I remember when we were in China last, our facilitator explained that she had adopted a daughter, and that because she worked such long periods (three weeks in a go, 24 hours a day, babysitting groups of adoptive parents who needed help with paperwork, child care and, like, ordering food and hailing taxis) that her daughter went to a boarding kindergarten. And that this wasn't unusual in China. It gave only children an opportunity to bond, which is nice.

But China Daily is reporting that long-distance families are becoming a bit of a social problem. It's a lot worse with the migrant laborers -- the rural folks who head into the cities to try to earn money however they can for as long as it takes. In some cases, this can be *years*.

Among the potential problems stay-at-home children face are the absence of any sort of family education, degraded school education and other psychological problems.

A survey of people in Jingmen, Hubei Province, showed that stay-at-home local children suffer from poor living conditions, lagging educational attainment, insecurity and difficultly in communication.

Located in the heart of Hubei Province, Jingmen has a population of three million people, 73,000 of whom are children who are separated from their parents.

And this is in a Chinese paper, too....

To deal with the issue, a dozen government-related bodies, including the Office of the Rural Workers United Conference under the State Council and ACWF, set up a working panel in October last year.

The panel is to cooperate with other government bodies, including the Education, Public Security and Finance ministries, to gradually put in place laws and regulations to safeguard the rights of stay-at-home children.

It'll be interesting to see how *that* turns out.

More at the link....