What is the birth policy of past dynasties?

Reward childbirth and set up special "child care" officials.

In the early Warring States period, the total population of China just exceeded 6.5438+million. By the time Qin Shihuang unified the six countries, the population of the whole country had doubled. In the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, the royal family declined, the vassal States dominated, wars continued, and a large number of people died, but the population increased instead of decreasing, which was the result of the "family planning" policy of encouraging more children in the vassal States at that time. For example, in the Battle of Wu and Yue, when Yue was defeated, Gou Jian worked hard to make a living and implemented the strategy of strengthening the country. One of the important measures is to encourage fertility and increase the domestic population.

According to the records in Li Zhou Di Guan Da Situ, it can be considered that the China government in the Western Zhou Dynasty attached great importance to population maintenance. The so-called "protecting the interest and supporting the public", the first one is "nurturing the young". Zheng Xuan's comment is: "Kindness means loving the young, loving the young, having three children with the mother, and having a second child with the mother." During the Spring and Autumn Period, the system of Yueguo was that women had to report to the government when they were about to give birth, and the government sent doctors to guard them. The reward for having a boy is two pots of wine and a dog, and the reward for having a girl is two pots of wine and a pig. The person who gave birth to three children was sent by the government to breastfeed. In Qi, there are also special "nanny" officials in the government, who are responsible for rewarding "glorious mothers". For example, mothers with three children can be exempted from tax; Regenerate one, the whole family is tax-free; If the fifth child is born, the government will also send a nanny, and the rations for the fifth child and nanny will be borne by the state. In addition, there are "orphan officials" in various places, who are responsible for finding foster families for orphans. Orphans have exemption treatment, and "orphan officials" often ask questions.

Since the Qin and Han Dynasties, all these functions have become the statutory duties of the county government. According to the Biography of Jia Biao in the Later Han Dynasty, when Jia Biao was the county magistrate of Xinxi County, there was a robbery in the south of the city and a baby drowning in the north. Jia Biao ordered driving to investigate the case, but officials thought robbery was more important than robbery, and he planned to take him to the south of the city. Jia county magistrate lost his temper and said, "it is common sense that thieves harm people;" Mother and son eat each other and go against the sky. " Then drive north. In the past few years, Xinxi County has added thousands of lives. It is said that it is the county magistrate Jia who survived, so boys are called "Jia Zi" and girls are called "Jia Nv". In the Northern Song Dynasty, Shi Youming's official infant care agency appeared, but people were still encouraged to come to the agency for adoption. Officials gave money or appointed nannies. At that time, there was a saying that "no athletes were raised, but beggars were raised". Since the Song Dynasty, the Early Childhood Care Bureau has gradually become popular, and later there were kindergartens, but the specialized "orphan" officials were no longer established and changed to miscellaneous posts.

Forced early marriage, severe punishment for not getting married at school age.

While encouraging childbearing, Yue also forced early marriage. It is stipulated that "a strong man does not take an old woman, an old man does not marry a strong wife, a woman does not marry at seventeen, her parents are guilty, her husband does not marry at thirty, and her parents are guilty." Judging from the family planning policy of Yue State, the popular "brother-sister love" and "yellow love" are strictly prohibited. Young and strong men can't marry older women, and older men are not allowed to marry younger women. Not only that, parents of unmarried marriageable children will also be punished. Later, the State of Yue defeated the State of Wu and rose again. Although there are many reasons, it is not unrelated to the implementation of this "family planning" policy.

Rewarding families with more children is only one aspect of China's ancient "family planning" policy. On the other hand, it is to solve the problem of gender imbalance between men and women of childbearing age, one of which is forced early marriage. In early ancient China, "late marriage" was once advocated. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, the legal age for marriage was 30 for men and 20 for women. However, in the period when the "family planning" policy is implemented to encourage more children, the marriageable age is often much earlier. For example, during the Spring and Autumn Period, Qi implemented the "family planning" policy of 20 years old for men and 0/5 years old for women, encouraging people to get married early, and some dynasties even advanced the marriage age of women to 0/3 years old. Besides lowering the age of marriage, some dynasties in ancient China also advocated "second marriage". For example, in the Tang Dynasty, the policy of "a man marries a widow and a widow remarries" was advocated, which denied the old idea that it is shameful for a man to marry a second wife and that a woman is "faithful all her life".

