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‘Missing My Chinese Co-Parent’: American Mom Celebrates Raising Kids In Repressive Communist State

   DailyWire.com
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A fashion designer who lived for 16 years in Communist China, where she raised her two daughters, celebrated her children being “co-parented by the Chinese government.”

Heather Kaye offered her sanguine opinion of communist China in an opinion piece in The New York Times.

Kaye chortled that she “laughed out loud” when viewing a picture online of an American woman wearing a T-shirt emblazoned, “I refuse to co-parent with the government.”

“In China, government co-parenting begins in the womb,” Kaye declared, noting the limits China had for years placed on the number of children parents could have and Chinese citizens are still forbidden from determining the “gender of their unborn babies.”

“I had to accept that my growing belly had become community property … restaurants would refuse to serve me cold beverages,” she recalled.

“In 2008 and 2010 we delivered two healthy daughters in Shanghai and faced the choice of all expatriate parents in China: between pricey international schools and enrollment in local schools, overseen by the government and with an immersion in Chinese culture and values,” she wrote, adding that after considering that their daughters would learn “fluent Mandarin and, hopefully, a broadened worldview” but also be exposed to “Communist Party propaganda and potential social isolation of being foreigners in a group of Chinese students … we took the plunge.”

“Our stringent government co-parent quickly made its presence felt,” Kaye wrote, including “how many hours our daughters should sleep, what they should eat and their optimal weight. Each morning all of the students performed calisthenics in straight rows and raised China’s red flag while singing the national anthem.”

Kaye celebrated the benefits of her girls attending the Chinese communist school: “self-discipline, integrity and respect for elders.”

“At times, our girls would repeat propaganda,” she acknowledged, lauding the “heavy censorship, which results in a kid-friendly internet, and national limits on how many hours young people can spend playing online video games.”

Kaye praised the “tight control of the Communist Party surveillance state” for allowing her daughters to ride the subway by the age of 11. “The sense of civic pride was palpable,” she opined.

“We’ve returned to a divided America where many feel government has no place in our lives,” Kaye wrote despairingly. “In these times, I find myself missing my Chinese co-parent.”

“Attention to the common good is a fundamental value I seek in an American government co-parent,” Kaye concluded.

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