T A B L E_ T A L K

At odds with your spouse on how to discipline your child? Get advice and vent in the Mothers Who Think area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Time For One Thing: Anxiety
By Jennifer Moses
Anxiety: That persistent, gnawing sense that something, somewhere, is not quite right actually serves a purpose -- it gets me out of bed
(11/10/98)

The last campaign
By Erin Aubry
My father was the kind of upright politician who did thankless, largely unquantifiable good works. Unfortunately, the electorate didn't give a damn
(11/09/98)

Why can't a woman be more like a chair?
By Debra S. Ollivier
Fashions inspired by Cyber Amazons, mental-ward escapees and furniture are all the rage in Paris this spring
(11/06/98)

Should a boy be expelled for thought crimes?
By Sallie Tisdale
Students used to have to commit violence to get kicked out of school. Now they just have to write about it
(11/05/98)

Worse sex can be yours -- tonight!
By Holly Smith
Watching cellulite-laden "real people" on better-sex videos is a sure ticket to getting the erotic heaves
(11/03/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATURE ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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_____Is one enough?
Will China's generation without siblings break away from the one-child rule?
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BY VIVIENNE WALT | LANGXIA TOWNSHIP, China -- Just as the Chinese New Yearcelebrations exploded across the country last February, Hong Yuanqing andXiong Jianrong threw a party to mark their wedding. They registered theirmarriage with the local Communist Party committee in this district north ofShanghai, and eight months later, on a brisk autumn day in October, sat ona hard bench in Langxia's "newlywed class," discussing the finer details of sex and love.

Slightly built, with big glasses and a blue V-neck sweater, Hong, a27-year-old hairdresser, doesn't look like the avant-garde of a country inthe midst of major social upheaval. His soft voice barely breaks throughthe echoing din in the crowded classroom, and he visibly blushes each timehe looks at his 25-year-old wife, whose hair, drawn back in a ponytail,frames a pale face and drops over a sedate maroon suit. But this couple isas good a mark as any of China's vast changes.

Inside the classroom, there are astonishingly few inhibitions: Thediscussion this day ranges from why some men ejaculate too soon to how theycan bring their women to orgasm before they ejaculate. The newlywedclasses are only for married or engaged couples, whose bosses release themfrom work one afternoon a month to participate. Still, the topics wouldhave been unthinkable nearly a decade ago, when the public newlywedclasses first began in many Chinese towns. The teacher, a young woman,stands in the front of the classroom wearing a plastic apron on which is printed, to scale, the female anatomy -- a walking instructional tool.

Yet for all this racy material, the talk among the couplesinevitably reverts to the one crucial question intruding inall their lives: the government's policy to persuade, cajole and oftencompel couples to have only one child.

"Here we learn about contraception," says Hong. "We're usingcondoms right now. But soon we'll plan to have a child." Then comes the zinger: "And if we're rich enough, we'll have two or three. We would like three."

When Americans consider whether to have another child, they weighfactors like paying for education or a bigger house. But having a second child can befar costlier than that in China. In Langxia the government levies huge fines on couples who transgress family-planning rules by givingbirth to more than one child. In a system that varies wildly across thecountry, here couples are fined about one-quarter of their annual income foreach of the first five years of this surplus human being's life.

And so, like much else in China's new freewheeling capitalism, youcan, for a price, purchase your privileges, including those in the mostintimate areas of your life.

Even with parts of Asia in economic crisis, Hong and Xiong each stillearn 10,000 yuan, or $1,250, a year, a handsome sum for a small-townChinese couple. At this rate, they will be able to buy their wayinto a bigger family. And that's a very unsettling thought for governmentofficials, charged with administering perhaps the most controversial andtightly controlled population program in history.

Last month, for the first time ever, China's State Family PlanningCommission, one of the country's most pervasive bureaucracies, invited agroup of foreign journalists to tour the country and see how the governmenthas dramatically eased the country's population problem -- or at least seeits version of the success story. In a trip the Rockefeller Foundation inNew York facilitated and financed, we received rare access to neighborhoodclinics, factory health posts and rural families, and met with top family-planning officials in Beijing and Shanghai.

N E X T_ P A G E: A labyrinth of regulations