Social constraint: discussion on the concepts of fertility and social constraint

Journal of Hubei University: Philosophy and Society Edition 1997 02.

Based on the tripartite interests of the concept of fertility, after analyzing the traditional and realistic concept of fertility and its related policies in China, especially the concept of "raising children to prevent the elderly", it is believed that family planning propaganda should focus on population control and consider future generations, and society should increase the breadth and intensity of protecting children's rights and interests. At the same time, it is pointed out that in the value system of the concept of fertility, the privileges obtained by parents simply because of fertility should be gradually weakened or even abolished, and the children's rights to survival and education should be recognized to improve the quality of the population in practical effect.

Keywords concept of birth, social restriction of family planning

The research on the concept of fertility rose in the early 1980s, which was in step with the strengthening and popularization of family planning. The proposition of dichotomy of self-fertility view is basically cited as * * * knowledge in demography, and the investigation and research on fertility view in the future society are mostly limited to this conclusion, and the investigation and analysis are basically based on the purpose of fertility, gender preference and the choice of the number of children. Looking back on the research on the concept of fertility in recent ten years, whether it is the problem, the purpose of questionnaire design or the countermeasures to change the concept of fertility, there is an affirmation behind the literal meaning, that is, the choice of the concept of fertility is decided from the interests of parents; It is expected that parents' demands for children's return will change from material to spiritual; Under the background of emphasizing parents' interests, social constraints also interfere with the concept of fertility; In addition, it attempts to define this change in children's expected interests as a revolution in the concept of fertility. The author thinks that this kind of research still stays on the surface, does not touch the root of fertility concept, and does not achieve the expected effect of social constraints trying to influence fertility concept.

First of all, think about the previous concept of fertility.

The concept of fertility is people's view on fertility, which belongs to the category of social ideology and is the expression of world outlook and outlook on life on fertility. The fertility problem involves many factors such as human reproduction, social evaluation and respect, bioethics, traditional culture and customs. It has penetrated into all fields of social life, making the concept of fertility extremely rich. This determines that different times, different regions and different people have different views on fertility. At present, the dichotomy view of fertility has its limitations, which can not completely, accurately and truly reflect the essence of the view of fertility.

In the value system of fertility view, the interests of three groups should be taken care of.

The birth of human beings is different from the reproduction of animals and the production of things, and its production target is living and intelligent human beings. For people with social attributes, his birth is not just a personal matter. Every specific fertility behavior involves three independent groups: one is the subject of fertility-parents, the other is the object of fertility-children, and the third is the society composed of other groups. When considering the connotation of the concept of fertility, we should first make clear which side's interests should be taken into consideration: parents? Children? Or society? If we analyze the same fertility behavior from different angles, we will get different or even diametrically opposite understandings. In the value system of birth concept, we must first make clear which side has the greatest interests and how to give consideration to the interests of relatively independent people. Favoring one party or overemphasizing the dominant position of one party will lead to the improper inclination of the concept of fertility to a specific group of people, thus undermining the delicate and dynamic balance among the three parties. The chart is as follows:

In these three relationships, children, as the object of childbearing, are passive, unable to participate in their own reproductive decision-making, let alone interfere with the fertility of parents or society. But at the same time, as an independent person, he has all the rights as a person, which is equal to the rights of parents and society. The only particularity is that his protection and respect for his own rights as a person also depends on the strength of society and parents. Therefore, parents and society are active bearers of responsibilities and obligations in the concept of fertility. In other words, on the issue of fertility, if the interests of the three parties conflict and contradict, it is up to the society or parents to make judgments, choices and weigh.

When the three parties have the same value orientation, they are unified. For example, while parents have children to meet their own needs, they also provide the needed labor force for the society. At the same time, parents and society also build a healthy growth environment and future living space for their children. We can draw a preliminary conclusion that the birth of parents basically takes into account the interests of all parties and is coordinated and unified. Otherwise, there will be disharmony, and it will also lead to the problem of whose interests should be considered first and whose interests are the greatest in the tripartite relationship. In different times and societies, the concept of fertility is not detached and independent, but strongly constrained and guided by social forces at that time, and accordingly formed a concept of fertility with historical characteristics that tends to the interests of a certain group.

