After the age of 30, single daughters who have become "orphans"

A decade ago, the announcement and implementation of the "universal two-child policy" declared the end of the era of "policy-only children".

Its end was not abrupt. Over three decades, the restrictions on having a second child were gradually relaxed until they were finally lifted. When social problems such as families losing their only child, population aging, and gender imbalance expanded and broke through the guise of "fewer but better births", the academic community announced the arrival of the "post-only-child era" [1].

How many only children are there in China currently?

The official data was last updated in 2005: There were 158 million only children aged 0 - 30 nationwide. This was the only time in the national statistical surveys that the number of siblings was included. All subsequent data is based on estimates. The general consensus in the sociological community is that the number of only children in China exceeded 200 million in 2015.

In families with only one child, the issue of "losing the only child" among parents is a matter of probability, while losing both parents is an inevitable problem that every young person with a normal lifespan will face in the future. When the loss of parents is combined with the label of "only daughter", the situation seems even more difficult.

Alone in the household register

The myocardial infarction came suddenly. In early 2024, when her father passed away, 34-year-old Daliu had just transferred to work in the provincial capital. By the time she rushed back to her hometown on leave, without much time to grieve, she had to start a non-stop series of tasks.

According to local customs, the children are supposed to dress the deceased in the burial clothes. Hearing that the only daughter was working away from home, the hospital urged the family to contact the funeral home quickly to take away the body. Finally, with the aunt's persuasion, Daliu managed to see her father off on his "last journey".

"My father was very heavy. I simply couldn't lift him. A girl doesn't have the strength to dress a body," said Daliu, who is slender. After repeated attempts, she still couldn't dress her father properly, so she had to hand the task over to the staff at the funeral home. Daliu was very helpless. "At that moment, I suddenly understood why some people have such a strong desire for a son."

Actually, her father wasn't without a "son". Daliu's mother passed away when she was in high school. A year later, her father remarried through a friend's introduction and had a stepson. Daliu lived with her father, stepmother, and stepbrother for some time, but she always felt like an outsider when she went home. Later, after going to college and starting work, she didn't go home often. All her daily necessities were gone. "I felt that my father cared more about them. They were the real family."

At first, Daliu didn't want her father to remarry, but the elders advised her, "Your father is still young. He can't stay single. It's good to have someone to take care of him in the future." However, when her father was hospitalized, the stepmother called her right away. "She always had her own things to do and kept herself out of it." In the end, all the hospitalization procedures and various examinations for her father fell on Daliu alone.

Her father didn't get along well with the caregiver and thought it was a waste of money. When he was hospitalized, Daliu had to rush between her work and the hospital. Her father was also troublesome. Although he had been hospitalized multiple times due to myocardial infarction and cerebral infarction, he ignored the doctor's advice to quit smoking and drinking and have a light diet.

"I already had a bit of a mental preparation at that time," Daliu felt overwhelmed. "But he didn't care about these things himself, and I couldn't do anything. I couldn't stay with him all the time."

Daliu didn't give up easily. She always used the best medicine, but she could never reason with her father. One night when her busy work and caregiving time overlapped, Daliu had a conflict with her stubborn father. She broke down emotionally and cried in the ward, asking her father to stop causing trouble. All she got in return was the man's meaningful silence.

Daliu even had the thought of committing suicide, but the responsibility of taking care of her father forced her to gradually digest the negative emotions. Finally, she could only exhaust herself with work to temporarily escape from her father's illness and the family conflicts. "I had a lot of work entertainment at that time. I was drunk every day. My father didn't know or care about my work pressure." Until her father's death, Daliu almost took on everything alone.

When she was a child and the whole family doted on her, Daliu thought it was very happy to be an only daughter. But as she grew older, all the responsibilities were placed on her alone. She began to wish she wasn't an only daughter. "When my father was sick, I really couldn't handle everything. If we ignore the money issue, I think this is the most difficult thing for an only daughter. I can't take care of everything by myself all the time."

At first, the doctor suggested that her father have an operation, but the effect of the operation couldn't be guaranteed. The doctor asked Daliu to think it over carefully. "At such a time, it's really necessary to have someone to discuss with. The responsibility and pressure are too great for me."

On the day her father passed away, Daliu went back to her hometown alone to buy the burial clothes and the urn. She signed the death certificate for her father at the hospital, then went through the whole process at the funeral home. Next, she handled all kinds of reimbursements for social security and medical insurance. Finally, she canceled her father's bank card and other certificates. "I didn't have time to think about other things. I was busy all day." Three days later, Daliu returned to work.

After that, Daliu never thought about suicide again. "When I'm the only one left in this family, I feel that I'm the last thing my parents left in this world." But it's not easy to live a good life. Over the past year, Daliu has spent the Spring Festival alone. Relatives rarely contact her. She just has occasional greetings.

On social media platforms, some young people who have also lost their parents record their feelings in posts. After they are the only ones left in the household register, like Daliu, most of them are so busy that they can only find time to grieve during the gaps between a series of "troubles".

They don't know where the insurance policy is. They don't know how to inherit the real estate in their parents' names. They need a notarized certificate to deal with the large - amount deposits in the bank account... At this moment, they become the only "adult" in the family.  

Decades of joys and sorrows turn into a dream after the parents' departure. Becoming an "orphan" in middle age doesn't become easier to accept just because of more life experiences. After the "social" aftermath of the parents' passing is handled, what remains is a lifetime of mourning.

As for relatives, without the connection of the parents' generation, estrangement seems to be an inevitable outcome.

Suddenly, there is no direction for effort

Li Yunyun from the Department of Social Work at the Chinese University of Hong Kong started "grief research" after her mother passed away. She interviewed 44 young people who had lost their parents and completed her doctoral thesis, "Living with Grief". She found that when parents pass away when young people are in the stage of thinking about the meaning of life, it will make them question the established life trajectory of "getting married, having children, and finding a good job" and even doubt the meaning of "living hard" [2].

