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Until last year it was not really possible for most unmarried women to become mothers in China - practically speaking. But a social change is under way and it is driving shifts in policy too.

In her flat on the outskirts of Shanghai, Zhang Meili rocks her baby back and forth. As he gurgles away happily, she tells him that she's going to head out soon to earn money for him.

After his mother goes to work, two-month-old Heng Heng will be looked after by his grandmother - who recently moved to China's largest city to help her daughter raise her child.

That there is no father in Heng Heng's life would be frowned upon by many in China, especially in more conservative rural and regional areas. The belief that a child should not be brought into this world without a mother and a father is still widely held here.

In Zhang Meili's case, she says she was lucky to have moved to Shanghai to run a business because being a single mother in this mega-city is much more accepted.

"I'm grateful for the tolerance of Shanghai," she says. "I'm from rural Henan, an area which would have a lot of discrimination against me as a single mother."

She became a single mum after her boyfriend's family rejected his choice of bride. They considered her position in society to be too modest.

So he broke up with her - even though she was pregnant with his child.

I ask her mother, Mrs Zhao, how she felt when she heard the news that her daughter, who is 25, would keep the baby.

"My feelings? I was heartbroken," she says. "It's very hard to raise a kid on your own. And, in our hometown, there would be criticism from neighbours."

Have her feelings changed now that she's a grandmother?

"Now I see him, I'm really happy," she says with a huge smile on her face.

Zhang Meili has options that many unmarried women don't have because she runs her own small business.

This gives her more independence and control over her life.

Though the little massage shop she runs is still struggling post-Covid, she doesn't need to clear leave with an employer or battle for social acceptance in a workplace because she has given birth to a son who will be raised without his dad.

Of course, it has not been easy for Zhang Meili to keep her business afloat during such a rocky time economically, with the added challenges of giving birth, plus knowing that - while attitudes are changing - there are still those who will look down on her.

She says that none of her friends backed her decision to keep her child. They thought it would harm her chances of eventually finding a husband, and that it wasn't right for the child to grow up without a father.