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Essay / Deviant Behavior Resulting from China's One-Child Policy Chinese realized he had a problem. Their population was growing at an enormous rate, and they knew that if it continued to grow like this, the government would have difficulty taking care of its population. “At the time of the 1982 census, China already had more than a billion people, and if current trends continue, there could be 1.4 billion by the end of the century” (Kane and Choi, 1999, p. 992). In order to slow this massive population growth, the one-child policy was implemented. This policy was first announced in 1979 and was created in order to curb rapid population growth. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Unfortunately, this policy had unintended consequences, many of which were the result of the cultural emphasis that boys were more desirable than girls. Thirty years later, in 2010, the SRB, or the number of males born per 100 females, was 118. Compared to the global average of 105, this number is significantly higher (Shi & Kennedy, 2016, p. 1019 ). This disparity is due to a number of different factors, including an increase in abortions, underreporting of live births, and infants put up for adoption or abandoned in orphanages. According to John M. Darley, organizations “can tip toward evil in many different ways. it is not intended by any of the participants in the organization” (Darley, 1996, p. 14). In this case, the government decided to implement a policy limiting the number of children its citizens could have in order to ensure that population growth did not negatively impact the country, but gave no thought to how it might affect the lives of its citizens and how they would respond. This led to orphanages taking advantage of the increase in unwanted babies and making large sums of money from international adoptions. When the number of abandoned babies began to decrease, orphanages began to exhibit deviant behavior. Human trafficking is deviant behavior that can be caused by abstract harm versus tangible gain, sunk costs, and diffusion of responsibility and information. Examining the implementation of China's one-child policy shows how individuals can be encouraged to commit deviant acts, particularly in relation to human trafficking in orphanages and international adoptions. Defining Deviance Before deviant behavior and how it is caused can be discussed, it must first be defined. Deviance can be defined as the intentional or unintentional creation of a system that leads to unethical behavior. Ermann and Lundman explain in their book Corporate and Governmental Deviance that “organizational elites can indirectly provoke deviant actions by establishing norms, rewards, and punishments that encourage deviance” (Ermann and Lundman, 2002, p. 9). These measures took the form of fines and penalties to prevent families from having more than one child, leading to an increase in the number of abandoned children. Later, when they began allowing international adoptions, they included a mandatory $3,000 donation to the orphanage from foreign parents.This rewarded orphanages for international adoptions and was probably one of the incentives for the trafficking that took place later. To better understand the situation in China, it is important to know the history of their orphanages and their adoption policies. In the early 1990s, Chinese orphanages were filled with girls abandoned because of the one-child policy. “Yet in the 1990s, legal requirements that adopters be over 35 and without children significantly limited the number of families who could legally adopt children. Although this did not prevent adoption in violation of the restrictions, it kept adopters away from government orphanages, thereby increasing the burden on these institutions. Many of these institutions could barely care for their children due to insufficient funding, lack of resources, and understaffing (Chinese Orphanages: A Follow-up, 1996, p. Living conditions in many places were terrible and, according to a report by Human Rights Watch/Asia, resulted in astronomically high mortality rates recorded during the period 1988-1992 (Chinese Orphanages: A Follow Up, 1996, p. 2). Chinese government enacted the Chinese Adoption Law of 1992 to allow international adoptions. Since this decision was made, many children adopted by foreigners have ended up going to the United States. Chinese children by American citizens increased from just over 206 in 1992 to almost 8,000 in 2005 (US State Department). "Chinese babies are generally healthier than infants in other developing countries because fewer Chinese mothers are alcoholics, drug addicts, or infected with HIV", and there were fewer "administrative difficulties often encountered in developing countries". development”. other foreign countries,” and “international adoption procedures in China allow single people and people in their 40s or older – who may face eligibility hurdles elsewhere – to adopt Chinese children” (Gates , 1999, p. 384). On top of that, many adopting families knew about the one-child policy and believed they were helping by saving these girls from growing up in a Chinese orphanage. As China eased restrictions on domestic adoptions and living standards rose, fewer babies were born. abandoned, leading to less healthy children in orphanages available for international adoption. However, there was still a demand for international adoption and “orphanages had become accustomed to receiving money for international adoption” (Leland, 2011). Due to this increased demand and lack of supply, some orphanages have begun to turn to other means of obtaining children, such as trafficking. Abstract harm and tangible gain According to Darley (1996), abstract harm and tangible gain can be a reason why people fall into deviant behavior. Abstract harm is defined by Darley as an action that "is taken and will ultimately result in harm to others", but "there is initially no obvious target of the actions committed, no salient human other who is seen as a victim of the action.” (Darley, 1996, p. 22). Tangible gain, on the other hand, is easy to perceive and usually comes in the form of things like money, goals, or efficiency. Looking at the situation in Chinese orphanages and the adoption program, we can see some cases where this applies. ByFor example, in order to facilitate the adoption of children, many orphanages falsified the papers of the children they bought from traffickers. In doing so, they caused potential harm to the biological parents, the adoptive parents and the children themselves, for the benefit of the tangible gain from the obligatory donation that