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UPDATED: January 28, 2011 NO. 5 FEBRUARY 3, 2011
Should Care Visits Be Enforced?
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First, even if children don't visit, elderly people usually won't be able to change the situation through a law suit.

Second, even if elderly people sue their children and a verdict is handed down by a court, it will be hard for it be executed. With a good intention, the draft law is doing a bad deed. Its original purpose won't be achieved but it will cause a greater number of contradictions and social problems.

Besides, no specific definitions are given relating to this regulation. It only stipulates that people should visit elderly parents often but it doesn't specify how often is enough and how infrequently is illegal, further lowering the feasibility of the draft law.

In some countries, the visits of children to parents are more infrequent than in China, and they don't have compulsory legislated regulations. Filiality should rely more on strength of morality rather than the compulsory force of the law. The intervention of law in this area will increase grudges between family members and reduce any quality of humanity among them.

Zhu Sibei (http://news.163.com): This draft law mainly aims to solve the problem of spiritual support for the elderly and satisfying their spiritual demands.

How to solve the contradiction between stress from competition in the society and a huge input in supporting parents is the most important thing. In an environment where competition is becoming more and more severe, children can hardly handle the relationship between a personal career and giving spiritual support to the elderly. This kind of phenomenon is more obvious in single-children families.

We should take the reality into consideration. Spiritual support is not only a task within the family but also has a close relationship with the whole of society. It's more of an obligation of society than of children. Only by taking this position can we solve this problem well, rather than becoming lost in conflict. If elderly people are only respected by the family, but there is no concern from the society, the problem of spiritual support is not solved. It's far from being enough to resolve spiritual support only within the family.

Satisfying the spiritual demands of the elderly not only relies on the support of family members but also support from members of society and social organizations.

Wang Shiqi (www.chinapeace.org.cn): Although almost all laws are products of an ethical spirit, laws should have a strong mechanism for operation, correcting wrong deeds and compulsory enforcement. When we legalize a moral standard, we should fully consider its feasibility since the implementation of a law should be highly rational and formalized. Only in this way can the law be the protecting god of morality and make new contributions to cultivating new morality.

Spiritual support is more about communication and emotional comfort. If the draft law is passed and a verdict is handed down by a court, how can it be enforced when supporters refuse to comply with their duties? It's an inevitable problem brought about by the law. Even if it's enforced, it will hardly have any practical significance in solving the problem. When children show up in a state of anger to visit elderly parents, the elderly people still don't get what they need.

The best way to solve the problem of spiritual support is to arouse the awareness of spiritual support in society and promote mutual understanding and respect between children and elderly parents. Speaking of the current situation, taking care of elderly parents requires help from society. On the premise of home-based care for the elderly, the government should also provide more social care program and supporting agency workers, volunteers and community workers to go to homes to look after the elderly.

Zhang Qiping (People's Court Daily): Fundamentally, the purpose of putting into law a frequent visitation requirement is promoting family love. But this kind of compulsory regulation will only lead family love into rigid formality or coldness. The court should make greater efforts into consolidating these kinds of cases, which is in accordance with the development of family love in a better way.

It shouldn't be ignored children will also experience great hardship in life between a legal requirement to take care of elderly parents and requirements from their daily work, children who are far distant from elderly parents, in particular. It is necessary to implement family leave vacations based on a Labor Law regulation rather than adding a compulsory visitation provision to the draft law.

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