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author | shi jingjing, a reporter from southern window

editor | xiang you

while conducting research in rural henan, chen ruiyan, a doctoral student at the school of social sciences of wuhan university, often felt the elderly farmers in the village express their endless concern about the "divorce phenomenon."

in their simple outlook on life, family happiness means reunion and happiness, but many families are experiencing the reality of "separation of wives and children". "divorce" has become another marriage dilemma in rural areas after "bachelor".

the stereotype is that rural marriages are relatively stable and divorce is mostly an "urban phenomenon", but data shows that rural couples are also experiencing marriage crises that are no less severe than those in urban areas.

in guizhou in the southwest, the rural divorce rate in yuping dong autonomous county has been on the rise since 2019. by 2022, rural divorces accounted for 95% of the total divorces in the county; in fuyuan county, yunnan, the number of rural divorce registrations in 2020 accounted for 60%; in qingyang, gansu in the northwest, the rural marriage rate declined and the divorce rate rose in the seven years from 2012 to 2018, with an average annual increase of about 250 cases of divorce litigation; in a wealthy industrialized village in shunde, the divorce rate also showed an upward trend in the ten years from 2009 to 2019, and those born in the 1990s became the main body of divorces.

the divorce rate in some rural areas is on the rise / stills from "dear child"

although it is the same divorce, the urban-rural differences in employment opportunities, economic income, education level, and customs and concepts determine that we cannot simply use urban experience to understand the divorce logic of rural couples.

this is also the reason why a group of rural sociologists continue to study it. field research in different regions has found that, especially since 2010, as the number of migrant workers has further increased, the divorce wave in rural areas has become particularly significant, and the characteristics of the groups are also distinct: the majority of divorced couples are young people, the marriages have lasted for a short time, and those who file for divorce are mainly women.

taking qingyang, gansu as an example, in 2018, the average divorce age of rural women had decreased year by year to 35.7 years old. in the previous seven years, more than 80% of divorces were initiated by women.

in today's world of free love and marriage, people certainly have the right to make their own choices. but in the conservative rural society, what drives the divorce tide, and why do women dominate divorce? after divorce, do young rural men and women live better?

understanding the great changes in rural families and finding the risk factors is more interesting and valuable, because it fully demonstrates how the relationships between rural couples, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, and parents and children are subtly reconstructed, and what new hidden dangers are generated, which has a more far-reaching and lasting social impact than divorce itself. scholars are also worried that rural family relationships, which are woven around marriage, are moving from one imbalance to another.

the complex spectrum of divorce

ban tao, a teacher at the school of social sciences and politics of anhui university, is a researcher in rural family sociology. over the past 10 years, he has conducted on-site research in more than 100 villages in 20 provinces and cities across the country. he also realized early on that the significant increase in rural divorce rates had become a common phenomenon in villages across the country, and some extreme cases shook his past cognition.

ban tao was born in 1985 and his hometown is huainan, anhui. when he was a child, he heard that women in the village would rather force their gambling husbands to get back on track and live a good life by taking medicine than choosing divorce. however, a tragedy he investigated in meixian county, shaanxi province was about a rural couple who quarreled because the daughter-in-law was not frugal enough. the daughter-in-law ran back to her parents' home and was determined to divorce. after repeated persuasion from her husband and her parents-in-law failed, the mother-in-law committed suicide by drowning on new year's eve.

extreme cases not only show that rural marriages are no longer as stable as they used to be, but also reflect new changes in rural family relationships and status. ban tao is also exploring why the divorce phenomenon in rural china is so prominent and what are its overall characteristics?

china has many rural areas, and there are regional differences. ban tao found that in terms of the causes of divorce, daily life friction is the most common cause in suburban villages, while economic poverty among men is the most common cause in remote suburban villages.

in suburban villages, housework and childcare are the main sources of friction in daily life. "the young girls we asked now dislike widowed parenting the most," ban tao explained to nanfengchuang.

