A group wedding is held at Northeastern University in Shenyang, Liaoning province, China, May 20, 2018.
“For me, there is nothing wrong with a single Life, at least it is an unrestrained state, you can do whatever you want, you can buy whatever you want, you don’t have to think too much, you don’t have to worry too much.”
To “single dog” self-deprecating after 90 Mr. He is a native of Beijing, into the years of his life, he has no intention of Marriage.
As a young man living in a big city, his thoughts seem to coincide with those of many millennials. This view of marriage is more acceptable to the 80s and 90s than the arranged marriages of the older generation in mainland China.
Millennials are the main force in the reproduction of today’s population, but influenced by subjective or objective factors, they choose to break with tradition and make an alternative choice.
In both urban and rural areas of mainland China, young people are plagued by political factors, economic conditions, and traditional attitudes, and the idea of not marrying and forming a dinky Family, which is against tradition in the eyes of their Parents, is slowly taking root.
Who bears the bitter consequences of “family planning” and “preference for sons over daughters”?
Since 1982, when the Chinese Communist Party made family planning a basic state policy, the marriage rate in mainland China has been declining at an alarming rate year by year since 2013, and in 2014, for the first Time in more than 30 years, China’s working-age population shrank.
The decline in the marriage rate has led directly to a fertility cliff, making it imperative for millennials to take up the banner of the fertility army. Communist authorities announced the implementation of a two-child policy at the beginning of 2016, but with little success.
Traditionally, the National Bureau of Statistics announces the previous year’s GDP data, employment data, birth population data, etc. at its annual conference on the operation of the national economy.
But this year’s conference did not show the birth population statistics for 2020, Ning Jizhe, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, explained at the conference, “The population census is once every ten years, and the sixth census was also conducted in November and announced in April of the following year. the results of the 2020 census will also be announced to the whole society in April, and the data cannot be provided today Please understand.”
The traditional patriarchal ideology of mainland Chinese families has added salt to the wounds of the “demographic crisis”, and gender discrimination in the context of family planning policies has led to a serious imbalance in China’s sex ratio. According to statistics, there are currently more than 30 million “leftover men” in China who are unmarried.
Mr. He recalled that from college to work, there are very few women around him, not to mention the opportunity to choose a quality object.
He said, “The ratio of men to women is out of balance, my circle around me are boys, fewer girls, there may be a few girls occasionally, but they are not their favorite type, so that’s why they are still single.”
At the same time, the gradual improvement of women’s Education has contributed to the rise of their social status and economic power, modern women have the right and more ability to pursue self-development, marriage and children is not their only choice.
Old policies, perverse traditions and new age thinking have created two groups marginalized by the marriage market: high-income, highly educated women and low-income, low-educated men.
Wu Xiuming, deputy secretary-general of the Shanxi Think Tank Development Association, said the best way to solve the urban “leftover women” and rural “leftover men” is to narrow the gap between urban and rural areas and promote two-way population mobility between urban and rural areas.
Netizens jokingly called this “a decade of brain thrombosis to come up with a policy,” and some people even asked: “What is wrong with urban leftover women to do with rural leftover men?”
This “chicken and duck mating”, “forced to take the magpie bridge” of immoral policy proposals also can not fundamentally solve the population crisis, and the messy point of lovebirds only for the post-millennial generation again planted the bomb.
High bride price and “three big things” scare young people
In the eyes of millennials, marriage is not only a test of two people’s emotions, but also a test of two people’s wallet thickness.
The bride price necessary to marry a wife has become a heavy pressure on some families, and with the economic development, the price of the bride price has scared off a pair of young people who are walking hand in hand into the marriage hall, and many areas even have a million bride price “three big things”.
The rural boy Xiao Xu, who lives in Qu Zhou County, Hebei Province, introduced some of the traditions of rural marriages to the reporter. He said: “First of all, from the matchmaking, certainly need a matchmaker, matchmaker in rural areas is particularly common, some older grandmothers or grandmothers, they like to be matchmakers. But the matchmaker to arrange a meeting will charge about 30 to 50 phone fees, regardless of whether to see or not, whether you talk or not, no matter how the follow-up, they arrange your meeting to charge this phone fee.”
He went on to say: “Then after the matchmaking meeting, such as talking for a period of time, feeling good on both sides, we must start talking about marriage, the first is the issue of the deposit, the issue of engagement. The first bride price, the county may be in about 100,000, in rural areas may be in more than 100,000 million to 200,000 to 300,000 may appear. The bride price is indeed a relatively large number, many families, including me, need to borrow money to complete the wedding.”
For Xiao Xu, who is engaged in farming at Home, this is basically astronomical, but he said this is the tradition, the woman’s parents want less others will gossip.
He said: “Social customs, family environment is like this, everyone wants more, if you want less, others wonder if your daughter has any problems, or your daughter is not as good as others, work is not as good as others, or education is not as good as others, so they want so low. There is such an idea that exists, and the high bride price has been a continuing bar.”
The high cost of marriage may only make these 80s and 90s after the heart palpitations, when they look at the wedding, high housing costs, children’s education costs, etc. often make them “no rebellion” to let go of each other’s hands.
The wedding house has long been a prerequisite for families in mainland China to get married, but the high rise in the property market is not proportional to the rise in people’s wages, and some young netizens lament, “Today, housing prices have become our most effective contraceptive.”
Living in Beijing, the city with the second highest house prices in the country, Mr. He admits that he cannot buy a wedding house at all with his income level, and he can only consume the savings and properties left by his parents if he wants to get married.
He said, “Beijing, the price of housing is very high, and some girls’ families want to share the property, that is, to add the name of the woman on the property certificate. But the house this thing, to my current income level can not afford to buy a house, so a house is basically my father and mother, or even father and mother, two generations of hard work, the value is too high, can not be used in this matter (marriage) to ‘squander’.”
Traditional concept of marriage change: not difficult for themselves
Many millennials’ view of marriage with the economic and technological progress has also changed, married life does not have to become a sublimation of adult love, and even from the marriage of individuals will get a higher quality of life, young people have the right to choose after thinking about the marriage to face the “birth”, “mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship “They can’t help but ask: Why should they make it difficult for themselves?
During the recently concluded Spring Festival holiday, many young people must have been subjected to caring marriage calls from friends and relatives, while the Spring Festival Gala also repeated the never-missing skits about marriage and family.
From arranged marriages to free love, social progress has given young people the individual right to marry or not, and respect and understanding of personal choice is fundamental to show social inclusion.
But social and family pressures have in turn become a countervailing force for millennials to pursue their own choices, but have they really given up on traditional marriage? No, they are caring more about the quality of their marriages.
In a New York Times story on millennials’ view of love, anthropologist Helen Fisher says this generation is choosing “slow love” over “no love. She argues that millennials are not destroying marriages. They may value marriage more.
In their eyes, the current concept of marriage is not a preservative for relationships or a refuge from life, and they are slowing down to think and trying to reshape the image of a good marriage with a new age mindset.
Benjamin Karney, a professor of social psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), says, “People are putting off getting married not because they care less about marriage, but because they care more about marriage.”
Yes, this generation shares the same desire for marriage, they too want to have porridge to warm when they return home at midnight in the future, to enjoy the nourishment of love and family companionship, yet the reality of Chinese society leaves many of them with the bitter fruits of policies and traditions they should not have to bear.
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