Firstly, no kids for me thank you very much. Secondly, if you are going to have kids and they turn around to bite you in the arse one day, then that’s the risk you take. But people see things differently in China, and the rate of elderly suicides have tripled in the last decade. In an attempt to curb this, the Chinese government wants to impose a law that will force children to visit their aging parents. If they don’t, their parents can sue them.

This piece explains that young people’s values are changing. Whereas reverence for the elderly was once an important virtue in Chinese culture, increasingly, the youth are leaving their forebears behind. The result is rampant loneliness and disillusionment, which causes added mental and physical health problems in a population that’s already struggling with chronic illness and dementia.

And that is why the government wants to force kids to go visit their elderly parents. And they are serious! Just this month a judge in the Shandong Province ordered three women to pay their 80-year-old mother between 350 to 500 renminbi a month (about $53 to $75) after the mother claimed that they ignored her.

Best give mum a call right now…

[Source: GOOD]