For Millions, ‘One is Enough’ But one American family is relieved to finally have their first

Add China to the list of countries such as Germany, Singapore and Japan worried about declining birthrates. That’s pretty ironic considering that the world’s most populous nation limits most couples to just one child.

But apparently, the program has been too successful in cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, reports the Los Angeles Times. Nationwide, China’s birthrate of 12 children per every 1,000 residents is just slightly below the United States, but in Shanghai only four babies are born each year for every 1,000 residents.

Zhang Xiaofeng is a dedicated father in China, but he represents the new cultural attitude spreading much deeper than the old national policy. “I bathed him, fed him and changed his diapers. I did all those things,” Zhang told the Times. But, he adds, “One is enough.”

About 80 percent of 20,000 young people surveyed in Shanghai agree with Zhang that one is enough. Another 5 percent don’t want children at all. Government leaders probably never imagined that China could so successfully alter its own culture that parents would prefer one child. But fertility rates were probably destined to drop anyway as the nation industrialized.

In the United States, Catholic Latina women choose, within a generation of living here, to have fewer children, reports The New York Times. In California, for example, Latinas will have only 2.6 children in their lifetime as opposed to 2.9 in the early 1990s.

But let’s face it, affording children nowadays is daunting, and increasingly young people worldwide seem to dislike the “inconvenience” of having to care and pay for many children. Zhang Qi, who is a middle school official, explained to the Times this self-centeredness: “Every student thinks she’s in the middle of the circle. They consider little of others. I think it’s a great harm to our nation.”

While that may be true, there are millions of people in the Western world desperate to have even one child, much less five. Take Julie at a little pregnant, for example, who has battled through endometriosis, miscarriages, Clomid and In Vitro fertilization in her effort to become a mom. Oh, and she’s had one of the most harrowing pregnancies, which included placenta previa, gestational diabetes and preeclampsia, I’ve ever heard or read about. But she finally gave birth prematurely to little Charlie by emergency Caesarean Section. Congratulations Julie and Paul for bucking worldwide trends.