When I ask my male friends about marriage, I found that a lot of them are lack of the awareness to build a family. A lot answers are: I have not thought about it before. But the same age girls may have already been aware what women would suffer in marriage. Maybe some boys do not want to take too much responsibility. Just planning for themselves is enough tired.
This is an interesting area of discussion, and while the female viewpoints are important, I would like to hear more from Chinese men themselves, rather than having women say what the men are thinking. Is what Chimeg saying correct, or is that her perception of men? What is the men's perception of themselves?
I don't say this from a place of ignorance. I speak to a lot more Chinese women than men - my own wife passed last year, and I inherited a lot of her female friendships, so I hear a lot about what they think of coupling and marriage, but I am underexposed to what the Chinese men are thinking.
Did it used to be a widespread expectation of Chinese wives that they would care for their husband’s parents in their old age? Is this still an expectation and if so could it be an extra factor in antipathy towards marriage?
I’m surprised none of the girls mentioned mistress culture, here in Hong Kong many men have ‘a girlfriend on the mainland, or just over the border in Shenzhen.
Hehehe. I presume the incentives for (local government) reporting of families with multiple children changed in 2019. How else could the TFR jump like that?
When did the divorce law around marital property change? It seems intended to discourage divorce.
I, old fogey that I am was brought up with the idea of marriage as being a (financially) interdependant (not independant) relationship where the 2 parties pooled resources and efforts for the benefit of both (and for raising any kids that came along). I lived in China (embassy based) as a teenager during the cultural revolution (ended mid 1976 with death of Mao) and recall that (elite) husband and wife pairs often lived independent lives with each assigned by the Party to far different places. ie so the idea of elite 'independent' women goes back at least a generation or 2 in communist China.
Valourising female 'independence' and suggesting men lack 'charm' are rationalisations after the fact (nowadays referred to as 'cope)
I do agree, the Siren Call (ref to Odysseus) of digital fantasy lives can seemingly be irresistible.
What role might the one-child policy have played in all this?
My fiancee was raised in China and she swears it's the primary reason why she was given the opportunities to study abroad and raise her expectations. When you only get one, every child becomes the favored son.
There's an academic book called Dreams of Flight (Martin, 2021) which goes in-depth about these only-child expectations, educational investments, and social effects among Chinese women studying in Australia.
1) I suspect, when parental aspirations for the future are focused on a single child that can become such an unbearable load on a young adult that they subvert it through focusing on their self.
2) As adults, I and my wife pretty thoughtlessly replicated our families of origin. We both had several siblings so expected to have several kids ourselves and conducted our working lives so as to afford them. An only child may have little expectation or comprehension of adult 'family' responsibilities.
I think there's an important psychological element missing here.
When you quote women saying they can't find good men with "EQ" or who fit this new higher standard they hold, you're taking these statements at face value. But basic psychology tells us that people construct narratives that protect their ego and self-image.
Both men and women do this—what it is to be human! When I talk to my male friends, they'll say it's impossible to find women who aren't emotionally unstable, or want them to pay for everything, or they act very entitled, etc. When I have seen actual text exchanges from my female friends who claim they can’t find men, the interactions tell a very different story than their ego narrative one
Your research skips this layer of analysis. Why take what women say at face value, but often add in context to quotes you take from men? Why dig deeper with one group but not the other?
My firsthand experience with young Chinese people while I backpacked through China, and increasingly meeting them at hostels all over the world (Chinese travelers rock!) doesn’t exactly match this either. Many were having fun with men — not lamenting on the lack of quality.
The gap between what people say versus what they do matters. People (mend and women) rarely volunteer "I'm single because I have unrealistic standards" or "I don't put effort into relationships" or “I was acting under the poorly formed assumption that the perfect men should just come and sweep me off my feet…without me having to do much.” Instead, they blame external factors.
I'm not dismissing the cultural and economic factors you've identified, but I think this psychological blind spot weakens your otherwise always excellent analysis.
I don't think it makes much sense to talk about this problem in China specifically when it's happening just about everywhere that's wealthy enough for single people to afford cellphones and apartments on a large scale.
And if you haven't noticed, cellphone-addicted single living is destructive to just about everything you can measure.
The course of the future - if nothing is done about phones - is rather obvious to me: those susceptible to cellphone addiction will reproduce at far lower rates than those who prefer the real world. In other words -- even if individual humans do not develop the capacity to resist digital addictions, humanity will evolve that resistance nonetheless, in a Darwinian fashion.
