The two-child family structure is expected to become dominant in Chinese households in the future.

 

The new family-planning policy that China plans to enact will permit all couples to have one more child than they are currently allowed. This will have an impact on multiple facets of Chinese society, particularly the family, which is currently in a period of transition.

Fertility desire
Fertility desire refers to the willingness of couples to give birth. It can be said that fertility desire is positively correlated with one’s satisfaction with family life as well as individual well-being.

It is clear that the two-child policy improves Chinese people’s fertility desire not only in terms of the number of children they are allowed to have but also in regard to substantial reproductive freedom.
With the one-child policy, most Chinese families were only given the option to have a single child. In this light, the two-child proposal not only means more births, but more importantly, parents will become increasingly selective in their decision to procreate.
 

In recent years, the survey data on fertility desire among university students show that ideally, those who choose to only have one child accounted for almost 20 percent, those who want two children accounted for more than 60 percent, and those who wanted more than two children accounted for 10 percent. Among the members of the post-90s generation who are entering the age range of marriage and fertility, almost 80 percent of them will possibly choose to have two children under the new policy, according to official projections, so the two-child family structure is expected to become dominant in the future.

Value-added effect
Compared with the single-child family, the two-child family will have more value-added effect, which means that the two children will produce more positive effect for the family.
 

For one, a two-child family is less exposed to risk. From the perspective of the potential for a child to successfully grow up to reach his prime, the risk of only having one child is huge because the injury or death of a child is harder to remedy. According to the prediction from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the cumulative mortality of children from single-child households amounts to more than 1 million, with a 95,000 year-on-year increase. The death of a child can leave bereaved parents mired in endless misery.

Also, interpersonal relationships in a two-child family are relatively rich. Additional family members add complexity to interpersonal relationships within the family. Concretely speaking, interpersonal relationships within a single-child family can be divided into three pairs—between the couple, the father and child, and the mother and the child. But for a family with two children, there are six pairs of interpersonal relationships in total.
 

Though the traditional system of family-based senior care is gradually fading away, and the social pension insurance system is rising to replace it with diversified models, the traditional system will remain dominant for a long time. Therefore, two children will surely be able to more effectively support their parents in old age.
 

Sibling relationship
Sibling relationship has always been valued by the Chinese people. As one of the factors of the child-rearing environment, the sibling relationship is important in a two-child family because it ensures both children realize there is another peer in the family who shares similar innate traits and family status. The two cannot completely separate from each other and have to maintain friendly relations. Thus, the sibling relationship teaches children how to interact well with his or her peers and further learn to appropriately balance the relationship between competition and cooperation as well as that between self-interest and the common good.
 

In fact, many empirical studies have shown that compared to families with more than one child, the parents in a single-child family tend to indulge their child and have unrealistic expectations for them. Consequently, the child is prone to be more stubborn and selfish. Their lack of empathy means they usually are not satisfactory partners in collaborative situations.

Marriage stability
For quite a long time, the marriage status of Chinese people has been relatively unstable. According to the statistics released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs of China, the divorce rate in China has risen every year for 12 years since 2003.
 

The two-child policy will address the constantly rising divorce rate, which is conducive to the stability of marriage. Under the two-child family framework, the long span of time from child bearing, rearing and nurturing will require greater interaction between the couples. In addition, such a family structure will enrich the parent-child relationship. In this way, the emotional relationship and interest association as well as sense of responsibility of the couples will be strengthened, which will stabilize their marriages to some extent.

 
Chen Wuqing is from the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.