With the one-child per family restriction having recently been relaxed, a new generation of two-child families is emerging in the Chinese society, Xinhua reported on Wednesday.
In China, parents are struggling to readjusting single children to life with a sibling.
The new parenting challenge is being placed in the spotlight ahead of International Children’s Day on Sunday.
After Wang Qian gave birth to her baby girl, her two-year-old son visited her in hospital. Wang passed a present to the boy, telling him, “This is a gift from your little sister.”
As a former employee of an educational NGO, Wang has been tactfully preparing her son to accept and love his sister since day one of her pregnancy.
Mei Qixia, a mental health therapist with the Children’s Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, says Chinese parents face particular difficulties because the societal norm has come to be that the first child is the only child. Accordingly, they have always got 100% of their parents’ love and attention.
Until recently, China’s family planning policy was introduced in the late 1970s to rein in the surging population by limiting most urban couples to one child.
In 2011, the restriction was relaxed when couples in which both members were a single child, were allowed to give birth a second time.
The policy was further eased in November last year, when couples were permitted to have a second child only if one of them was an only child.