In other words, like the bubonic plague, it's the kind of problem that solves itself eventually, one way or another. That is, unless the digitally depraved manage to blow everyone else up before they die out. So it is somewhat worse than the bubonic plague on account of that possibility.
Ah, the Internet. The tool that was meant so save introverts, only to leave them condemned instead. Are Internet cafes a thing in China? Last I was involved in Starcraft II, they were in South Korea. A lot of these solitary activities can be made to be more social . . . ever read a book in a cafe, and had someone strike up a conversation? Sure beats being at home! (Although, South Korea of course has an even lower TFR)
What do you make of the idea that countries positioned at a more intermediate point along the traditional-modern spectrum (like China) have some of the lowest TFR, as opposed to Northwest Europe and the Anglosphere? I saw someone else (not sure if there was an associated paper or not) that France's lack of stigma against single mothers props up their TFR, unlike somewhere like Poland. China is much more like Poland than France in this regard!
My personal, D-K addled STEM person who pretends he knows things outside his area of expertise, "fan favorite" theory that's been suggested: the Big Five have been shown to be accounted for 40-60% by genetics and each component is heavily correlated with fertility. What if we're simply in for a rapid shift in human behavior genetics, such as towards greater extroversion, due to the Internet? (What if the Internet is related to neuroticism in terms of higher standards for parenting?) Counterpoints: the effect sizes are not large enough to be meaningful even after 2-3 generations, the effects are due to relative and not absolute measures for each component, etc.
I disagree strongly with the assertion that "introverts" are more vulnerable to digital addiction than "extroverts." That may have been true when digital addiction was mediated through "nerdy things" like having a home PC good enough to play games -- but now, it seems to me that "extroverts" are far more brutally addicted to social media on the whole than the "introverts" I know.
As someone who verts with himself a lot - that's a hilarious joke to those familiar with archaic English by the way - I was done with the way "normies" use social media by about 2008, and they haven't put out a video game I liked in more than ten years. Now I mostly walk around, read books, write things, and watch old movies...and I know I'm tooting my horn, but I've had an unspoken proposal or two -- one from a woman who'd just dumped her very extroverted in-an-indie-band fiancee for doing nothing but sitting on the couch texting other people all day (or instagramming or whatever. it's all the same to me.) She would gush over random suburban houses we passed being "so perfect for kids," and she liked being around her sister's kid a lot, so I think she was very much inclined that way.
If only I weren't such a monogamous pullout king...in any case, my partner says she would, but only if we lived in nature.
Which reminds me -- in that one experiment where they had too many rats, they found that once the available territory had reached a certain rat density, the rats simply stopped reproducing, or even mating very much -- instead they spent most of their time grooming & engaging in unconsummated displays of courtship and/or aggression. The problem might be as simple as "fewer people get the baby bug if they live in a densely-populated area." The evolutionary reasons for that seem obvious: if there's not much space for more people, don't make too many more new people, or everyone might starve. If that dynamic occurs in rats, who are significantly more, er, rat-eat-rat than communitarian compared to humans, it's not a very big leap to assume the same thing in people.
That doesn't mean "cities are fucked" or anything like that, though...there may simply be a density at which human populations tend to level out unless those instincts are "tricked" in one way or another -- and "tricking" those instincts may be simpler than we think. Would soundproofing make people feel more "alone"? Would people feel like they had more space if apartments had more but smaller rooms, or fewer but larger rooms, compared to now? (As far as self-analysis, I feel like if I had to hear my building neighbors' too-loud televisions as usual, *plus* a crying baby, I might have a stroke. And I don't think constant random-hours ambient noise is good for a baby either.)
When I ask my male friends about marriage, I found that a lot of them are lack of the awareness to build a family. A lot answers are: I have not thought about it before. But the same age girls may have already been aware what women would suffer in marriage. Maybe some boys do not want to take too much responsibility. Just planning for themselves is enough tired.
This is an interesting area of discussion, and while the female viewpoints are important, I would like to hear more from Chinese men themselves, rather than having women say what the men are thinking. Is what Chimeg saying correct, or is that her perception of men? What is the men's perception of themselves?
I don't say this from a place of ignorance. I speak to a lot more Chinese women than men - my own wife passed last year, and I inherited a lot of her female friendships, so I hear a lot about what they think of coupling and marriage, but I am underexposed to what the Chinese men are thinking.
Did it used to be a widespread expectation of Chinese wives that they would care for their husband’s parents in their old age? Is this still an expectation and if so could it be an extra factor in antipathy towards marriage?
