ABSTRACT
In China, many families still live in three-generation households: grandparents with parents, with usually only one child as a result of the government's one-child policy, which has operated since 1979 to control the increase of population. This family situation provides an interesting opportunity to use the FAST test to examine three-generation households in a situation where number of grandchildren (sibling size) is not a confounding factor. In this chapter, we report data from the FAST with families in mainland China, to examine:
the relative cohesion of grandparents, parents and children
the existence of cross-generational coalitions
the relative hierarchy of grandparents, parents, and children
the differences between maternal grandparents and paternal grandparents, and between grandmothers and grandfathers, regarding intergenerational relationships
the effects of education and occupation of the parental generation on family cohesion and hierarchy
the distribution or frequency of balanced, labile-balanced and unbalanced family structures.
