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Matt Spence's avatar

What a wonderful piece from Dr. Liu! It seems to me the fundamental tension in both the US and China is that traditional family models relied on the assumption that the young would always substantially outnumber the old, and that the elderly would not live long after retirement. It’s much easier to care for elderly parents when there are 3-5 children to split the work and it only needs to happen for 5-10 years of retirement. Now we have 1-2 children splitting the work of caring for elderly parents for 20+ years, and even though we have fewer children the intensity of parenting has gone up dramatically such that child-rearing burdens have not really declined. The smaller number of parent-child relationships also leads us to put much more pressure for fulfillment on them individually, ironically straining those very relationships.

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Pechmerle's avatar

Interesting, and insightful.

I wonder if Dr. Liu has seen, or will view, the recent American movie "The Materialists." An Asian director! Exploring some of these same rational choice -vs emotional growth - issues.

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