the adoptive parents had to make to the orphanages. As mentioned earlier, abstract harm occurs. when an action results in unintended harm to a victim. In the case of biological parents, it is always possible that the traffickers did not simply find the children on the side of the road. Sometimes children were kidnapped by traffickers or taken away by officials for violating the one-child policy. "Previously, family planning would step in if you had a child over the quota, and they would demolish your house, or take a pig, or do something. Once the orphanage joined the international adoption program, it changed, and now they saw a kind of win-win situation in which Planned Parenthood would step in and take the child who was not registered, hand him over to the orphanage, the orphanage would reward Planned Parenthood.officials , and then adopt that child internationally” (Amazon Studios, 2019) By falsifying details about the children and where they were found, they increased the risk that the birth parents who had their child removed. child cannot find them. In the case of adoptive parents, who have spent a lot of time and money to add a child to their family, the risk that their new child has been stolen from their biological parents is devastating. being the reason their new child was separated from the parents who actually wanted them, if the child was actually stolen, there is fear that the biological parents will try to take their child back. Finally, a lot of harm is being done to the children caught at the center of it all. Instead of growing up with their biological parents, they would probably grow up in another country thinking that their biological parents didn't want them. If, by chance, they find out that they were taken away as children, it might be too difficult for them to understand. According to Research-China, an organization that helps parents research orphanages and adopted children in China, it is not uncommon for adopted children to not want to meet or even learn about their biological parents. They already have their own lives, and knowing their biological parents would complicate the situation, especially after years of believing they didn't want them in the first place. It is very likely that the orphanages did not deliberately try to harm the biological parents, but the adoptive parents. , and adopted children, but it is obvious that they did it. Faced with a tangible gain like the money they would receive from the mandatory donation, the potential harm was far from their minds. They had no connection with the children and parents they were harming. Abandoned babies were very common at the time, and it was much easier to falsify records than to search for biological parents who may or may not have wanted their child. Sunk Costs Another source of deviant behavior is sunk costs. Darley (1996) defines sunk cost as “commitments to a course of action that are generated by an initial decision, often a decision to invest financial or other resources in a course of action” (Darley, 1996, p 21). This definition of a sunk cost can be seen both in orphanages and in foreign parents who adopt the children. Orphanages spend money to care for children whosethey have custody, in addition to buying children from traffickers. They invested this money in the hope that a foreign family would come and adopt the children and pay the obligatory donation to the orphanage. Because of their investment in the children, they committed to putting them up for international adoption instead of searching for their birth parents or allowing a domestic couple who was not required to donate to adopt. The parents who adopted the Chinese children also collapsed. costs that influenced their behavior. The adoption process takes a lot of time and money, so by the time they bring their new child home, they've already invested a lot in him or her. Perhaps even more impactful is the amount of love and attention they give the child once they bring him or her home. For all intents and purposes, they believe it is now their child. When it was discovered that it was possible that some of the adopted children had been stolen from their biological parents, many parents did not know how to react. They were furious that the orphanages may have lied about how they found the children, but also feared they would have to abandon their adopted child. As a result, many parents remained defensive and unwilling to express their suspicions about what had happened or allow the organizations that had collected the DNA of parents whose children had been stolen to contact them. This is what Brian Stuy, founder of Research-China, experienced. “When he was able to contact his biological parents,” he says, “most were happy to learn that their children were alive, healthy and in good homes. “Unfortunately, the reaction of most adoptive parents is to hide,” Mr. Stuy said. “When they have suspicions, they don’t want to come forward. » (Leland, 2011). His wife, Long Lan, elaborates on what the parents feel. “When I shared the situation with some American adoptive parents, they were completely shocked. They just couldn't understand everything at once and were in total denial. They felt like adopting their daughter could have resulted in her being taken from her birth family. They also feared that their daughter would be forcibly returned to China. They were afraid of losing her and immediately cut off all contact with us” (Amazon Studios, 2019). This behavior, both on the part of orphanages and parents, can be attributed to sunk costs. In both cases, time and money were invested in the children and could not be returned. The orphanages reacted unethically by paying for the babies in order to get money from international parents, and the parents reacted unethically by not talking about the corruption they experienced. witnessed in orphanages. Diffusion of Responsibility and Information “The diffusion of responsibility is another source of organizational disruption. harm” (Darley, 1996, p. 18). China's adoption process "has been touted as the most stable program, the most honest program" by adoption agencies. The possibility of trafficking was rarely discussed, even in the late 2000s, despite earlier reports about traffickers arrested in China for selling babies to orphanages. The information was there, but no one seemed to want to put the pieces together to show that this was a bigger problem. problem than initially thought. Darley (1996) says this about the mindset that leads to the diffusion of responsibility: “Responsibility requires knowledge. If I don't know that harm is risky, then I don't have the.
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