A Study On The Social Support Of Shanghai 's

After the implementation of the basic national policy of family planning, one-child family has become the major form of Chinese family structure. With the development of society, various risk factors also appear frequently. It is because of the large number of one-child family and the rising of risk factors, a new group of a large number appears in our country, namely, those who lost their only child. They suffer from the pain of losing their only child; on the other hand they have more and more worries about their own problems of finances, life care and emotional comfort. Although the government has launched nationwide support activities, they are still taking various right safeguarding actions to express their appeals to the government. Given the fact that the number of those who lost their only child is large and that their problems are complicated, the solution to this issue cannot be found merely through government efforts; instead, it requires the collaboration of all social support systems.In this paper, the author takes those who have lost their only child and age 49 years or more in Shanghai as the subjects, using questionnaires and interviews to collect data and analyzing their finances and health, daily life functioning and current mental state to explore their needs in these three aspects. Then, from the perspective of the functions of social support(financial support, instrumental support, emotional support) and the structures of social support(both formal and informal social support entities), the author is trying to find out the state and traits of their financial support, instrumental support and emotional support. According to the findings, most of the subjects are in good financial conditions, and those whose expenditures are overly large are found in poor financial conditions; retirement pensions and special subsidies are the major forms of financial support. In terms of life care, the subjects feature poor personal health, high morbidity rate of chronic diseases; instrumental support mostly depends on spouses and themselves, and the quality of other forms of care is not high. In terms of mental health, the subjects do not have sound mental state and are more willing to participate in activities that involve people who have suffered the same kind of loss. Social organizations and people sharing the same suffering have significant influence on emotional support.