A child’s death is devastating to all parents. But for Chinese parents, losing an only child can add financial ruin to emotional devastation.
That’s one conclusion of a research project on parental grief I’ve conducted in China since 2016.
From 1980 to 2015, the Chinese government limited couples to one child only. I have interviewed over 100 Chinese parents who started their families during this period and have since lost their only child – whether to illness, accident, suicide or murder. Having passed reproductive age at the time of their child’s death, these couples were unable to have another child.
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