Reports

China’s One-Child Policy (OCP) restricts the number of children that urban couples can have to one, with exceptions for those from ethnic minorities or with a severely disabled child. The policy has given rise to a land of “little emperors ” whose parents dote on them exclusively. This has led to widespread concern within China about the social skills of this generation and the observation that these children tend to be more self-centered and less cooperative (1–3). This can be seen in developments such as employers including phrases like “no single children ” in job advertisements (4). In March 2007, 30 delegates in the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) called on the government to abolish the policy (5). Their concerns centered on “social problems and personality disorders in young people.” The question of the behavioral consequences of not having siblings has been of interest in developmental psychology for many decades. China’s One-Child Policy provides us with a natural experiment tha