there are differences in the reasons for divorce among rural couples/stills from "the kim bok-nam murder case"

suburban women are often influenced by modern concepts earlier, and most of them have their own jobs, and their income may be higher than that of their husbands. they break through the traditional division of labor of "supporting the husband and raising children", are unwilling to become family nannies, and also require their husbands to participate in housework and childcare. they have plans to return to the workplace after giving birth. however, when men retain the traditional concept of "men work outside and women work inside" and show laziness, friction arises. taking childbirth as the node, 2 to 3 years after marriage is a high-sensitivity zone.

in contrast, the more numerous remote villages in the central and western regions are more likely to divorce because "poverty brings sorrow to all". the primary factor is economic conditions, followed by incompatibility of personality, physical and mental defects, and bad habits such as infidelity, violence, and gambling.

ban tao told southern window that a typical example is rural north china, where, due to the serious imbalance in the male-female gender ratio, rural women have more room to choose their spouses and have higher requirements for the economic conditions of men. buying a house in the city has almost become a standard, and if this is not achieved, the risk of divorce will increase.

one of the reasons for rural men’s economic poverty after marriage is the high bride price agreed upon before marriage.

ban tao gave an example to southern window: "in my hometown of huainan, anhui, the bride price is 200,000 or 300,000 yuan (roughly equivalent to 5 to 10 years of working income). as early as 10 years ago, you might have bought a house in the town, but now you have to buy a house in the county at least, which costs at least 500,000 or 600,000 yuan. the down payment is basically paid by the man's parents, and there are also corresponding wedding expenses such as the three golds for the banquet, which will definitely cost at least hundreds of thousands of yuan... the man's family rarely does not get into debt because of the child's marriage, especially in rural areas in the north, where there is a saying that 'giving birth to two sons means crying', and the original saying 'more children, more blessings' is no longer mentioned."

in remote suburban villages, there are few local job opportunities and limited income. in order to repay debts and loans, men generally go out to work. however, low education limits the career advancement of young men. their only way out is to work in underground coal mines or at sea, engaging in high-risk, high-intensity work in exchange for relatively high incomes.

the effort to "earn money for a wife" and "reduce debt" has been the family motivation for the 170 million migrant workers over the past 20 years - but a major risk of working away from home is that a large number of rural couples are separated for a long time, and rural marriages are in turmoil due to the lack of balance.

migrant workers have caused a large number of rural couples to be separated for a long time, and rural marriages have become unstable/still from "working people"

long-term separation is a hotbed for marital derailment. in 2018, li yongping, an assistant researcher at the zhou enlai school of government at nankai university, found during a survey in a village in changchun that one in eight households in the village was divorced, and the phenomenon of one or both spouses having an extramarital affair was even more serious. they often find their extramarital partners through social software, "usually within ten miles of the village", and working away from home is a major inducement for extramarital affairs. among them, more than half of the middle-aged couples divorced at around the age of 40, and there was also a phenomenon of "sons getting married and parents getting divorced".

in the past, divorce was damaging to one’s reputation, and parents and even relatives of both parties would “persuade the divorcing couple to reconcile rather than separate.” public opinion pressure would also build up within the village, and divorced women would be disliked by their natal families and even become homeless. this was also a major stabilizer of rural marriages in the past.

but the situation is different now. the resistance to divorce has been greatly weakened. divorce has changed from a public affair of the family and the village to a personal private matter.

during a research trip in henan, chen ruiyan met a couple whose son-in-law had not visited his parents’ home for two years, and whose daughter always came back alone during the spring festival. they also did not know whether their daughter and son-in-law, who were separated in wuhan, were divorced. because of long absences, when ban tao was conducting research in rural chengdu, a couple found out about their son’s divorce after a long time. when he asked the villagers, many of them were not aware of the divorce situation in the village. it was no longer a topic of conversation for them, and they lacked sources of information.

