{"id":1067,"date":"2011-01-07T01:35:09","date_gmt":"2011-01-07T05:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/eldercare\/?p=1067"},"modified":"2012-01-30T01:44:32","modified_gmt":"2012-01-30T05:44:32","slug":"next-stop-grandmas-house-its-the-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/eldercare\/2011\/01\/07\/next-stop-grandmas-house-its-the-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Next stop grandma’s house — it’s the law"},"content":{"rendered":"
CNN,<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n
China is considering a law to require children of elderly parents to visit them regularly<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
By\u00a0Jessica Beaton<\/a>\u00a07 January, 2011<\/em><\/div>\n

\nGuilt trips for not visiting the folks may soon be replaced by police visits.<\/em><\/div>\n
\n

If you thought the annual visit to the parents during Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) was just about bearable, take a deep breath: mom and pop may soon be able to demand you visit them more often, through the courts.<\/p>\n

A draft amendment to China’s ‘Elderly Law’ requiring the children of elderly Chinese to visit home more often is being considered by the government. If passed, it\u00a0would\u00a0require children to care for their parents’ \u201cspiritual needs and cannot neglect or isolate them,\u201d according to\u00a0Legal Daily<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n
It would be better to strengthen moral education than to force people to do something legally.<\/div>\n
\u2014 Qian Jun, Chinese lawyer<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Although traditionally Chinese families have always considered it a child\u2019s duty to care for or assist their parents, this amendment would make it enforceable by law.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons children have been slack in taking care of their parents, some\u00a0observers<\/a>\u00a0say, is due to\u00a0migration<\/a>\u00a0and work pressures that have strained traditional family units.<\/p>\n

Additionally, a generation of China’s One-Child Policy has left the country with fewer workers supporting an increasingly graying population.<\/p>\n

Under the proposed amendment, elderly people who feel ignored by their children “can go to court to claim their legal rights to be physically and mentally looked after,\u201d said Wu Ming, an official with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, to\u00a0Shandong Business Daily<\/a>.<\/p>\n

China has approximately 67 million people over the age of 60 and nearly 19 million over 80 years old, according to statistics released by the China National Committee on Aging. Half of them live alone without children.<\/p>\n

Wherever conditions permit, said Wu, the ministry will do its part to support the country\u2019s elderly, extending additional pensions to seniors over 80 in addition to expanding \u201cfree medical and other health services.\u201d<\/p>\n

China currently has more than 38,000 nursing homes serving more than 2.1 million elderly, according to the ministry.<\/p>\n

China’s current law on the elderly, called the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Protection of the Rights and Interests of the Elderly, was put into effect in 1996. The requirement for adult children to visit their parents would be an amendment to the current regulations.<\/p>\n

More on CNNGo:\u00a0Too old for the One-Child Policy<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Qian Jun, a Beijing-based lawyer, told state media this week that it is impossible to enforce compulsory visits to elderly family members because it violates personal liberty.<\/p>\n

“It would be better to strengthen moral education than to force people to do something legally,” said Qian.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNN, China is considering a law to require children of elderly parents to visit them regularly By\u00a0Jessica Beaton\u00a07 January, 2011 Guilt trips for not visiting the folks may soon be replaced by police visits. If you thought the annual visit … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":295,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40877,40871],"tags":[42116],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/eldercare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/eldercare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/eldercare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/eldercare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/eldercare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1067"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/eldercare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1069,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/eldercare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions\/1069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/eldercare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/eldercare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/eldercare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}