More families without kids

CHINA's family structures have experienced a dramatic change over the past 50 years. This core unit of society has evolved from "extended family" to "nuclear family" and now to "DINK family" and "pets-only DINK family".

Joint family / Extended family: 数代同堂的大家庭

Three or four generations live under the same roof. This was the ideal family structure in the 1900s-1960s in China.

Nuclear family: 核心家庭

Compared with the joint family, the nuclear family consists of only children and their parents. In the late 1970s, China carried out its family planning policy. Nuclear families gradually took the place of extended families.

Bi-cultural family: 父母双方来自不同国家或地区的家庭

In this kind of family, the children's father and mother do not share the same national and cultural background.

She's from a bi-cultural family: her mother is a Chinese and her father is a Canadian. As a result, she can speak both Chinese and English. (她来自一个多元文化背景的家庭:她妈妈是中国人，爸爸是加拿大人。所以她中英文都会说。)

Solo parent family / Single-parent family单亲家庭

The single-parent family includes children under 18 headed by a parent who is widowed or divorced and not remarried, or by a parent who has never married.

Social scientists have found that children growing up in single-parent families are disadvantaged in some ways when compared to those from two-biological-parent families. (社会学家发现，和在双亲家庭成长起来的孩子相比，单亲家庭长大的孩子在某些方面稍显劣势。)

DINK family: 丁克家庭

DINK is an acronym for "Double Income No Kids". DINK families are gaining popularity around the world. They represent the modern, flexible lifestyle that, at the same time, reflects the advance of the woman's position in modern families.

Pets-only DINK family: 丁宠家庭

Such families prefer to have pets rather than children.

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