"nowadays, people are less interested in gossiping and tend to live their own lives. marriage has also been separated from the extended family and has become a matter between husband and wife." chen ruiyan told southern window, "it's not just divorce, the public nature of the village is being eliminated."

women take the lead in divorce

the distinctive feature of rural divorce is that women file for divorce first.

not only that, lu fei, a teacher at the school of ethnology and sociology of south-central university for nationalities, found from 763 rural divorce verdicts in five counties and districts of sichuan that in a small number of divorce lawsuits filed by men, the main reason was that the woman had been away from home for a long time and was forced to divorce, which further highlights the "female-dominated" color.

this breaks the traditional cognition, because we are accustomed to thinking that women are in a weak position in marriage, powerless and helpless, unable to control their own lives. even in an atmosphere of awakening female subjectivity, in common personal narratives, divorce still has multiple obstacles or concerns. those who resolutely break through are therefore given the positive meaning of "daring to fight" and "pursuing independence and equality."

so when rural women take control of divorce, will it be a liberation narrative similar to "nora's runaway" that highlights the progressiveness of women?

"in fact, it is not quite the same" and "at least it is not what we often call the awakening of subjectivity", ban tao and chen ruiyan tend to answer negatively. at least in their empirical judgment of investigating rural divorce phenomena, this understanding is inaccurate and may be a huge misunderstanding.

stills from "determination to leave"

chen ruiyan gave an example. she interviewed a remarried woman in a rural area in henan. her ex-husband was considerate and they actually got along well. she divorced because she felt that her ex-husband was not good at making money and had an unstable job, but he spent money lavishly on food, drink and entertainment. the couple quarreled over this, and the woman's parents' pessimism also played a catalytic role - this also echoed the conclusion of many surveys that "poor economic conditions are the primary factor for divorce." after remarrying, her second husband was a different type. he worked hard and made money, but he was honest and didn't talk sweetly. the two had little emotional communication, but her economic pressure and public opinion pressure were reduced.

chen ruiyan explained to southern window that in the first marriage of this rural woman, it was not that she was oppressed in the family and her rights were violated, which gave rise to her subjectivity and forced her to fight for a divorce, but that her ex-husband's wealth accumulation could not make her respectable in the family and the village, so she divorced. "in fact, it is the pursuit of material and face. especially if the family as a whole is not thriving, saving money as soon as possible to buy a house in the city will be under pressure from public opinion in the village."

an interview record with villagers in northwest shandong province reveals the meaning of this public pressure: "although couples may quarrel and get angry with each other, you cannot fall behind. you should make money when you should make money, and work when you should work. if you play without any foundation, you will be laughed at. villagers laugh at people who don't know how to live. if you live a good life, others will respect you, but if you don't live a good life, everyone will sneer at you."

the pressure of public opinion in the village will also be internalized into the psychological pressure of the villagers. comparing the post-marriage situation of his playmates in the same village, one villager said more bluntly: "her husband is capable of working outside and earning a lot of money, buying her nice clothes and imported cosmetics... people in my mother's village say that her marriage is very happy... she is lucky to marry a rich man. i am unlucky to marry a poor man. not only is life hard, but we often quarrel. it is really impossible to live like this. i divorced while i am still young. after the divorce, he will raise the two children, and i, a woman, can't take care of them."

in the past, divorced rural women were stigmatized and were often expelled for their bad character or infertility. under the concept of "a daughter who is married off is like spilled water", divorced women were often not welcomed by their parents' families, but now these stigmas have faded.

prejudice and stigma against divorced women are gradually fading/still from "dear child"

although both are about "living together", the pressure of public opinion in the village has shifted from the stigma and criticism of divorce to the comparison of economic strength. the villagers generally value the state and results of a comfortable family life, and divorce and remarriage in the process have gradually been accepted by the villagers.

this is specifically manifested in the following ways: divorced rural women can largely avoid being homeless because they cannot return to their parents' home. even if they would rather be single than marry someone they do not like, they do not have to worry about remarrying. even some "evil-minded relatives of the mother's family" as described by villagers will encourage their daughters to divorce and remarry because of the temptation of high bride prices.

