Mr. ShangkongFor many, having an extra child just brings on labour
Even money is not enough to make parenthood any easier on the mainland, so city couples are unlikely to rush to double their problems
The long-awaited changes to the mainland's controversial one-child policy did not surprise or please every parent in Shanghai when they were revealed last week. Why? Well, it comes down to those familiar issues of money and power.
Today's China might be richer than ever, but the gap between the haves and have-nots is at its peak, too. That reality is often at its most stark in big cities like Shanghai or Beijing, where many couples can barely make ends meet.
So if you do not have enough money to buy happiness for just the two of you, how can you hope to deliver a happy life for one child, let alone two? That is a question widely discussed among parents and those thinking of having children.
I have witnessed my friend W's experiences in raising her child. The tough choices she has faced are not uncommon. The first is shared by many Chinese parents - where to get good and safe baby formula? A lot of them choose to go across the border - not just to Hong Kong, but as far afield as Germany, Britain, Australia and Canada.
W, who is a professional and comes from a middle-class family in Shanghai, often joked that when she and her husband planned a trip abroad for a so-called "holiday", the most important part of the trip was where to get the milk powder. As her child grew older, W quickly came to the second-biggest parenting challenge - one that many Hong Kong parents face more or less in the same way - education.
In Shanghai, not only do you need money to get access to a good school, you also need guanxi, or "relationships". It is perhaps the most important thing to have to solve problems on the mainland nowadays.
"You definitely need guanxi - someone who can introduce you to somebody - otherwise no one (the headmasters and teachers) will take your money, even though you are rich," W says.