Association between Second-Time Mother’s Prenatal Depression and Firstborn’s Behaviour Problems: The Mediation Role of Parenting Daily Hassles

Background: With the relaxation of birth control policy in China in recent years, second-time mothers’ mental health has raised concerns. However, the impact of firstborn children’s behaviour problems on second-time mothers’ prenatal depression in families transitioning to siblinghood has received little attention from family psychologists. Aims: This research aims to investigate whether firstborn children’s behaviour problems affect second-time mothers’ prenatal depression and the mediation role of daily parenting hassles, i.e., minor stressors associated with parenting, on this relationship. Methods: Data about second-time mothers’ prenatal depression, parenting daily hassles, and firstborn children’s behaviour problems were collected from 105 families transitioning to two children families using mother-reported questionnaires. Regressions were used to analyze the data. Results: About half of the mothers in the sample have depressive symptoms. Firstborns’ behaviour problems did not have a direct effect on the mother’s prenatal depression, but the problems did have an indirect effect via parenting daily hassles. The mothers’ age was significantly associated with prenatal depression. Conclusions: The mediation role of parenting daily hassles in the association with firstborn’s behaviour problems and mother’s prenatal depression suggests the need for support that reduce the levels of daily parenting hassles from firstborn children.

What are the main challenges facing the sustainable development of China’s Yangtze economic belt in the future? An integrated view

Interactions among human and natural systems are fundamental to many issues facing today’s sustainable development. Yangtze Economic Belt (hereafter Belt), one of the most dynamic regions in China, is of no exception. The economic prosperity of the Belt, however, comes at the price of ecological and environmental degradation, which poses severe challenges to its sustainable development. This paper describes the application of the ANEMI_Yangtze system dynamics model, aiming at identifying the main challenges facing the Belt and the potential way out towards its sustainable development. Three scenarios are proposed to (i) explore the potential impacts of climate change; (ii) examine how changes in birth control policy affect population dynamics and the natural-environmental systems; and (iii) investigate how policies aimed at improving the eco-environment conditions affect the Belt. Results show that a moderate rise in temperature is beneficial to the Belt’s economy and energy-food-water systems, but further temperature rise is harmful. Population in the Belt peaks around 2030, 2080, and 2100 under one-child, two-child, and three-child policies, respectively. Suppose no major changes in economic, technological, and policy developments are introduced. In that case, the Belt may face a serious energy deficit ranging from 10 to 17 billion tce. A food self-sufficiency ratio will fall from around 0.7 to 0.39 by 2100 as the country’s birth control policy loosens. Water scarcity occurs if surface water is considered as the only supply and this situation becomes even more serious when water pollution effects are considered. However, water stress will be greatly allievated if groundwater and wastewater reuse are introduced. The policy of increasing nutrient removal efficiency can save million lives. Finally, our results also suggest that the recently introduced 10-year fishing ban policy can not prevent the Yangtze fish stock from depletion in the long run.

The only-child premium and moderation by social origin: Educational stratification in post-reform China

The One Child Policy initiated in the late 1970s created a birth cohort with an unusually high proportion of only children. This paper examines the relationship between being the only child in the family and educational attainment, as well as its potential variations by social origin. Drawing my sample from the China Family Panel Studies, I compare two birth cohorts born before and after the birth-control policy. Results show that in the younger cohort, being the only child in the family produces a premium in educational outcomes, including years of completed schooling and odds of progressing through critical grade transitions. In addition, I observe a pattern that the only-child premium tends to be larger for people with higher social origins in competitive grade transitions.

Experiment

Chapter 9 assesses the effects of exposure to different author bylines and frames in news coverage of birth control policy. Using a series of survey experiments, this chapter identifies how exposure to the kinds of articles typically produced by male and female reporters influences media trust, political cynicism, and opinions about contraception. The results show that women asked to read articles on the contraceptive mandate written by other women viewed the media as more credible than women asked to read articles written by men. In addition, the results demonstrate that exposure to strategic game coverage significantly decreased perceptions of media credibility, enhanced feelings of political cynicism, reduced issue-specific information retention, and encouraged more frequent expressions of negativity among experimental participants. In line with previous research, the experimental results also show that support for the contraceptive mandate increased after reading an article framed around women’s health, reproductive rights, and sexual morality.

Birth Control to Birth Promotion? China’s Population Policy at a Crossroads

China officially ended its one-child policy effective from 1 January 2016. Yet the effects of the relaxation of birth control policy have been limited thus far. Largely relying upon policy incentives, China’s policymakers also face pressure to take more direct measures to boost fertility rate. Whether the Chinese government is able to balance the needs of the nation and the citizens’ private rights remains a big question mark.

Lost and Found

Between 1979 and 2010 local leaders and rural families across China concealed the existence of millions of girls from government officials and the national census. The single child policy (1979–2015) was introduced in 1979, and the central government’s goal was to reduce population growth through strict birth control. Yet, at the same time, many rural parents had strong incentives not to comply with the birth control policy because under economic reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, larger families meant increased labor and income. However, most journalists and scholars reported that the combination of a strictly enforced central policy and a historical preference for sons had led to a stark gender imbalance, with an abnormally higher number of males being born than females. The result was an estimated 20 million “missing girls” in the population from 1980 to 2010. Most demographers have believed that this dearth of girls has been due to widespread sex-selective abortion and infanticide. Yet quantitative analysis of China census data and qualitative interviews with rural parents and local leaders suggest that at least half of the “missing girls” were hidden in China. This was due to two key factors. First was the discretion to implement central policy that street-level bureaucrats and local leaders have. There was mutual noncompliance between rural families and village leaders, such that rural parents did not immediately register additional children and local leaders underreported illegal births to higher authorities. Second is the increasing value of daughters and equal preference for sons and daughters over the last several decades.

Historical Underreporting and the Identification of the “Missing Girls”

There are three distinct time periods in which the social and political environments influenced incentives to hide or not hide infants, children, and young adults: the pre-PRC period before 1949, the Maoist era (1949–1976), and the reform era, after 1979. Rural families and local officials avoided census counts and registration for males and females from the late Qing Empire in the 1800s right up through modern times. After 1979 came the most critical outcome of the state birth control policy: the country’s abnormally high sex ratio at birth statistic. According to an assessment of the 2010 population census, the number of girls truly missing from the population between 1980 and 2010 was estimated to be about 20 million. However, an examination of the two key assumptions behind these skewed statistics shows the number of hidden girls to be closer to 10 million, or about half of the estimated number of “missing girls.”