A son-in-law who lives with his wife's family is looked down on by the community. He cannot be expected to replace a naturalson.
    A family nearby ha's four sons. Life became very hard when the two older sons got married. However., the third son says he would rather be a bachelor for life than risk having to take in some day his wife's aged parents.

    As China's family planning programme enters the 1990s, traditional ideas on family life are posing the major barriers to limiting China's population.
    These ideas have formed over thousands of years.
    The concept of "more sons, more happiness" still exists in some rural areas , especially in poor and remote ones.
    For some families, the presence of several sons gives parents a feeling of protection. Families with no boys , or few boys, may feel intimidated by families with many sons.

    Another problem the country must face is early marriages. A survey in a town in Zhecheng County shows young people marrying earlier than the law prescribes.
    Some are engaged by the age of 15. Parents dream of grandchildren,
and sometimes they encourage early marriages, ignoring the government's call for "marriage at mature ages ".
    Changing these ideas is hard as tens of millions of peasants are illiterate.

Additional Information

    Wang is a school teacher in Shimen in east Sichuan. At 36 he was still a lonely bachelor and was likely to remain one until one day towards the end of 1988 he happened to read in the matrimonial column of a magazine an advertisement which read; Yang, a woman of 31 who is a family planning officer in a certain township in south Sichuan, seeks a reliable and understanding man for a spouse having been disappointed in her first love affair by the man she has lost her heart to . . . '

    Somehow this advertisement appealed to Wang greatly. After much thought he plucked up his courage and wrote to this woman Yang. It was first love letter he had written in his life. To his surprise and great joy he got a very warm response. Things went so smoothly in fact that very soon the woman appeared before him in flesh and blood, with a divorce certificate in her 6and to prove that she was a free woman and was sincere in .

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