This blog is created by students from Clemson University's spring 2009 course Women's Studies 459 - "Building Bodies: Women's Bodies in Theory and Practice." This class explores the construction of bodies from various methodological perspectives, focusing on five specific areas: theories of bodies; bodies and genders and sexes; “misbehaving” bodies; politics of bodies; and constructing bodies. We welcome comments and contributions to our posts and discussions.

13 March 2009

Propaganda BBC news report - Should we have a one child policy ?



Hey guys! Here's a video entitled Propaganda BBC news report-Should we have a one child policy? It's a pretty short video and it relates having larger families to global warming issues. In the opening there's a lady who is talking about how she teaches her children to recycle and take care of the environment. The announcer talks about China's one child policy and states that advocates aren't looking to implement the same policy but rather to implement incentives. I think that this is still placing great restrictions on the family. Seeing this video made me think of the question that posed in class as to whether the one child policy was taking away the rights of women or whether it was just an economic policy. In this video it appears that they are trying to set it up as merely an economic policy to solve a social issue and not as anything actually limiting. I certainly find it a bit limiting, however. I just find it strange that the government would offer incentives to not have children and thus control the population. I realize that this has been in practice for a while but still, I thought about what it would be like to be offered an incentive here in the US to keep my family small. (Especially in light of the current state of the economy...I think that perhaps we'd see a larger drop in birthrate than we would have in previous years). But that's about the extent of my thought processes on the matter so far. What do you all think?
side note-the girls in the family of 5 are wearing head scarves!

1 comment:

  1. I don't think the government should limit how many children a couple has. I understand there is a problem with over population, but isn't there another way to help solve this problem? If a family can raise a child, why should they be limited? Plus, you never know, by limiting the amount of children a person could have, you might be inhibiting the future. I know this is a stretch, but by not letting a woman have her child, you might have just passed on the cure to cancer. Limiting the number of children a person can have is like limiting the amount human intelligence.

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