The Hardest Time

Hailey Huang

ESL 100

Cause and Effect Essay

Third Draft

March 14, 2015

 The Hardest Time

            Having a son was the most important task for a new couple in China’s past because of the traditional ideology looked up to men and down on women. People preferred boys to girls, so many new mothers couldn’t stop producing until they had a boy. Unfortunately, the government began to implement the family planning policy in 1980. It was called the one-child policy, but people were allowed to have a second child only if the first one was a girl. My parents got married in 1983. As a result, they were under the population control policy. Since the last generation still had the deep traditional ideology, my grandparents hoped to have a grandson very much. The one-child policy which still exists today had a deep influence on my family.

                    The first effect of this policy was that my parents lost the chance to stay with their children and watched them grow up. I have total of seven sisters. My parents were continuously trying to get a boy until the seventh sister born. Since my older sister and I were born, my parents had to hide in different places to evade the government. When I was little, and still a baby, my parents could just see me only once or twice a month because both my older sister and I were sent to live in different relatives’ homes. As a result, it caused a lack of mutual understanding between my parents and us. When I was six years old, my parents decided not to pursue a boy anymore, so both my older sister and I got to come home and live with my parents. When I started to live with my parents, I didn’t know my father that much, and I didn’t even talk to him.

                     In addition, my parents had to give my three little sisters away to families that they didn’t even know. With their misfortune, every time my mother brought a new baby girl to the world, she had to give her away. The reason was that my parents had too many girls, so they still needed to hide. This gave my parents a lot of grief. At that time, some couples who didn’t have a child wanted to adopt a baby, so my grandparents connected an intermediary and gave the baby to them. I could not imagine how my parents could take the pain of separating from their own new born baby three times. Every time my parents thought of my three little sisters, tears would fill with their eyes.

            Furthermore, this policy had a strong impact on my father’s job and his life. My father used to work as an accountant for the government. For violating the birth control ordinance, he needed to pay the penalty and lost his job. It was hard for him to find another good job, so he decided to become a farmer. Because of his little experience farming, he had to learn from the old farmers and work very hard. He worked at the farm in the daytime and worked on the agricultural books at night in older to learn more knowledge about farming. Due to the stress of life, he soon became older than his age.

            Today, the one-child policy is still implemented in China. Even though the policy has become more lenient, it still affects many families. I am so lucky and happy that I can be in America, which is a free and mostly feminist country. I don’t need to worry about what gender my child would be, and I can have as many children I want. The most important thing is I don’t need to follow the footsteps that my parents had.