text: Family and Gender Family structure went through a significant transformation during the Republican era. Since the late Qing, and especially during the May Fourth Movement, scholars and social activists cast doubts on the utility of the existing large family structure. Some theorized families of big sizes and senior authority as a social problem impeding the agenda of social development. Wu Guanyin, an official at Beiyang government and former international student in Japan, harshly criticized the inequality in large families and its disadvantages for the whole society. In an article published in 1915, he pointed out that in large families where adult sons and their core family members still lived together with their brothers without dividing family property, the male elders had considerable authority to manage family affairs and enjoyed various privileges in social and legal life. He blamed large families for corruption and bribes, claiming that profiting one's own family (mou jia) is in opposition to profiting the state (mou guo). Wu's claim was one of the major intellectual efforts to point out and attempt to solve family problems (jiating wenti) in the Republican period. Exposed to the Western ideal of conjugal families, radicals actively promoted the transformation of family structure. They urged damping the large families where members relied heavily on one another and were placed into an unequal generational hierarchy in an effort to advocate small conjugal families to comply with the Western model.