Feng, Xiao-Tian, Dudley L. Poston, Jr & Xiao-Tao Wang. 2014. China’s one-child policy and the changing Family.Journal of Comparative Family Studies (1): 17-29.
This articles reviews a few of main changing family parents due to one-child policy and then outlines three risks and issues that are associated with the policy. First, the authors analyze five changing patterns: changing family size, changing family structure, changing intra-family relationship, changing living patterns of young couples and new and changing family lifestyle. For instance, the changing of intra-family relationship emphasizes that because of one-child policy, the relationship in the one-child family tends to be simple while the intra-family relationship tends to revolve centering on the only child. In terms of the new family lifestyles, one of them is that the three-member family pattern is maintained for a pretty long time because when they only need to have one child, they choose to have it soon after the marriage. The three risks and related issues are the old-age security problems for one-child parents, the death of an only child and the issues resulting from the lack of kinship network. The future for children born by one-child parents is really unknown and cannot be predicated. No previous lessons can be learned in the history of human being.
这篇文章总结了由于独生子女政策所带来的一系列家庭变化以及与此相关的社会问题。首先，作者总结了五个主要的家庭变化：家庭小型化、家庭结构的转变、代际之间的家庭关系变化、年轻夫妻的生活模式和新的家庭生活方式。比如说，在讨论代际之间的家庭变化，作者强调由于独生子女政策，两代人（祖父母、外祖父母和父母）的重心都转移到孩子的身上。另外，由于大多数夫妻依然生育一个孩子，这就会造成绝大多数的夫妻都会在婚后五年内生完孩子，而三口之家的的模式会延续很长时间不发生变化，他们之间的沟通交流都会非常紧密。随后，作者提出三个由于独生子女政策所带来的家庭问题：养老问题、失独家庭的脆弱性和亲属关系的逐渐消退。现在，越来越多的独生子女一代开始为人父母，生儿育女，他们的子女很有可能在没有任何兄弟姐妹和叔叔阿姨的家庭内成长。这是人类历史上从来没有过得现象。