FOR the last half century China has dispensed with child-care gurus while Western parents became reliant on Dr Benjamin Spock or Penelope Leach for guidance, reassurance and just plain common sense.
But suddenly there has been a mushrooming of Chinese child-care manuals for parents, mostly based on old Confucian and other traditional texts being revived by official publishers. Television dispenses advice on discipline and how to inculcate values in children and newspapers focus less on the problem of the only child, and more on how parents can cope with their demands.
The reason is that mainland parents today seem to be at a loss over how to deal with their 'little emperors and empresses', pampered products of the country's one-child system, many of whom are now in their teens.
The government has realised parents need help. 'The authorities fear that if a whole generation is brought up as selfish, self-centred 'little emperors and empresses', the whole socialist system will not survive,' notes Dr David Wu, head of anthropology at Chinese University.
His book Chinese Childhood Socialisation which looks at the problem of upbringing and education of the one-child generation has been published in Chinese in Shanghai this month. 'In China in the early 1980s preliminary research by psychologists and anthropologists appeared to support parents' view that single children are more self-centred and selfish and do not care about others, making a lot of demands on their parents,' Dr Wu notes.
But many of these studies may not be representative. The disciplines of anthropology and psychology had been virtually banned for 30 years during and after the Cultural Revolution and most studies did not try to compare families with one child with a control group of those with siblings. More scientific studies were needed and the real picture is only now beginning to emerge.