[LMB] Single children (Was China)

[JenL]

On 9/6/07, Rachel Ganz <rachel at compromise.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

>
> On 1 Sep 2007, at 1:04 AM, ROBIN NAKKULA wrote:
> > My theory is: very male, very unused to sharing (no siblings, so no
> > sense of "brotherhood,")
>
>
> Do you think this is true of all single children, or only Chinese boys?
> There are quite a few single children in the Vorsorkigan books (Miles,
> Ivan, Gregor, Elena)? Are they exemplars of this?


Miles' childhood would affect him whether he had siblings or not.  And all
of these characters were in unsual situations (to be Ivan, not only an only
child but also in line for the throne, is far different from being an only
child of factory workers in a village in China.)

But still, whether or not these characters were written to show an effect of
being an only child doesn't change whether real children are affected by
being raised as an only child.

I don't think there's ever been a social experiment on the scale of this
"one pregnancy" rule in China, so we can only speculate on how it will
affect individual kids.  But I think we can assume that this experiment will
have consequences - the "one pregnancy" rule has already had unintended side
effects for China, such as the rise in the number of parents using fertility
drugs in order to deliver multiple babies in that one pregnancy.


jen