1. Pre-social standard stage. In the long primitive society and slave society, the level of productivity is extremely low, the living conditions of human beings are poor and the mortality rate is extremely high. In order to maintain the continuation of race, the survival of clan and the development of society, social constraints are embodied in the greatest interests of population, clan and society, and the interests of parents and children must be subordinate to the interests of the whole. It has been observed that among the surviving primitive tribes, when food shortage threatens people's lives, clans always give priority to those who are strong and have a high survival rate, whether they are parents or underage children. Parents' interests and children's own rights are ignored and obliterated. This period can be called the low-level social standard stage.

2. Parent-oriented stage. In the long feudal society, with the development and progress of social production, social interests are reflected in the specific interests of each family. On the issue of fertility, parents' needs and interests are more considered, and the traditional concept of fertility is based on parents. As the private property and accessories of parents, children must obey their parents' interests as the greatest premise. Its most typical is China's "filial piety culture". Social constraints focus on guiding and protecting parents' rights and interests.

3. Children-oriented stage. Entering the capitalist society, we advocate everyone's free development and independent right to exist. The interests of children who have been neglected in the concept of fertility have attracted social attention. In dealing with parent-child relationship, considering that parents are mostly adults, they have the ability of independent thinking and self-protection in reproductive choice. The focus of social constraints began to tend to protect children's rights and interests. For example, the abortion laws of various countries prohibit women who are pregnant for more than a certain month from having an abortion, in order to protect the right to life of the fetus in the womb. Since then, a series of laws and regulations, such as the Law on Minors and the Law on Child Labour, have embodied this spirit.

4. Post-social standard stage. After entering the 20th century, on the basis that the basic rights of parents and children have been guaranteed, people's understanding of their own fertility has been further deepened, and their awareness of environmental protection has been gradually enhanced. Considering the deterioration of the relationship between population and economy, population and environment, when guiding and restraining their own population, all countries in the world mainly proceed from the overall interests of the country and society, with the ultimate goal of improving the living conditions of all mankind, and formulate corresponding population policies. It can be called the post-social standard stage.

To sum up, the essence of the concept of fertility is how to coordinate and balance the conflicts of interests among parents, children and society. In the historical evolution of the concept of fertility, social constraints play a dual role of restriction and guidance, with obvious tendency.

Second, the analysis of the current concept of fertility.

From the perspective of tripartite interests, we can find that social constraints are hesitant and powerless in restricting and guiding the concept of fertility.

The development of China society did not go through the period of capitalist form, but directly entered the socialist society from the feudal society. For China society in the primary stage of socialism, the influence of traditional ideas in feudal society is deeply rooted. In the view of fertility, "filial piety culture" is still an important symbol to measure people's moral level, and its social inertia is still slipping to the parents; At the same time, with the gradual improvement of opening up and the legal system, laws and regulations to protect children's rights and interests have been promulgated one after another, such as the Nine-year Compulsory Education Law and the Law on the Protection of Minors. Formally, attention to children is increasing; On the other hand, China's family planning policy is put forward to safeguard the overall interests of the country, with the aim of protecting the environment and promoting the orderly development of the economy and society. In this sense, the social constraints of China's current concept of fertility should be inclined to the post-social standard stage.

From this point of view, it is still a difficult problem to define the concept of fertility at this stage. Based on the above analysis, can we think that China's current concept of fertility is still in the dilemma of "parental standard" in his bones and "protecting children" in form, hoping to achieve "social standard"? In this wandering and uncertainty, social constraints are not really close to social interests, which are concentrated in the following aspects.

(A) Parents-oriented social constraints and guidance

1. In family planning publicity and education, the basic tone of publicity is still to get the best interests of parents.

Publicity and education is an effective means of family planning work, which has been paid attention by the state and actively cooperated by governments at all levels and family planning departments. As a result, a powerful propaganda network with radio, television, newspapers and magazines as the media has been formed. However, when explaining why the population should be controlled, most propagandists try to emphasize the point that the purpose of family planning is to protect the interests of parents, starting from their own interests and thinking for their parents. For example, the propaganda slogans scattered on the roadside in rural areas directly promote this theme. There are also "having fewer children and getting rich early", "having boys and girls is the same (providing for the elderly)", "having fewer children and planting more trees if you want to get rich" and so on.

