Chinese Marriages in Transition: From Patriarchy to New Familism

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Chinese Marriages in Transition: From Patriarchy to New Familism

by Xiaoling Shu and Jingjing Chen

Rutgers University Press, 2023

ISBNs

Cloth: 978-1-9788-0467-8

Paper: 978-1-9788-0466-1

eISBN: 978-1-9788-0468-5 (ePub)

eISBN: 978-1-9788-0470-8 (PDF)

About the Book

Outdated models of Chinese gender roles, marriage, and family transitions portray these changes as streamlined and unidirectional, from traditional to modern, public to private, collective to individual. Chinese Marriages in Transition documents the complex, nuanced, and multidirectional nature of these cultural transformations. Using complex and large-scale historical national data as well as comprehensive data from multiple countries, Xiaoling Shu and Jingjing Chen demonstrate that, while the second demographic transition is unfolding in many advanced Western societies, it is not necessarily a normative form of societal transition. Working instead from a framework of "new familism," Shu and Chen show that Chinese new familism consists of both old and new values, including the persistence of some traditional beliefs and practices, accompanied by a transition to modern perceptions of gender, and adaption to some modern forms of family formation.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)— a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the University of California, Davis. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: openmonographs.org.

Download the open access book here.

About the Author

XIAOLING SHU is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Knowledge Discovery in the Social Sciences: A Data Mining Approach.

JINGJING CHEN is a mixed-methods researcher at Google, who lives in Berkeley, California.

Reviews

"The radical transformations in the Chinese system of gender, family, and marriage do not neatly fit the prevailing theories of modern social change, nor are they outside the global transitions of the last century. Shu and Chen masterfully integrate China's uniquely "flexible traditionalist" system into that broader story of social change, providing a powerful introduction to Chinese social change for all gender and family scholars."
— Philip Cohen, author of Enduring Bonds: Inequality, Marriage, Parenting, and Everything Else That Makes Families G

"Employing several nationwide social surveys conducted by Chinese academics and think tanks between 1995 and 2018, this study sheds light on how factors such as age, sex, education, and rural/urban residence have impacted contemporary mainland Chinese attitudes and lived realities concerning marriage, divorce, cohabitation, fertility, and women’s participation in waged labor, among other topics. The authors also include many useful numbers, graphs, and charts to illustrate their findings." — CHOICE

"Chinese Marriages in Transition reveals distinctive patterns that do not always replicate those of Western or other East Asian countries. This study encourages us to rethink assumptions about the uniformity or linearity of social and demographic change."

— Pacific Affairs

"Shu and Chen identify a distinctive pattern of 'flexible traditionalism' that reinforces the notion of separate spheres and heightens gender differences in marriage and family life. An important and original book that will further the debate on how and why Chinese women and men are charting a different course than their peers in Europe and North America."— Deborah S. Davis, co-editor of Wives, Husbands, and Lovers: Marriage and Sexuality in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Urban Chi