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6 The obligation of adult children to provide financial support for their parents in need has been inscribed in Article 49 of the 1982 Constitution, Article 15 of the 1980 Marriage Law and Article 183 of the 1979 Criminal Law. See Palmer, Michael, “The re-emergence of family law in post-Mao China,” The China Quarterly, No. 141 (1995), pp. 110–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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10 To protect the privacy of my informants, I use pseudonyms for their names and for the name of the village.

11 I adopted the Chinese government's criterion of 15–49 for women's reproductive ages. I interviewed only married women within this age range. The survey of 248 couples of reproductive age included couples from Lijia village and a neighbouring village.

12 In rural China, the administrative units are the village, township, county, city and province. The village is the smallest unit and the province is the largest.

13 All interviews were conducted privately with the elderly parents, without the presence of their married children. Of the 34 informants 14 were couples and were interviewed separately.

14 Lijia village is located about 4 km away from the local county seat where many peasants seek non-agricultural employment, such as working in construction sites and restaurants. In addition, there is a brick kiln outside Lijia village where a large number of Lijia residents seek employment. According to my interviews with Lijia daughters who have chosen to move back to Lijia village after marriage, the accessibility to these job opportunities was the major reason for their decision.

15 Croll, Elizabeth, Davin, Delia and Kane, Penny (eds.), China's One-Child Family Policy (New York: St Martin's Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greenhalgh, Susan and Winckler, Edwin, Governing China's Population: From Leninist to Neoliberal Biopolitics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; White, Tyrene, China's Longest Campaign: Birth Planning in the People's Republic, 1949–2005 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

16 Another major expense is a deceased parent's funeral. In Lijia village, according to tradition, sons are responsible for the expense of the funeral home services and a feast for guests. Daughters pay for the expense of hiring a mourning band. The child who holds the funeral feast also keeps the gift money received from guests. Therefore, in some cases in Lijia village, several children have competed to hold a parent's funeral.

17 In 2006, the currency conversion rate between the US dollar and the Chinese yuan was 1:7.8.

18 See also Cohen, Myron, House United, House Divided: The Chinese Family in Taiwan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Charlotte Ikels, “Settling accounts: the intergenerational contract in an age of reform,” in Davis and Harrell, Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era, pp. 277–333.

19 After Yulan was adopted, she and her biological parents remained in contact. Her biological parents, who remained married and had several more children, visited her several times, but she visited them only once.

20 Deborah Davis and Stevan Harrell, “Introduction,” in Davis and Harrell, Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era, pp. 1–22; Yunxiang Yan, Private Life under Socialism.

21 Croll, Elisabeth, “The intergenerational contract in the changing Asian family,” Oxford Development Studies, Vol. 34, No. 4 (2006), pp. 473–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guo Yuhua, “The logic of fairness and its change in intergenerational relations”; Yunxiang Yan, Private Life under Socialism.

22 In Lijia village in 2006, the most suitable ages for marriage were 20 to 22 for a man and 19 to 21 for a woman.

23 A dowry includes money and household items, such as small electric devices and bedding items. Some brides spent part of their bride wealth on household items and counted them towards their dowry. The average amount of a dowry in 2006 was between 5,000 and 10,000 yuan, only a fraction of the amount for bride wealth.

24 Yunxiang Yan, Private Life under Socialism; Zhang, Weiguo, “Dynamics of marriage change in Chinese rural society in transition: a study of a northern Chinese village,” Population Studies, Vol. 54, No. 1 (2000), pp. 57–69CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

25 Croll, Elisabeth, The Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Honig, Emily and Hershatter, Gail, Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980s (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Yunxiang Yan, Private Life under Socialism.

26 Women's rights to initiate a divorce are contained in Article 17 of the 1950 Marriage Law. Diamant, Neil J., Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949–1968 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

27 Yang, Keming and Victor, Christina R., “The prevalence of and risk factors for loneliness among older people in China,” Aging & Society, Vol. 28 (2008), pp. 305–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Evans, The Subject of Gender; Fong, Only Hope.