A Family of Three, a project explores the complex relationship between governmental legislation and family dynamics. The First Marriage Law (1950) and The Family Planning Policy (1979) passed in the People’s Republic of China, gradually established a new structure for the Chinese nuclear family: mother, father, and daughter/son. The one-child policy intended to curb the growth in China’s population had unintended consequences that produced adverse social consequences. A Family of Three scrutinizes how China’s patriarchal tradition which combined with emerging feminist politics, produced these issues within the context of my family: an unsuccessful heterosexual marriage, a dynamic not unique to my family.

 

A Family of Three is an auto-ethnography. By investigating my family within the field of our home, the work chronicles the effects of heteronormative ideas drawn from the fantasy of the happy Chinese family in the contemporary social imagination. What is revealed is the impact of these constructed mythologies on individuals who are shaped and entangled with other lives.