The One-Child Population Policy, Modernization, and the Extended Chinese Family

This article examines structural social-psychological and ecological factors affecting the direction and types of changes occuring in the Chinese family and concludes that multiple demographic and socioeconomic influences and the families adaptive responses are creating conditions in China for the traditional household arrangement to survive while generating new variants of family organization. The 1-child population policy and the general modernization of China exert strong effects on the extended family structure but the robust nature of the extended kinship system in a modernizing society seems to allow for adaptation. Variant family patterns have emerged which do not fit either the stereotypical extended or the nuclear type. The 1-child family policy directly effects the physical formation of the extended family the manner in which family members relate to one another and the content and features of intergenerational ties. Since institution of this policy average family size has decreased reflecting expected changes in the power relationships among the generations. Married womens traditional role of childrearing and related household chores womens visibility in the workforce and interfamilial relationships are all affected. While the concept of family extendedness has been weakened other socioeconomic factors create a favorable climate for the survival of the extended family structure. Individualistic consumption orientation mobility and housing trends and historical concepts of economic interdependence between family members have an impact on the extended family sometimes in contradictory ways. Previous expectations that the Chinese family might give way to the nuclear family of the Western type have not been met and the factors discussed here have encouraged more diverse family types to grow and take shape.