The first thing coming to many people's minds may be a picture of four generations under one roof. A white-bearded, bald-headed and hunchbacked great-grandfather leads five or so grandfathers, tens of fathers and dozens of children.

However, it's difficult to find such a big roof in China's cities today.

The past century has witnessed tremendous changes in the urban family.

According to three surveys carried out by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1982, 1993 and 1997, more than half of urban families in China are "core families", consisting of a father, a mother and a child.

Only 2 percent were of the "four-generation" kind in 1982 and 1997, with the number down to one in 200 families in 1997.

The first survey, conducted in 1982, covered five Chinese cities - Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Nanjing, the capital of East China's Jiangsu Province, and Chengdu, the capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province.

The second, in 1993, covered seven cities - Guangzhou, the capital of South China's Guangdong Province, Lanzhou, the capital of Northwest China's Gansu Province, Harbin, the capital of Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Chengdu.

The third, in 1997, focused only on Shanghai and Chengdu.

In each survey Chinese families were classified into seven types - the single family (consisting of a single man or woman), the "dink" family, (well-off young couple working with no children), the empty nest family (the children having grown up and left), the core family mentioned above, the trunk family (a couple living with their parents and their children), the joint family (couples living with their parents and their in-laws) and the other family including all other types.

Statistics indicate that the percentage of core families among urban families rose from 55 percent in 1993 to 65 percent in 1997.

Meanwhile, dink families made up 3 percent of the total in 1997, six times the number in 1993.

According to a forecast made by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the percentage of core families will keep rising together with the number of trunk families, while joint families and empty nest families will decline in number.

"The family planning policy is a major reason for this trend," said Tan Shen, a researcher at Chengdu Research Institute of Social Sciences.

When the only children born after the launch of the family planning policy in the 1970s get married, they will form core families, dink families, trunk families and empty nest families, but never joint families.

Another explanation of this trend concerns a practical choice - whether the married couple live with their parents and in this way form a trunk or joint family.

Shen Chonglin, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said there are five factors affect the couple's choice, apart from their personal wishes. These are: Whether the husband or wife live with their parents before marriage; whether they are financially capable of supporting a family; whether they have necessities such as housing; whether their own parents have to be attended to; and whether the couple have enough time to care for their baby or to pursue their careers.

For thousands of years in China, it has been traditional for the couple to live with the husband's family.

But now, along with drastic social changes, more and more newlyweds choose to form their own family unit in the way they want to, in pursuit of independence and equality.

Among 1,600 couples surveyed in 1983, 300 lived with the husband's family, 60 with the wife's family and about four-fifths formed their own units.

However, it is interesting to find that in the 1990s more and more newlyweds chose to live with parents, as their brothers and sisters in the 1980s had cried out for a space for themselves.

Of those married between 1990 and 1997, three-tenths made up trunk families with their parents, while only two tenths did so among those married between 1980 and 1989.

"Some youths of the new generation consider it a suffocating burden to have their own family. They would rather enjoy the care of their parents," said Xu Zhimin, researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Xu said this also has to do with only children lacking basic skills in life.

Research by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences based on the three surveys also looks at the life cycle of urban families in China.

With a span of 50-60 years, the family life cycle in China can be divided into six periods: the formation, expansion, stabilization, extraction in which some members pass away or leave, empty nest and disintegration in which all the senior members pass away while young generation build their own family.

Most families are in the stabilization period.

According to the 1997 survey, one-fifth of the families formed before 1970 were in the empty nest period, and three-fifths were core families and trunk families in the stabilization and extraction period.

More than 75 percent of families formed between 1970 and 1990 were core families in the expansion, stabilization or extraction period.

But this number declined to 60 percent among those who married between 1990 and 1994, and then fell to 40 percent in 1997, when more young couple prefer to stay with the parents.

The family life cycle is sensitive to changes in social psychology, according to the Academy's research in 1997.

However, no matter how much social psychology changes, "core, trunk and empty nest families will surely become the main kind of urban families in China," said Tan Shen.

(China Daily 02/05/2001)