Welcome to the People’s Republic of China! One child per family, please.
Since 1979, much of the urban population of China has been restricted to having just one child per family. What has this done to family relationships in China? By the 1980s and 1990s, there were a generation of schoolchildren without brothers and sisters. In the 2000s, Chinese children were born without aunts and uncles, and cousins were nowhere to be found.
By the 2020s we’ll start seeing urban Chinese children without great-uncles and great-aunts, and even second-cousins will be nowhere to be found. When these children think of “family”, it will only be of parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. I found a nice website with 102 categories of relationships in the Chinese family; by the 2020s, 76 of these will be obsolete in urban China.
And so we say goodbye to the Chinese Uncle, and the extended family as a part of the Chinese psyche. And hello, to a country of only children.
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