"especially in rural north china, due to the past reproductive concepts of 'raising sons to provide for old age' and 'preferring sons to daughters', there is a serious imbalance in the gender ratio. in addition, a large number of women of marriageable age go out to work, resulting in a small number of local women of marriageable age. the dominant position of women is thus highlighted. there is also a situation where the matchmaker has already come to introduce a partner to the woman before she gets divorced. when it comes to the second marriage, the man also has to pay a high bride price and arrange the marriage in the same way as the first marriage," said ban tao.

when a marriage loses its appeal due to low quality of life, the cost and resistance of divorce are reduced in all aspects, and there are many alternative options, so rural women have gained significant dominance in marriage. however, in the process, they are not "resisting oppression and seeking liberation", and their "rights consciousness" is still vague. they are more in a scarce and sought-after gender structure, reversing their weak position in the original patriarchal structure in another more affordable and beneficial way.

another imbalance

in a survey last year, chen ruiyan found that rural male bachelors have ushered in a "new spring".

older men who villagers had originally estimated would remain single their entire lives have begun to get married in the past two years. most of their wives are divorced women, and according to the villagers, remarried women generally live better than first-married women.

however, it is very difficult for divorced rural men to remarry. this is because ordinary families have exhausted their financial resources in their first marriage and cannot afford the high bride price for remarriage, so they end up being single again. on the contrary, the former bachelors have a comparative advantage after a round of wealth accumulation. "the status of divorced men in rural areas is lower than that of bachelors," said chen ruiyan.

the sharp contrast between the cost of remarriage for rural couples after divorce (higher for men than for women) and their living conditions (women moving up while men moving down) is also beyond experience. this not only strengthens the dominance of rural women in divorce, but also enhances their voice and dominant position in family life.

"it's not that there is anything wrong with the improvement of the status of rural women, but that the obligations women bear have been reduced. the improvement is under the condition of imbalance of 'rights and obligations'." ban tao said that in rural areas, that part is manifested in that they don't have to work or go to the fields to work, and the housework is done by the mother-in-law, whose main role is to take care of the children. after divorce, most women give up their custody rights for their children, do not fulfill their custody obligations or pay for child support, and leave them to the men to raise alone, forming a situation of "abandoning the husband and the children."

li yongping calls women's dominance in marriage a "right without obligations," and believes that it breaks through the framework of "family politics" and leads to the hollowing out of the ethical content of family life.

stills from labyrinth of heart

“if you ask the elderly in the countryside, they will all tell you that marrying a daughter-in-law nowadays is like marrying a bodhisattva, and they must worship her. otherwise, if the daughter-in-law is unhappy and asks for a divorce, their son will be at risk of becoming a bachelor again.” ban tao said that another metaphor similar to “bodhisattva” is “rural young lady.”

this means that the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in rural areas is being reconstructed, and the image of the mother-in-law being "stubborn and domineering" is becoming a thing of the past. the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law have broken free from the struggle for "head power" and entered a situation where "the mother-in-law pleases the daughter-in-law."

chen ruiyan has seen a mother-in-law wash her daughter-in-law's clothes by hand because the clothes were too delicate to be put in the washing machine; when she heard that her daughter-in-law had returned, she would quickly put down her mahjong and go back to cook, her eyes and actions showing fear of neglecting her.

there are also more strange things revealed in it. a typical example is this mother-in-law, who was widowed at an early age and raised her children alone. now her son is working away from home, and she and her daughter-in-law live in the village with their five or six-year-old grandson. the mother-in-law is basically responsible for housework and taking care of the grandson. the daughter-in-law has no job, and the mother-in-law doesn't want her to go out to work, lest she "becomes bad-minded and runs away with someone else." chen ruiyan wanted to talk to her daughter-in-law, but the mother-in-law refused. she obviously didn't want her daughter-in-law to have unnecessary contact with outsiders, although the internet can easily break through this line of defense.

chen ruiyan described this state of apparent harmony but concealed strangeness as "captivity." however, when their sons leave home for work, many mothers-in-law now carefully help their sons reduce the risk of divorce and become "pleasing guardians." husbands working away from home often stay at home periodically, buy their wives clothes and gifts, do more housework and say nice things, strategically maintaining their marriages, reversing the situation in the past where rural women often had to swallow their anger in front of their husbands and parents-in-law.

