A new law has come into effect in China saying adult children must visit their parents or potentially face fines or jail.
The Elderly Rights Law deals with the growing problem of lonely elderly people by ordering children to visit their ageing parents.
The regulation has been ridiculed by tens of thousands of Chinese web user.
Many across China are questioning how the law could be enforced, since it fails to spell out a detailed schedule dictating the frequency with which children should make parental house calls, the BBC reports.
According to Chinese government statistics, more than 178 million people in China were 60 years or older in 2010. By 2030, that figure will double.
As China's population goes grey, the Chinese media fills with stories of neglected old people.
Many were shocked by the story of a 91-year-old grandmother who was beaten and forced out of her home in China's southern Jiangsu province after she asked her daughter-in-law for a bowl of rice porridge.
Two days later, internet forums were filled with a similar story of farmers in the same province who allowed their family's 100-year-old matriarch to sleep in a pig sty.
But those stories have not lead most people to support the new Elderly Rights Law.