In ancient China, the punishment for those who violated family planning was also very severe. For example, during the reign of Emperor Liu Ying (Hui Di) in the early Han Dynasty (BC 195 ~ BC 188), there was a clear "fine" plan. According to Records of Emperor Hui of Han Dynasty, in BC 189, Liu Ying ordered: "Women who are over 15 to 30 years old will not marry, which will be counted as five." "Calculation" was the unit of measurement for collecting poll tax at that time, and it was a tax calculation method set by the founding emperor Liu Bang in the fourth year after the founding of the People's Republic of China. All citizens aged 15 and under 56 must pay poll tax, and the tax amount per person is 120 yuan, which is called "one-time calculation". Fifth, 720 yuan. That is to say, if you don't get married at the right age, you will violate the "family planning" policy and pay a fine of five times the poll tax. This fine was not low at that time. Based on the average grain price per stone 100 yuan in the whole Western Han Dynasty, 720 yuan can buy seven or eight stones of grain, which is at least one year's rations for an adult.

As soon as Emperor Taizong Li Shimin ascended the throne, he issued a timely imperial edict in the first month of Zhenguan (AD 627), encouraging Shu Ren's marriage and employment, encouraging childbearing, mobilizing the rich to sponsor poor bachelors who could not afford to get married, and taking the quality of family planning and the number of widows as performance indicators for local leading cadres.

As today, in order to publicize the family planning policy, there were various family planning slogans and slogans in ancient China. Of course, the theme is to encourage more children. There are many slogans to encourage more births, at least two of which are deeply rooted in people's hearts and have influenced the whole feudal era. One is "more children and more happiness, raising children to prevent old age"; There is also a saying that "there are three kinds of unfilial, and there is no big one."

The transformation from "many people are blessed" to "many people are poor"

In ancient China, some scholars realized the serious problems caused by the rapid population growth and worried about "full population", so they put forward the slogan of having fewer children or even not having children. The representative figure is Wang Fanzhi in Tang Dynasty. Wang Fanzhi, a popular folk poet in the early Tang Dynasty, had a rough life and suffered a lot. After 50, he converted to Buddhism. He opposed "having more children" and put forward the idea of attaching importance to population quality education. Among the most popular forms of poetry at that time, he wrote many family planning "slogans" in vernacular Chinese. The most famous is a sentence in his poem "Big Skin Tree", "Don't have too many children, just do it." It means, don't have too many sons, just have one who can do things. Twenty or thirty years ago, the most popular slogan of "family planning" in China, "A couple has only one good child", originated here.

In the Song Dynasty, some scholars estimated that the total population of China exceeded 1 100 million for the first time. Under this background, Ma Duanlin, a famous scholar in the late Song Dynasty and the author of Literature General Examination, formally put forward the "family planning" theory, which emphasizes the quality of the population and the overall quality, and is quite close to the modern population and family planning policy.

Young people's concept of marriage age did not rise until the Song Dynasty. In the northern song dynasty, according to the order of Tang kaiyuan, it was stipulated that "men are fifteen years old and women are thirteen years old, and they are allowed to marry"; In the Jiading period of the Southern Song Dynasty, it was changed to sixteen years for men and fourteen years for women. The actual age of marriage is about 20 for men, and between 15 and 19 for women.

However, by the end of the Ming Dynasty, people had more thoughts and worries about "Manchu". Writer Feng Menglong said: If every couple always gives birth to a man and a woman, there will never be any increase or decrease, which can last for a long time; If you have two boys and two girls, each generation will double, and it will only increase. How do we feed them?

At the end of Qianlong in Qing Dynasty, the octogenarian emperor Qianlong expressed his concern about the excessive population growth in an imperial edict: the country was blessed by God and peaceful for more than 100 years, but the population increased more than ten times than before. A person who cultivates more than ten people cannot produce enough food as before. In addition, the land occupied by the Green Society is also growing exponentially, with fewer and fewer people engaged in production and more and more people consuming food, which is closely related to people's livelihood. If we waste food at will, the people are lazy and the fields are barren, then there will inevitably be food shortage, and I am very worried about it on the day when the economy is in trouble! Gong Zizhen and Wei Yuan, who were active in Daoguang period, were also extremely anxious about China's "increasingly complex teeth and narrow weather" and were very sensitive to the possible great turmoil. In addition to the ancient idea of "average", they also advocate that a large number of idlers without education, agriculture, industry or commerce voluntarily or forcibly immigrate. Wang Shiduo, a scholar who witnessed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's occupation of Nanjing, directly blamed the outbreak of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Revolution on China's "large population" and put forward a series of measures to reduce the population beyond or even contrary to rationality. His central argument is: "The reason for the chaos in the world is that there are many people (there are many women, so there are many people). Many people are poor (lack of land). " Because "there are many women in the world, which is also the reason for the chaos in the world", his measures to reduce the population, in addition to the slaughter policy of "disorderly people", are more aimed at women, such as promoting the law of female drowning, giving cold medicine for abortion, strictly remarriing, and setting up a virginity home.

China's traditional concept of population was subverted, and finally changed from "many people are blessed" to "many people are poor".