Chinese Marriages in Transition: From Patriarchy to New Familism

Outdated models of Chinese gender roles, marriage, and family transitions portray these changes as streamlined and unidirectional, from traditional to modern, public to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.