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‘Badhai Ho’: Pay up for your third child, local government tells elderly Chinese couple
The local government in eastern China’s Shandong province is calculating how much to fine them for having a third child, breaking the limit of two children, as per China’s family planning policy.
A 67-year-old grandmother and her husband, 68, who gave birth to a baby girl in China last week named her Tianci or “gift from heaven”.
Now, it seems the couple, arguably the oldest in the world to have a naturally conceived child might have to pay up for the gift bundle.
The local government in eastern China’s Shandong province is calculating how much to fine them for having a third child, breaking the limit of two children, as per China’s family planning policy.
The couple already has two children in their ‘40s.
Partly to blame for the looming fine will be the international publicity that the new mother, Tian, a retired doctor, and her husband and former lawyer, Huang Weiping, received after the birth.
Tianci’s birth at the Zaozhuang maternity hospital last week managed to grab international headlines besides attracting the scrutiny of officials from the local family planning department.
“Shandong Province regulations restrict all couples to two children, exception could be made if the children are physically impaired or born through ex-spouses. Couples who violate these rules face a fine that is calculated according to a city’s average income and the number of children,” the tabloid Global Times reported.
According to the news report, Huang believed the regulation only applied to reproductive women up to 49 years old and therefore his much-older wife would be exempted.
“Huang’s case was under review,” an official at Zaozhuang health commission in charge of family planning affairs told the tabloid.
The new parents are happy with the new birth but their two fairly adult children aren’t.
Neither went to the hospital or their house after the new birth, and according to local media reports, the older son and daughter were both upset with their parents upon learning their mother was pregnant.
The birth has sharply divided China’s online population with many criticising the couple’s decision to have a late child.
It’s not unheard of in China though.
State media had earlier reported that at least a few elderly Chinese couples, in their ‘50s and ‘60s were opting for a late child especially if their only child had died.
The Global Times had earlier quoted a study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which revealed that as a result of the one-child policy from the late 1970s to 2016—when it was scrapped—there were 150 million only children nationwide.
More than 1 million families have lost their only children to diseases and accidents.