Like Dandelion Seeds in the Wind

For my Life Snippet for today, I would like to describe how young women in China navigate marriage works in China – and how young adult women navigate it. Or, at least, I will summarize the perspective of a 22-year old woman I met from Southeastern China. She explained why marriage in China makes her feel nervous.

Traditionally, marriage in China has involved the wife moving into the husband’s family. The wife joins the home of her husband and his parents. This saying describes it well, “A daughter married off is like water spilled out.” In short, when a woman marries a man, they, in effect, leave her family and join his family. Thus, whenever she goes back to visit her biological parents, it should be like a guest visiting a home, not a child coming home to see her family.

They are expected to follow his family’s rules of the house, which can put wives in a very uncomfortable position. In particular, the husband’s parents often have set ways they are used to things being that they expect the wife to conform to. The wife is now expected to take care of the children, his elderly parents, and the house in general, which may involve learning to cook food in a way that matches picky parents’ preferences and following the parents’ cleaning standards. In some previous eras, she said the wives are treated more like servants in the new household without any agency or say in what they can do, even forced to eat separately from the husband and his family.

When they marry, women also loose their original names, becoming simply referred to by their husband’s family name. She lamented that she does not know the full name of her great-grandmother or other female ancestors. Once as a child, she asked her father why they don’t remember the names of her great-grandmother’s generations, but her father scolded her, saying that children shouldn’t fuss over such matters. She never asked again because it seemed “disrespectful.”

At the same time, the family line is passed down exclusively through boys, so boys become seen as the primary children. Daughters will end up in the family they marry into, but boys will be the ones who carry the family line down. This not only means that having boys is often prioritized over having girls but also that boys are more likely to receive inheritances than girls. The One-Child Policy complicated all of this nowadays by limiting the number of children Chinese families were allowed to have (until 2015 when it was ended), but if a family has both a boy and a girl, the parents will often pass down their major resources like their home or cars as inheritance to the boys rather than the girl. They see giving these things to the boy as building their family legacy; whereas, the girl presumably will receive these resources from her husband’s family. Other women told me that many sisters are often forced to give a portion of their paycheck to their brothers or pay for the houses or other major expenses for their brother.

Furthermore, wives are frequently expected to support their husbands no matter what in what she says is frequently an one-sided exchange. “Marry a chicken, follow the chicken; marry a dog, follow the dog.” Basically, in her parents’ and grandparents’ generation, no matter what happens, the wife is expected to follow her husband like a loyal slave. Whether he becomes rich or poor. No matter how often or how badly he may beat her. The idea is that because she married him (which sometimes she freely chose to do and sometimes she was forced into), she must follow him forever. She will be bound to him for the rest of this life and throughout the afterlife.

For her, the same amount of loyalty or care does not always feel reciprocated. Wives often end up as unpaid nannies, caring for both children and elderly parents-in-law while maintaining a whole host of other homecare responsibilities. At the same time, the incredible toil pregnancy has on the human body are often swept under the rug, and they still may be expected to fulfill these responsibilities even when there are complications. She said that husbands often end up being indifferent bystanders instead of relating, comforting, or helping wives. Further if there are any complications that make it difficult to have sons (or children in general), blame almost always ends given more to the wives.

She summarized it in this way:

“So in China, we girls don’t have our own homes; we’re like dandelion seeds, drifting wherever the wind takes us, and by the time we die, no one remains to remember us. No one will recall you. You might say your children and grandchildren—twice that number—will remember you, but the generations after that? They won’t even remember your name.”

What About Marriage Nowadays

All this describes traditional marriage in China, or what she often described as the view of marriage of her parents’ and grandparents’ generation. (To use academic anthropology jargon, traditional Chinese marriages are patrilocal and patrilineal.) Views on marriage have changed since, especially since many women are incredible skeptical about this kind of life.

On the one end, some still practice this kind of marriage. In Southeastern China, some minorities and specific regions follow a form of marriage pretty similar to this. Even worse to her, some older men, especially more powerful older men in a local, rural community, will force younger women to marry as teenagers.

For example, she has a few friends in their early twenties who already have two children, with the oldest being ready to start kindergarten (which often starts at 3 years old in China). They seem happy now, especially since their parents are still around to support them with their kids, but she is concerned about their life prospects when they get older. By the time, they reach their thirties or forties, disagreements and conflicts will likely multiply, and they may find themselves significantly more vulnerable. (Even though this is a different culture, here is an example of an Indonesian friend I talked with who found herself in exactly this situation in her forties: https://crackeddoor.com/putri-story/.)

She said that many other women born in the twenty-first century feel incredible skeptical and anxious about marriage in China, because they see how it has become an unequal arrangement for them. She thinks everyone has the right to be happy in life, so if a marriage is not able to support that, she will get divorced or not get married in the first place:

“If you marry well, that’s just good fortune; if you marry poorly, that’s bad fortune. That used to be the case, but now we’re the post-2000s generation. I don’t care about sayings like, ‘Marry a chicken and follow the chicken, marry a dog and follow the dog.’ As long as I’m unhappy, I have the right to choose—and if things don’t work out, we’ll divorce. Living on my own is perfectly comfortable. That’s why, in China today, our divorce rate is quite high: women are becoming increasingly self-aware.

We won’t think like the older generation: ‘I’ve married you, so my whole life must revolve around you; otherwise, I’ll be plagued by rumors and lose all face.’ People born in the 2000s and beyond don’t hold such views anymore. Life is something we all have to experience, and no matter what, we live our own lives—not someone else’s. I won’t cater to others’ expectations; I’ll live however I choose.”

What About Others?

How contemporary women navigate this is a bit complicated, but many I have talked to do are also apprehensive about marriage because it does not seem to serve them. This can range from women who have told me that they do not want to get married at all because of how bad they find the institution to women who enjoy dating but sense that they must be very picky with any guy they are considering marrying to make sure they do not fall into this kind of trap with him (or his family). Also, nowadays, many grandparents help with childcare while both parents work.

Finally, I will also see significant variations in different regions. For example, on the one end of the extreme, many women from Shanghai especially and a few other bigger cities seem to have a very similar approach to dating or marriage to what I tend to find in Western countries, and others in some other regions (especially rural communities in Southeastern China) tell me their families them pressure to do something more akin to the above.

Since many couples have jobs in the cities before they get married, they end up staying in the city where those jobs are. This can breakup the family dynamic of moving in with the husband’s family and encourage couples to develop their new homes where the economy is booming. Although this is not always true: some families are originally from the big city anyways and still live nearby, and sometimes grandparents will move into the big city with the couple in order to take care of the children.

My friend’s take on marriage helped me understand how women experience marriage in China, why many feel anxious and apprehensive about it, and how they navigate expectations put upon them to still live a vibrant and healthy life. I understand why one would be at best very careful about getting married in this kind of family environment. Her approach shows one way to resiliently navigate this kind of context as a woman while building a vibrant life for herself.