But the overall impact of these social changes on women’s work-family choices is distressing.

Housework and child-rearing have always fallen on women’s shoulders, even during the Mao era, when women were held up by the government as men’s equals. Their responsibilities increased in the reform period, beginning in early 1980s, as the state rolled back child care support and the middle class began to invest in early-childhood education. In the meantime, women also began to pursue careers of their choosing, and to compete with men under the new rules of the market economy.

While many mothers, like my own, managed to juggle their domestic duties and professional tasks with remarkable grace, the demands on women without significant spousal support or social policy protection create an impossible balancing act.

“Raising two children in Beijing would definitely cost me my job,” a friend who works in marketing at Google in Beijing confessed to me, explaining why she would not take advantage of the end of the one-child policy.

Also daunting is the widespread pregnancy discrimination in the workplace. “A woman used to have an easy time finding a job after she had given birth once,” said a classmate at my high school reunion. “Now employers have reasons to worry twice.”

While these issues may resonate in the context of Western feminist debates, they are so new to China that the public still has little expectation of positive change. My suggestion to my female friends that fathers should take half of the child rearing and housework responsibilities is often met with a surprised look or a smile of disbelief.

It’s not only children putting caregiving demands on urban Chinese women. Elderly populations in Chinese megacities have soared — for example, in Shanghai nearly 30 percent of the 14 million residents are older than 60, an increase of over 5 percent from a year ago — straining the country’s rudimentary system for caring for the urban elderly. Seeking to shift some of the burden to families, the government passed a law in 2013 requiring adult children to visit their parents regularly.

But the decree merely reflected what was already taking place. Married couples care for their elderly parents in most urban families, studies show, with the bulk of the responsibilities falling on women. Wives are often expected to care for their own parents as well as their husbands’.