Chinese Daycare: Toddler Chained to a Tree!

I adopted my daughter from China, so I have spent the last few years trying to understand the culture as well as the laws. The law One Child law allows families more than one chance to try for a son. Without a son, farmers in rural china get less land to farm (the government owns the land). Also, without a son,there is no one to care for aging parents (they are sent to welfare institutes to me cared for; welfare institutes are large buildings run by the government; they house orphans, old people without married sons (the daughter-in-law would normally care for her in laws), and children who have been abandoned (usually girls and disabled boys). If a married woman's first baby is a girl, she is permitted to try again for a son. If it's another gir they either keep both girls and dtop trying (hardly happens), or more likely, they are forced (due to economics and law) to abandon the baby girl and try AGAIN for a son. It's a horrible predicament that we can hardly understand. The motherscdont want to give ip their daughters; they are forced to by their family's needs. Often, as soon as the baby is born, and it is determined it's a girl, the mother breastfeeds the infant, then she is taken away by the father or other relative, dressed in the nicest clothes they have, and relative takes the child to a public market or orphanage in the middle of the night and leaves the infant, wrapped and bundled according to the wheather, with a handwritten note telling the childs bithday and expressing the wish for their daughter to be given a better life. The family then tries again for a son. The woman has very little or no say in any of this. Unfortunately, what has occurred, after roughly 20+ years of the One Child Law is that there are very few young women for Chinese sons to marry! Hence--the kidnapping of girls. They are kidnapped from one area of China and taken to remote areas where they will not be recognized. This happens to girls and young women in China. But it's not like the USA, where there are police departments and federal offices dedicated to finding missing children. There are some great videos and books that might help you understand more deeply the complexity. See "the lost daughters of China" or read "Wanting a daughter, Needing a son."

An update on this story: the man received 3 years of free childcare.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1248696/No-chains-Jingdan-Kindergarten-offers-poverty-stricken-Chinese-father-years-free-childcare.html

@cola: In Shanghai, if both parents come from one child families, they can have another baby. I'm not sure for the rest of China. Also, remember than China is vast and laws are difficult to apply. It is not uncommon to see migrant workers i.e. people that come from inner China to the big coastal cities that have 2 toddlers with them.

He's being trained for his future stay in a Laogai :(

Hey, at least they haven't got any of that unfreeing nanny state opression (daycare), like in Sweden. ;-)

Not condoning it, but I think the chain was so no one could take the child either.