Written with a journalist's eye and in an engaging and accessible style, Fong shifts between personal stories (her father told her that if their family had stayed in China she would not have been born), the lives of people she encountered in her work as a journalist and for her research for the book, and Chinese and international demographic, sociological, and economic research. From 2006-09, Fong was China correspondent for the Wall Street Journal covering subjects from China's 'invisible army' of migrant workers to the 'cancer villages' of Fujian. The history of the one-child policy and its impacts on past, present, and future generations is the subject of One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment (2016) by Pulitzer Prize-winning Malaysian-Chinese journalist, Mei Fong. But this idealised image masks a long history of disruption and intervention to the Chinese family unit that began with the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and culminated in the one-child policy (1978/80-2015).
If advertising reflects a society's aspirations and desires an even number of children and gender balance is the new normal in China. This ideal family unit is typically comprised of one set of grandparents (presumably the husband's), a husband and wife, and a young girl and boy often the girl is older, a nod to one-child policy campaigns of the 1980s and '90s that sought to counter male preference in traditional Chinese culture. If you take the subway in Beijing you are likely to see advertisements featuring happy, middle-class families in matching red tangzhuang.
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