Birthing, competitive and constrained
Following up on the babies-as-luxury-items thread... NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday recently ran a piece about "competitive birthing." The short story: the last decade has seen large families become status symbols for wealthy couples. In other words, babies have become another form of conspicuous consumption. Says one demographer who appears in the piece, "It's an unprecedented trend and completely counter to a hundred years of history."
As it so often is, the story is very different in China. It came out this week that the Chinese government is reformulating the marketing campaign behind its one-child message. Slogans such as "One more baby means one more tomb" and "Raise fewer babies but more piggies" are apparently now out. In are messages such as "The mother earth is too tired to sustain more children." The change of tune comes two weeks after the government of Hunan province announced it would be cracking down on wealthy families that have flouted the one-child policy. (via)
-Greg Dahlmann
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