Baldassar, L. 2007. Transnational families and the provision of moral and emotional support: the relationship between truth and distance. Identities 14 (4): 385-409. Single-child migrants have faced two challenges when it comes to caring for their parents. The first and most urgent is to deal with virtually every emergency in the lives of parents in China. Ran (man, 27, software engineer) said: “I have to be able to come back in a few hours, not the next day. In some emergency situations, it would be too late. In comparison, Chuanli (a 31-year-old postdoctoral fellow with a sister) has her sister`s physical closeness to her parents and has given her “peace of mind.” The other problem is that parents are living with the child in the UK because of the immigration policy and the welfare of their parents in a new country. The UK government has sharply reduced residence permits for “elderly dependent parents” arriving at family reunification. If parents were to move to the UK, their lack of English, coupled with lifestyle changes, could pose a potential threat to their mental well-being by increasing their dependence on their child and thereby reducing their own mobility. The end of the 20th century marked the beginning of dramatic socio-economic changes for families in China. Economic reform after 1978 saw the emergence of a new “middle class” in China (Li 2010a). The increase in the household capacity of this class was associated with a sharp decrease in family size as a result of the one-child policy launched in 1979.

The one-child policy officially ended in October 2015. However, the three and a half decades of political implementation have created a single-child generation and have made the three-person nuclear family the norm in urban China. Given the widespread lack of social assistance programmes, the well-being of older people in low- and middle-income countries, such as Bangladesh, China and India, may not be fully protected by legislation that emphasizes the responsibility of children. One of the challenges is to ensure full and fair enforcement of legislation on children`s aid, especially when relevant information, such as location. B of residence, employment and income of adult children, are difficult to obtain. Another dimension to consider is general compliance with laws in a given country. According to the World Bank, there are wide differences between countries in that people have confidence in and comply with national legislation.12 Public perception of the quality of contract enforcement, property rights, police and courts is important, if not determined, for the success of agency support and other laws. Finally, it is not clear that many seniors with children who do not comply with child welfare laws are taking legal action against their children. This would recognize that the unofficial intergenerational contract has failed and that their children have violated the civil code and the penal code. In Chinese families, the notion of childish piety has been the dominant “cultural logic” for more than 2000 years (Zhan and Montgomery 2003). It is one of the oldest forms of the family contract. The definition of childish piety in the 21st century varies slightly among scholars in different contexts (Schans and Valk 2011; Chow and Chu 2007; Croll 2006; Ikels 2004).

In general, child piety requires that children meet the practical and financial/material needs of the parents and take care of the emotional well-being of the parents; It also traditionally imposes obedience and respect for the younger generation on the older generation, regardless of an individual`s age (Keller et al.