The coming‐of‐age of China's single‐child policy

China's one-child policy is now 25 years of age—the officially sanctioned age for marriage by men in the People's Republic of China. A significant proportion of those now about to enter their child-bearing years are themselves the product of the first generation of one-child homes. This article reviews the history of the single-child policy, with specific regard to the forces that initiated it as a national imperative and which today appear to sustain its widespread acceptance by the Chinese peoples. This article considers the circumstances leading to the implementation of the single-child policy, the development of incentives for compliance and penalties for noncompliance, information reflecting representative data-based analyses of outcomes from the policy, and the present situation and scenarios that might lead to a revisitation of this policy. Impressions and data gathering were conducted through conversation with individuals from all social strata in six locales in the People's Republic of China and were contrasted with similar exploratory visits from 10 and 15 years ago. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 42: 305–313, 2005.