In TV, movies and publicity reports, it is often the theme that super-life leads to parents' poverty and vagrancy.

These similar missions directly or indirectly imply that it is reasonable and inevitable to transfer the best interests of parents in reproductive behavior. This educational model is to stimulate people's self-love psychology, but the effect is the opposite. Before accepting the subjective guidance of propaganda, the propagandist must first judge whether it is true or not and whether it is in line with his own actual situation. In the vast rural areas, the productivity is relatively low at this stage. After the household contract, the output mainly depends on the input of domestic labor force. In fact, there is an economic mechanism to stimulate the birth of the population. Based on this, it is difficult for propagandists to accept the subjective inducement and suggestion of propagandists, but it is possible to get the opposite conclusion, that is, the government controls the population for parents, and parents can get the greatest benefit for themselves by increasing the birth population, which is basically consistent with the original intention of the government and should be reasonable. They may also misunderstand and distrust the government's population policy, thus affecting the understanding and implementation of the family planning policy.

2. In the interest-driven mechanism of family planning, the interests of parents are still the axis.

All provinces and regions in China have their own family planning regulations. According to the regulations, parents who marry early and have more children will be fined. Parents who meet the requirements of family planning enjoy certain economic rewards, such as being more responsible for farmland and giving priority to recruitment and employment. Did not consider how to reflect and protect the rights and interests of children.

Filial piety is the first, and society emphasizes the responsibility of children to support their parents.

Despite the impact of the market economy, filial piety is still regarded as the greatest virtue of the Chinese nation, which is strongly supported by public opinion and concerned by community organizations. According to a survey in Beijing, among the "five good" families in rural areas in Beijing, the proportion of families characterized by providing for the aged was rated as "five good" at 48%, ranking first.

At present, China's economy is underdeveloped, and less than 1/4 elderly people enjoy retirement security. It also forces the state to assume the responsibility of supporting the elderly mainly by families, so as to reduce the pressure of the elderly population on society. When dealing with the tripartite relationship among parents, children and society, we dare not and can't propose to break the concept of "raising children to prevent old age", and we can only replace it with the ambiguity of "giving birth to children is the same (providing for the elderly)". Compared with the modern concept of fertility, we can't think that our current concept of fertility has changed from material to spiritual. It is still a realistic material choice to regard children as an investment in future pension.

(2) In the concept of bearing children's rights and interests have not been truly reflected, and social protection is not enough.

So far, in the analysis of China's concept of fertility, the main considerations are why parents have children, how many children they have, gender selection and so on. The formulation and publicity of these related policies are based on the best interests of parents, and parents are the main body of thinking. This is the best fertility model for parents. In this case, children's rights and interests are ignored.

1. When children's long-term interests conflict with parents' immediate interests, parents often choose to give up their children's interests, and society does not give them strong constraints. If the concept of fertility is understood as including "fertility+education", we can find many violations of children's rights and interests. For another example, families who are already poor and unable to raise their children continue to have more children because of their parents' desire for male offspring, resulting in children's living standards below the poverty line, poor health, dropping out of school and premature employment. According to statistics, the physical development of rural children is obviously lower than that of urban children, the malnutrition rate of teenagers is as high as 36. 16%, and there are more than 20 million out-of-school children. In order to have more boys, parents choose to be born by medical means, which makes the sex ratio abnormally high and seriously damages the interests of their children's future marriage. Parents abandon baby girls and disabled babies from time to time, which shows that children are deprived of their basic rights in an extreme way.

Although the society has controlled the use of B-ultrasound, rescued children who dropped out of school, and social welfare institutions have adopted some abandoned babies, parents who have this behavior have basically not been punished. This actually condones parents' damage to their children's rights and interests.

2. The formulation of China's family planning policy follows the principle that a couple has only one child, which is absolutely average. However, under this fair policy, the educational and economic differences of different parents are ignored, and whether children born in different families can get enough support and care is not considered. This is a pure product distribution model embodied in the birth policy.

