One thing which always stood out to me when I first started learning Chinese was the number of words used to describe family relations. 
 Now on the mainland, most of these words have fallen out of daily use - brothers, sisters, cousins, in-laws, and now aunts and uncles. 
 The One-Child Policy was amended to a two-child policy last October, but the effects will continue for decades. Recent estimates say that over 400,000,000 births were prevented over the past 30 years because of that policy - more than the current population of the United States and Canada combined. The numbers are only part of the story. 
 In the 1980s, the one-child policy was viewed as an economic stimulus policy by the Deng Xiaoping administration. It could have been a way to fudge the numbers (working with per-capita GDP growth), and the effects may not have been fully known. The last census was almost twenty years ago. The policy may also have been implemented as part of fear of overpopulation and excessive resource consumption - which may be a moot point, with individual consumption increasing anyway; not to mention all the pollution from manufacturing and heavy industry. 
 Traditional Chinese society, at least the idea of it, was based upon familial connections and respecting ones' place in this system. But this relationship is turned on its head. There is a new set of numbers which dictates social norms: A ratio of 4:2:1 - 4 grandparents are cared for by 2 parents, who are in turn cared for by 1 child in their old age. Usually, multiple children would share the cost of caring for parents, but now 1 child has to do it all. Where the Chinese social safety net is not as developed as the Western European, Japanese, or American models, these elderly people risk poverty as they retire. The one child also receives undue attention from their parents, as the embodiment of their hopes and dreams for multiple children, leading them to be called 'Little Emperors'. 
 Furthermore, the preference for boys has led to its own consequences. Sex-selective abortions (which persist despite laws against them) have led to an imbalance of tens of millions of Chinese bachelors. 
 The author peppers these facts with some of the stories she has seen and heard from her own reporting in China. These range from the amusing and grotesque (sex-doll salesmen in Shanghai) to the tragic - parents who have lost their children due to the Sichuan earthquake and are now cast adrift by society. 
 The author was the last of five children, born to a Chinese diaspora family in Malaysia. Her grandparents warned her if they were in the old country, she wouldn't be alive. Her book adds a valuable perspective to China's demographic crisis, and what may come after.