Directly before any of these factors came into the picture, the sex ratio was 1.06/1, a completely normal number (Gu, Roy 3rd par .). In 1986, when the one-child policy had been in place for seven years and ultrasounds had been available for about six, the sex ratio was 1.109/1 (Hull 69). The one-child policy was adopted as a method of population control. At the time, China was a country with a rapidly increasing population, and the government feared that the population would overwhelm available resources. As a result, they introduced the one-child policy, which, with a few exceptions, limited couples to just one child. More recently, as the negative impacts of this policy have become apparent, the policy has been relaxed and more exceptions are allowed. In rural areas where the population is less dense, couples may have more than one child. There are many articles explaining the purpose and results of the policy, one of which was “The One-Child Family Policy” by W. Zhu. In it, Zhu stated that a recent change is that if two only children marry, they can have two children, one to replace the mother and one to replace the father (463,464). China has always favored boys over girls, but the one-child policy has really exacerbated the problem. There is also a significant amount of information regarding gender preference after the policy has been put into practice, and one such examination is an article titled "The Consequences of Son Preference and Selective Abortion in China and Other Asian countries" by Therese Hesketh, which helped a lot in clarifying the basic information. In it he states that once parents were limited to having just one child, they would work much harder to have a boy, and would use every means available to prevent having a girl, or to end a relationship.