This inflexible absolute population control model can reduce the birth population in a short time, but from the perspective of improving the quality of the population, it has caused problems. A number of statistics show that there are 300,000 disabled children in China every year. According to the current family planning regulations, the first child with non-hereditary disability can have a second child. In view of the imperfection of current gene identification, it is actually indistinguishable. There are also parents with smart children who can only have one child, while parents with dementia fools are allowed to have a second child, which is likely to be disabled. Excessive protection of such disabled children actually deprives healthy children of their right to exist. Compared with Singapore's population policy based on choosing parents, the social constraints of China's population policy should be revised.

3. In recent years, although China has enacted a series of laws and regulations, such as the Law on the Protection of Minors, the Compulsory Education Law and the Prohibition of Child Labour, there is still a long way to go before these laws are put into practice.

In fact, the social constraints of the concept of fertility only have certain restrictions on whether children can have children. When a child is born, how parents cultivate and educate their children is basically laissez-faire. Traditionally, the concept that children are parents' property still has a considerable market. Occasionally, parents killed their children because of their negligence, indicating that their personal rights and interests have been extremely violated. In the actual operation of the law, when children's rights and interests are infringed, it is not clear who should complain on their behalf and which institution should supervise them, at least not very clear.

(3) Under the guidance of the concept of fertility, the society expects to achieve the goal of "controlling the population and improving the quality of the population". However, due to misunderstanding and compromise with reality, social constraints are ambiguous, hesitant, hesitant and uncertain, and there is a contradictory cycle:

One of its strange circles: in the concept of social constraint on fertility, we vigorously promote the change of the concept of "raising children to prevent old age", and at the same time legally stipulate that children should support their parents. The reality is that the social security system is not perfect, and family pension is still encouraged, that is, to prevent old age or to raise a son.

The second cycle: Changing the traditional concept of "son preference" in China is an important part of changing the concept of fertility. The reality is that men and women have unequal employment opportunities and educational opportunities, and women are still discriminated against in rural land contracting. In fact, it is the de facto inequality between men and women, and selective childbearing is popular.

The third cycle: the fine for super-birth is to restrain parents' reproductive behavior. In fact, it is a fine, and people are also super-born. For poor families, after paying the fine, the children drop out of school and go back to their hometown to farm. The population is not controlled, and the improvement of population quality is even more affected, forming a vicious circle.

(4) An important reason for population control is to reduce the burden of raising young people in society, save expenses and improve the quality of the population by reducing the number of births. Since the implementation of family planning in 197 1, 300 million people have been born less, but the current situation of improving the quality of the population is not optimistic. Mainly manifested in the shrinking scale of primary and secondary schools, the phenomenon of teenagers dropping out of school is still very serious. Controlling population has not achieved the goal of improving population quality.

To sum up, we believe that whether it is the emphasis on protecting parents' rights and interests or the uncertainty of social constraints, China's current fertility concept is at the stage of traditional fertility concept. Optimistic, it is only the first step to hesitate about children's standards. When formulating and implementing population policies in the future, the first thing to be determined is which party's rights and interests should be protected by social constraints.

Three. Suggestions on realistic birth policy

China is still in the primary stage of socialism, and it is unrealistic to hope to realize the "social standard" of fertility in one step. Of course, we can't continue to tolerate the existence of "paternalism". The more feasible choice is: social constraints clearly indicate that children's interests are the greatest, and it is their responsibility to protect children. Expect to change from "parents-oriented" to "children-oriented", and specific family planning measures and supporting social and economic policies should reflect this theme. We can start from the following aspects.

(1) Family planning publicity and education should make it clear that population control is for future generations, and parents should not only focus on their own personal interests at the expense of their children's future interests and enhance their sense of responsibility. If parents can realize that reducing fertility at this stage is to reserve more living space for their children, even if it harms their vital interests, it is easier to accept it emotionally and intellectually. In other words, parents' love and devotion to their children has shifted to the support of China's population policy.