Daliu describes her life in the past year as an "empty - nest only daughter" as "muddling along".

"I used to think my life would go on in an orderly way: work, get married, have children, and then take care of my parents. Now that they're gone, everything I do seems meaningless. Who am I showing my achievements to?" She said she used to be very hard - working at work, but now she doesn't have much motivation. She goes to work just to have an income to support her life. "I don't know where to go."

Two years after her mother's death, her father also passed away. That year, Xiaoyi was 37 years old and unmarried. She fell into the same confusion.

In 2023, before she could recover from the grief of losing her mother, Xiaoyi, who was working abroad, suddenly received the news that her father was hospitalized. Although she had always kept in frequent contact with her father, her father, who lived alone, never mentioned the "bad news". He hid his health problems from his daughter for half a month. It was only then that she learned that her father had been admitted to the ICU due to organ failure caused by an infection. Xiaoyi returned to China to accompany him in the last 10 days of his life.

Xiaoyi went abroad to study at a young age and then stayed there to work. She was used to living alone, but she was actually a very family - oriented person. After her parents' death, Xiaoyi said she felt that she lost her goal overnight. "Looking back on many things now, I realize that subconsciously, I did them to get my parents' approval. They had very high expectations of me since I was a child. Anything less than 100 points was 'unqualified'. Now that they're gone, suddenly there's no direction for my efforts."

For a long time after that, Xiaoyi just "slacked off". She only ate one meal a day. Sometimes she ate when she remembered, and sometimes she didn't. But her weight was out of control. Before her mother's death, 1.68 - meter - tall Xiaoyi only weighed 104 pounds. A year after her father's death, she had gained to 150 pounds, and she also suffered from insomnia.

She wasn't married and didn't have children. With no immediate relatives in the world, Xiaoyi at that time felt that she had nothing to worry about. If she "left" tomorrow, she wouldn't be afraid. Because she felt that she had no connection with the world psychologically. "It doesn't matter whether I live or not. I just haven't thought about killing myself."

Xiaoyi said that what she needed most during that time was peace and quiet. She was very grateful for the time of living alone after her parents' death. "I can freely miss them and grieve. I can cry or laugh as I like. I can eat when I want to." As for whether having siblings to share her emotions is important, she said, "Even if they cry with me, it can't change the fact that my parents are gone."  

Losing mother is the beginning of loneliness

Daliu's complete family started to have problems when she was in the third year of junior high school. That year, her mother got sick. She clearly remembered that her mother went to the provincial capital hospital the day before her birthday. Because she carefully selected a gift the night before her mother left and found that her mother had gone to bed early when she got home, she left the gift beside her mother's bed. At that time, she thought her mother would just go to the big hospital for a check - up and then come back.

Considering her young age, the family didn't tell her much. Until her mother was hospitalized, Daliu didn't know the details of her illness.

Later, her mother came back from the hospital. It was only after some time that she heard that the doctor said there was no cure. Then, when Daliu was in high school, she suddenly received a call from home during class. By the time she rushed home, her mother had passed away. From then on, no one in the world would care about Daliu's inner feelings, not even her father.

Daliu remembered that her father loved her very much when she was a child. Although he often went on business trips, he would always take her to the mall to buy a lot of toys when he came back. After remarrying, her father changed. He belonged to another family. "Maybe it's true that a stepmother means a stepfather," Daliu became an "orphan" psychologically at that time. Her relationship with her father was very tense. "He never considered me from beginning to end. If he had, there wouldn't be so many remaining problems."

The remaining problems Daliu mentioned were a property left by her mother when she passed away.

This property was later sold by her father, who needed money for business. Half of the money was used to pay off the bank loan, and the other half was used to buy a new house. And this new house was registered under the name of the stepmother's son. Daliu had no idea about this beforehand. "That house was built by my mother's family. This property is the last thing she left. It's something I must fight for."

Because of the dispute over this house, she had a dream. In the dream, her mother told her to solve the problem of this house this year and didn't say much else. "I rarely dreamt of my mother over the years. I only dreamt of her when I was extremely desperate. The last time was when my father passed away."

Until now, the stepmother and her son still live in this house. Daliu said she would use the law to solve this problem, but currently, "nothing has been resolved yet".

Xiaoyi's originally happy family of three also started to change after her mother was suddenly diagnosed with cancer.

As an only daughter, Xiaoyi received all the resources and love from her parents during her growth. In 1998, the annual per - capita disposable income of urban residents in China was 5,425 yuan [3]. Her mother insisted on sending Xiaoyi, who had just graduated from primary school, to a one - month Canadian summer camp that cost nearly 20,000 yuan. Even though her parents were outstanding scientific researchers in their respective fields, this was still a huge expense. During that summer vacation, Xiaoyi spent half of the time learning English and the other half visiting the former residence of Norman Bethune and Niagara Falls...

Her parents were busy with scientific research and had Xiaoyi after they were 35 years old. She knew that if they had more children, each child might not receive full - scale cultivation. The summer camp experience that her mother actively advocated laid the foundation for her to learn a new language and study and work abroad. "If there were two children in the family at that time, I wouldn't have had the chance to participate in the summer camp. The family couldn't afford it financially."

Since her mother was the one in charge of the family since she was a child, when she fell ill, the spiritual pillar of the whole family began to collapse.

Xiaoyi's mother was the eldest in her family. She was used to taking on most of the responsibilities alone, and this habit continued in their small family. Before her death, neither Xiaoyi nor her father knew the amount of the family savings, where the money was, or the password of the bank card.

Her mother's death coincided with the global COVID -