"it has not achieved the ideal relationship equality. the relationship between husband and wife, and between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law has changed from one unbalanced state to another unbalanced state now," said chen ruiyan.

in this unbalanced state, ban tao is more worried about "relationship squeeze". in his observation, the higher the cost of marriage, the more severe the squeeze of marriage on family intergenerational relationships. the mother-in-law in shaanxi who drowned herself because her daughter-in-law insisted on divorce is an extreme manifestation of the sharp squeeze.

the higher the cost of marriage, the greater the impact of marriage on intergenerational relationships/still from "the kim bok-nam murder case"

a more common intergenerational squeeze is that for the parents, the parents-in-law have to work and farm more intensively to provide support, squeezing their already limited pension resources; for the children, single-parent children in rural areas cannot receive proper care and education, and their physical and mental health is harmed.

wu cunyu from shandong normal university paid attention to children from families with fragile marriages and recorded the situation of two such families in 2020.

a left-behind woman who was abandoned by her cheating husband, because her husband rarely sent money home and had a violent tendency, she farmed and worked alone to raise her three sons, and her life was difficult. the three sons dropped out of junior high school. the eldest son picked eggs in the chicken farm in the town, earning 300 to 400 yuan a month, which he gave to the family. the twin younger sons, one studying auto repair and the other studying sofa making, each gave their mother 200 yuan a month to supplement the family expenses.

the other was a husband who was abandoned when his wife ran away from home. he worked outside and his three children were taken care of by their grandmother and uncle. the brother and sister often went to school on an empty stomach in the morning and helped their uncle with work after school, such as sweeping the floor, cooking, going to the fields to herd ducks, and hauling soil and bricks. during the summer vacation, they went to reunite with their father where he worked, but they helped with the work together, working in the workshop from 7 in the morning to 11 at night. when they were hungry, they ate a few cold steamed buns. when they had heatstroke, they huddled in a cardboard box in the corner of the workshop to rest.

the paradox of the “marriage market”

in modern concepts, freeing people from an unhappy marriage is a manifestation of freedom of marriage and love, and a respect for human nature. however, the term "marriage market" that frequently appears in interviews and academic research highlights the paradox in the rural divorce phenomenon.

research case from song lina, associate professor of the department of sociology, faculty of arts and law, henan agricultural university: a 28-year-old woman from fengnan village, shaanxi, was trafficked to the mountainous area of ​​sichuan in her early years and forced to marry and give birth to a daughter. in 2014, she escaped back to her parents' home when no one was paying attention. her parents quickly arranged blind dates for her, and all three candidates were unmarried. two of them were willing to pay a gift of 100,000 yuan to marry her and accept her daughter; the other one came from a slightly poor family, but he looked good and had saved 150,000 yuan after working for many years. the girl fell in love with him, and the marriage was finally completed with a gift of 86,000 yuan.

"the imbalance in the ratio of men to women in the marriage market has increased women's bargaining power and ability to ask for prices in the marriage market, reduced men's bargaining power in the marriage market, and intensified competition among men for marriage resources. coupled with the decline in the sense of ethics in marriage relationships, the lowering of moral sense, and the gradual weakening of cultural factors that regulate marriage relationships, the marriage market and marriage relationships have become naked market competition, and men who fail in the competition have become the biggest victims in the rural marriage market." song lina wrote that the threshold for marriage in rural society is getting higher and higher, housing in the city is standard, and the bride price is out of control. "being married and growing old together" increasingly depends on "the richness of wealth."

