One-Child Policy Britannica Online

The one-child policy was a rule made by China's government in the late 1970s. The rule said that each family should only have one child. The main reason for this rule was to stop the country's population from growing too fast. In 2016, the government stopped this policy.

When China started this rule, they first said families should try to have no more than two kids, but one kid was better. Soon, they said one child per family was the rule. This was to help control how many people were in the country, which was almost one billion people at that time.

The rule was supposed to be for everyone, but there were some exceptions. For example, if the first child had a disability or if the family was from certain ethnic groups, they could have more than one child. The rule was followed more strictly in cities than in the countryside. In cities, families were usually smaller and agreed to the rule more. In rural areas, families were larger and didn't want to follow the rule as much.

To make sure people followed the rule, the government offered rewards to those who did and penalties to those who didn't. Sometimes, they even forced people to not have more kids.

Because of the one-child policy, fewer babies were born in China. But this also caused some problems. Since more families wanted boys, there were more boys than girls born. This became an issue when these children grew up because there were not enough women for men to marry. Also, with fewer children being born, there were fewer young people to help take care of older people. Some parents who wanted more kids had them in secret, which caused problems for these children because they didn’t have official papers.

In 2015, China said it was okay for families to have two kids instead of just one. But even with this change, not many families decided to have more kids. They were worried about things like money and taking care of the children they already had.

In 2021, the government said families could now have three kids. They also promised to help families more, so they would feel okay about having more kids. This was because they noticed that not having enough young people could cause big problems for the country in the future.