(2) The society should increase the breadth and intensity of protecting children's rights and interests. The theoretical understanding of "children are the future of the motherland" is in place. But the crux of the problem lies in how to carry out this concept to the end and implement it. According to the regulations of the United Nations, children enjoy three rights, namely, the right to life, the right to play and the right to education. Considering that play is children's nature and the right to play is an index that is difficult to quantify, analyze and explain without data, we only discuss the protection of children's legitimate rights and interests from the perspective of "right to life" and "right to education".

1. At present, the most urgent task to protect children's right to survival is to protect the right to survival of baby girls, so that ordinary children can enjoy the care and upbringing of the average living standard of society, maintain the reasonable living space of healthy children, and severely crack down on the crime of abandoning baby girls. It is reported that since 198 1 year ago, Wuhan Yuying Hall has adopted more than 100 abandoned girls every year, but it is extremely rare for parents to be punished. This proves our incompetence in protecting children's rights and interests from another side. The crime of abandonment should be regarded as other criminal offences and the crackdown should be intensified.

We should reform the mode of sharing children's fertility and parents' interests equally, ensure children's right to exist, and play a guiding role in improving the quality of the population and encouraging individual struggle.

2. In order to ensure children's right to education, society and family should share the responsibility.

The state should increase investment in primary and secondary education funds. When the per capita GNP of all countries in the world reaches US$ 400, the international average level of education investment in GNP is 3.52%, 1986, and the per capita GNP of China has reached US$ 400. In the same year, China's education investment accounted for only 3.03% of GNP, while it was 2.75% in 1987. This is extremely disproportionate and unreasonable to China's national conditions.

We should strengthen the role of the family in helping children receive education and impose corresponding social constraints. The government should punish parents who don't want their children to receive education, such as deducting them from family income in the form of compulsory retention, or converting part of the fines for over-birth into education funds for children who are out of school.

In order to promote the conscious improvement of the quality of the whole people and ensure the normal education of girls, we should formulate a slightly intense social and economic policy. For example, only citizens who have completed nine-year education can participate in conscription and conscription, and get certain family planning preferential treatment. The scores are equal, and women have priority in further studies and employment.

(3) In the value system of the concept of childbearing, the privileges enjoyed by parents simply because of childbearing should be gradually weakened or even abolished, such as occupying their children's labor force for free and getting unconditional and legally guaranteed support from their children without due diligence. Considering that parents, as adults, can decide their own reproductive behavior independently, and at the same time, they can create some kind of social security for their old age through their own efforts, so it is fairer to gradually transfer the responsibility of providing for the aged to the society and the parties themselves. It is unfair for a couple to bet on a child who has no choice out of doubt about their ability and fear of poverty. In fact, the traditional way of raising children has faced more and more challenges. Family planning has reduced the number of children who can fulfill their responsibilities, but there are more and more elderly people who need to be supported, and children will be unable to bear the responsibility of support at some point in the future. The impact of the market economy and the emergence of small families have also led some young people in rural areas to sign an agreement on "whether to raise or bury" before marriage. It shows that it is unstable for the elderly to rely on their children to support them, and it is difficult to ensure that they can get better care. From this background, we should gradually dilute the pension function of parents' reproductive behavior.

First of all, while children are required to support their parents, necessary restrictive clauses are attached. For example, only when parents fulfill their obligations to support their children, ensure that their children can live a normal life, receive the necessary education, and there is no abandonment or abuse of their children, can they get the reward from their children in their later years. Otherwise, their children have the right to reduce or even cancel the support of their irresponsible parents. Of course, from the perspective of consanguinity, children always have feelings for their parents, which should be encouraged, but should not be legally enforced.

Secondly, encourage adults to prepare for their old age by saving, insurance and mutual assistance when they are young. The society should gradually establish and improve the social security system for the elderly, carry out community medical services for the elderly, and encourage the elderly to support themselves and help each other by saving "working days".

About the author: Ci, female, born in 1964, lecturer in the Department of Education Management, Hubei University (Wuhan) (postcode 430062). Fan Yunxia, female, born in 1957, is an assistant researcher at the School of Education of Hubei Medical University (Wuhan) (postcode 430072).