in the practice of rural remarriage, some other tendencies or rules are also related to "wealth": with the help of the migrant worker wave, divorced women can go to the coastal areas in north china and look east to the central and western regions, while rural men who return to being single place their hopes on economically less developed regions, such as yunnan, guizhou and sichuan, or even look for vietnamese brides... "regional imbalances in economic development have also led to regional imbalances in marriage choices," chen ruiyan told southern window.

the regional imbalance in economic development has also led to a regional imbalance in marriage choices/still from "the shout"

marriage is based on emotional connection and is full of humanity, while the rules of the market are competition and survival of the fittest, without any ruthlessness. when they are combined, they are full of "social darwinism", which divides people into high and low based on how much visible wealth and resources they have, just like commodities.

chen ruiyan even feels that if in the past rural women were alienated into "reproductive tools", now rural men are also alienated into "cows and horses", which is actually a deeper alienation and two-way objectification of people.

rural men are in a particularly difficult situation. bachelors who lack resources and those who have returned to being bachelors are not only unable to start a family, but also have to bear the pressure of public opinion in the village and are considered "unworthy of starting a family." for example, a village party secretary criticized bachelors who were unwilling to work outside the village on the loudspeaker.

ban tao believes that although the men who become single or return to being single still have the support of their extended families, their own core small families are ultimately the source of their individual sense of belonging. when they lose confidence in forming a family, they will also lose the motivation to strive for progress and only maintain a minimum level of survival, such as doing odd jobs for a while, earning some money and then returning to the countryside, and then doing odd jobs again when they have spent most of it. the working hours and intensity are not sufficient, and they will not take the initiative to improve their professional skills, but stay in simple jobs with strong substitutability.

"the fundamental reason why they go with the flow is that they have been thrown out of their 'home' and become atomic individuals," bantao concluded.

on the other hand, rural women in remote areas do have the opportunity to use their dominance in marriage to "marry better", but research by qi weiwei of hunan normal university shows that they have a ceiling in the current "marriage market".

she investigated the divorce phenomenon in rural areas of the developed coastal areas in an industrialized and wealthy village in shunde, guangdong, which she called "the marriage highland of rural areas across the country." because the industrial park is home to many famous companies and has many job opportunities, a large number of women from other places have flowed in, making the number of eligible women in the marriage market in the area greater than that of eligible local men, and women no longer have an advantage.

this is reflected in the fact that they cannot get high betrothal gifts and only maintain the attributes of etiquette and courtesy. in particular, local women generally do not marry far away, and the space for choosing a spouse is further reduced, which in turn strengthens the dominant position of local men in the marriage market, and the man's family is more confident to reject or ignore the woman's request.

for example, a couple who had been in love for many years were discussing marriage, but the marriage ended up falling through because the girl’s parents from another place demanded a dowry of 400,000 yuan and refused to compromise; or a local young man insisted on his own way, and not long after getting married, his third wife filed for divorce because of trivial matters in life.

stills from "morning glory"

in the modern context, the high bride price, which has increasingly become a symbol of "wealth" rather than "etiquette", is like a freak. people criticize it as a regression to the feudal society of "selling daughters". at the same time, marriage fraud with the goal of bride price aggravates misfortune, and marriages that fail due to high bride price also kidnap the freedom of marriage. however, many people also regard it as a material guarantee and the confidence to fulfill their promises, and it is the cornerstone of marital stability.

"it is indeed complicated and quite strange." ban tao said that when he was conducting research in rural zhejiang, he found that some men gave high betrothal gifts, and some women also gave high dowries. although this was done to highlight the family's strength and improve its reputation, it was also to consider winning status for their children after marriage.

"it is not necessarily the case that the concept of bride price will become weaker as the market economy develops," ban tao explained. "people often say 'love cannot be measured by money', but life is hard. how can you prove that you value the woman and provide her with a good life? isn't it also very thin to say 'i love her'?"

there are signs that we seem to have fallen into a new dilemma. in rural areas, where economic modernization has not yet been achieved, farmers have suffered the consequences of unbalanced modernity in their marriages and families.

the pictures in this article are from the internet