The author summarises factors that have played on changing roles and configurations in Chinese marriages and families in the last seventy years, including the one-child policy, periods of national trauma, and the recent stresses on families as China becomes more urban, individualistic, and entrepreneurial. He gives two family vignettes, one a couple that faces the strain of different expectations for their marriage, and the other a family with a history of trauma, alcoholism, and a school-refusing adolescent girl, illustrating how couples and families experience the strains on modern Chinese families.