soooo..be more like china?
By law, single women in China have the right to reproduce. Children born out of wedlock are also legally entitled to enjoy the same rights as other children and are protected against discrimination.
But the law is widely ignored. “Discrimination is everywhere,” says Liang.
According to Xin Lingyan, a lawyer at Jingxiang Law Firm in Beijing, authorities regularly disregard the current legislation when it comes to children born to unwed mothers. “Local governments often don’t enforce the laws and regulations,” she said.
Liang was 19 when she found out she was pregnant. Her race car-driver boyfriend had cheated on her multiple times, and they had already broken up. After finding out about the pregnancy, he wanted nothing to do with the baby, instead telling Liang she could sell one of his race cars and keep the money to pay for the birth.
For the first seven months of her pregnancy, Liang lived in the nearby city of Shenzhen, a tech hub bordering Hong Kong.
Liang says if she had stayed in Guangzhou, her father would have forced her to get an abortion — a common pressure unmarried mothers face, as the traditional belief that only married couples should have children still dominates Chinese society.
“I don’t think I should beg someone to marry me just because I’m having his child,” says Liang.
Liang’s son was 5 when she applied for his birth certificate. Liang hoped to obtain his
hukou before he started school. Back then, the staff at the family planning office told Liang she would need a marriage certificate and information about the father, neither of which Liang could provide. And because Liang’s ex-boyfriend didn’t want to be involved, she couldn’t ask him for help.
But in 2007, there was no such flexibility. The Guangzhou Municipal Health Bureau refused to process a birth certificate for Liang’s son, and the authorities were immutable in the face of her protests. Liang had one last resort: cash. “They solved the problem as soon as they took my money,” she says.
With the new birth certificate in hand, Liang went to the local family planning office. Before she could apply for her son’s hukou, she had to pay a fine called the “social maintenance fee” — the same fine people were charged for illegally having more than one child under the one-child policy.
Searching for an Absentee Father
Chen Xiaoman moved to Shanghai more than a decade ago after leaving her native Qingdao, a coastal city in China’s eastern Shandong province.
While living in Shanghai, the 37-year-old had a relationship with a local man, but when she became pregnant she decided to keep her daughter’s existence a secret.
“I knew he wouldn’t be responsible,” Chen explains. “He refused to pay alimony to his ex-wife and didn’t want to look after their child.”
When her daughter Miao Miao was born in August 2009, Chen used personal connections to smooth the awkward process of acquiring her birth certificate without the father’s input. But when she tried to secure her newborn’s registration document, the process proved to be more problematic.
For this, Chen needed to go back to Qingdao, where her own
hukou was registered, and begin negotiations with the district-level family planning office there.
The office told her she had to pay a social maintenance fee of 100,000 yuan.
Chen knew immediately she was being ripped off. Staff from the community-level family planning office — a lower authority — had already told her the fine would be around 40,000 yuan. But Chen had no recourse and decided to pay, expecting that to be the end of the matter.
The family planning office refused to let Chen pay the fine.
The officials insisted that according to policy, both the mother and father must be fined, and so Chen was told to return with the father to pay the fine.
Four years later, Chen did just that. She registered a sham marriage with a gay friend and headed back to the family planning office in Qingdao with her marriage certificate in hand, hopeful that the issue could finally be resolved.
It still wasn’t enough. An employee at the family planning office told Chen that she would need DNA evidence to prove her husband was the biological father of Miao Miao.
“It drove me crazy,” Chen says. “I didn’t know what else I could do.”
Sixth Tone approached the family planning office in Qingdao, but no one was available for comment.
Unmarried women accuse local governments of discrimination, despite laws in place to protect their families.
www.sixthtone.com
and if you read these stories thru out it all the man who knocked up these women (one married so according to you by definition of being married he's not a "jack boy" right?) not one of them is held to ay standard if they choose to not take responsibility..
BUT the kid still needs an education and child care and food etc...you know ALL THE STUFF YOU HAVE TO DO TO TAKE OF A CHILD. And he gets to skate on that.
And you guys think thats fine? or solely her fault?? cuz theres NOTHING in your rules or methods that holds him any way responsible if he doesn't want to be. And theres NO incentive for any man to own up if all thats going to result is a bunch of fines and penalties...wont stop them from skeetin up tho right??
SO youre solution is to punish her MORE in the hopes that will break the cycle...
Well...china's actually doing that...hows it working out??
fuck how she feels about this shit...right? Its her job to make that decision (AFTER the sperm leaves your body) for the BOTH of us.
...the stuff YOUR MOTHER did for you. Are you saying she wasn't held accountable for her choice in having YOU?
