Changing Chinese family structures weigh on intergenerational bonds

This is the eighth in a series of 12 primers on current affairs and issues in the news, and what they mean to Singapore.

Not only are family structures changing, values held by the elderly in China and their adult children are diverging as well. PHOTO: REUTERS
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BEIJING - Families in China are changing, as the world’s second-largest economy grows from strength to strength, causing relationships between parents and their adult children to evolve accordingly.

Increasingly, more nuclear families – comprising a set of parents and, more often than not, their only child – are being formed in China, as the number of extended families living together continues to dwindle both in cities and villages.

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