There, couples with one spouse from a one-child family will be allowed to have a second child.

FORBES: The End of China��s One-Child Policy?

This year I have been incredibly fortunate because of the three conferences I was looking forward to attending, two offered child care and one was family friendly.

FORBES: Want More Women At Your Conference? Offer Child Care

As a rule of thumb, economists reckon that a family with one child needs 30% more income than a childless couple to maintain the same living standard.

ECONOMIST: Most of the rich world is short of babies

"We've got one family here, the child comes down from the farm in a car onto the road, " she said.

BBC: Cumbria concern over school funding formula

Torbay have only one child waiting for adoption at present and a family has been allocated for the youngster.

BBC: Councils failing adoption process

In one family, a grandparent gave a child candy with nuts.

CNN: Kids with nut allergies feel teased, excluded

"A family with two working parents and one child will be worse off, " said its education research fellow Harriet Waldegrave.

BBC: Childcare costs scheme 'better for parents'

Or that, if one family were held to have driven a child to act unspeakably, then all families must be seen as sick and vicious?

ECONOMIST: The silence of the lambs

When a child is born, a family often starts two savings accounts: one for their education, and another, just as large, for their wedding.

FORBES: The Woman Behind India's Celebrity Weddings

And in every case, every one, you could trace the successful return of that child to someone -- a family member, a cop -- who just decided to never give up hope.

CNN: Lessons from 'America's Most Wanted': Never give up

If you have two kids in college at the same time, your total expected family contribution, for both kids combined, rises just 20% above the one-child level.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Every Irish school child is being pushed to send postcards to some distant relative, imploring family reconnection at one of countless gatherings of the clans being encouraged for 2013.

FORBES: 70 Million Irish Please Come Home (Briefly): But Don't Mind Our In-Fighting

Taking care of parents is part of Chinese tradition but the country's one-child policy and the trend of people moving away for work have put strains on the traditional family structure.

CNN: As enriched China ages, families strained

A. Butler, a child of empire if ever there was one, describes his failing the Eton scholarship (the mere fact that his family wanted a scholarship would have told the discerning something about his origins) and being consigned to the outer darkness of Marlborough school and Pembroke College, Cambridge.

ECONOMIST: The British empire