I’m surprised none of the girls mentioned mistress culture, here in Hong Kong many men have ‘a girlfriend on the mainland, or just over the border in Shenzhen.
TMFR in 2019 2.1 vs 2020 3.1
Hehehe. I presume the incentives for (local government) reporting of families with multiple children changed in 2019. How else could the TFR jump like that?
When did the divorce law around marital property change? It seems intended to discourage divorce.
I, old fogey that I am was brought up with the idea of marriage as being a (financially) interdependant (not independant) relationship where the 2 parties pooled resources and efforts for the benefit of both (and for raising any kids that came along). I lived in China (embassy based) as a teenager during the cultural revolution (ended mid 1976 with death of Mao) and recall that (elite) husband and wife pairs often lived independent lives with each assigned by the Party to far different places. ie so the idea of elite 'independent' women goes back at least a generation or 2 in communist China.
Valourising female 'independence' and suggesting men lack 'charm' are rationalisations after the fact (nowadays referred to as 'cope)
I do agree, the Siren Call (ref to Odysseus) of digital fantasy lives can seemingly be irresistible.
What role might the one-child policy have played in all this?
My fiancee was raised in China and she swears it's the primary reason why she was given the opportunities to study abroad and raise her expectations. When you only get one, every child becomes the favored son.
There's an academic book called Dreams of Flight (Martin, 2021) which goes in-depth about these only-child expectations, educational investments, and social effects among Chinese women studying in Australia.
Two thoughts come to mind.
1) I suspect, when parental aspirations for the future are focused on a single child that can become such an unbearable load on a young adult that they subvert it through focusing on their self.
2) As adults, I and my wife pretty thoughtlessly replicated our families of origin. We both had several siblings so expected to have several kids ourselves and conducted our working lives so as to afford them. An only child may have little expectation or comprehension of adult 'family' responsibilities.
I think there's an important psychological element missing here.
When you quote women saying they can't find good men with "EQ" or who fit this new higher standard they hold, you're taking these statements at face value. But basic psychology tells us that people construct narratives that protect their ego and self-image.
Both men and women do this—what it is to be human! When I talk to my male friends, they'll say it's impossible to find women who aren't emotionally unstable, or want them to pay for everything, or they act very entitled, etc. When I have seen actual text exchanges from my female friends who claim they can’t find men, the interactions tell a very different story than their ego narrative one
Your research skips this layer of analysis. Why take what women say at face value, but often add in context to quotes you take from men? Why dig deeper with one group but not the other?
My firsthand experience with young Chinese people while I backpacked through China, and increasingly meeting them at hostels all over the world (Chinese travelers rock!) doesn’t exactly match this either. Many were having fun with men — not lamenting on the lack of quality.
The gap between what people say versus what they do matters. People (mend and women) rarely volunteer "I'm single because I have unrealistic standards" or "I don't put effort into relationships" or “I was acting under the poorly formed assumption that the perfect men should just come and sweep me off my feet…without me having to do much.” Instead, they blame external factors.
I'm not dismissing the cultural and economic factors you've identified, but I think this psychological blind spot weakens your otherwise always excellent analysis.
Good video about how much easier it is to recruit to neonazis nowadays https://youtu.be/d-g3Z8IWsdU?si=-EtEy4_R6iV99JOs
I don't think it makes much sense to talk about this problem in China specifically when it's happening just about everywhere that's wealthy enough for single people to afford cellphones and apartments on a large scale.
And if you haven't noticed, cellphone-addicted single living is destructive to just about everything you can measure.
The course of the future - if nothing is done about phones - is rather obvious to me: those susceptible to cellphone addiction will reproduce at far lower rates than those who prefer the real world. In other words -- even if individual humans do not develop the capacity to resist digital addictions, humanity will evolve that resistance nonetheless, in a Darwinian fashion.
In other words, like the bubonic plague, it's the kind of problem that solves itself eventually, one way or another. That is, unless the digitally depraved manage to blow everyone else up before they die out. So it is somewhat worse than the bubonic plague on account of that possibility.
Ah, the Internet. The tool that was meant so save introverts, only to leave them condemned instead. Are Internet cafes a thing in China? Last I was involved in Starcraft II, they were in South Korea. A lot of these solitary activities can be made to be more social . . . ever read a book in a cafe, and had someone strike up a conversation? Sure beats being at home! (Although, South Korea of course has an even lower TFR)
What do you make of the idea that countries positioned at a more intermediate point along the traditional-modern spectrum (like China) have some of the lowest TFR, as opposed to Northwest Europe and the Anglosphere? I saw someone else (not sure if there was an associated paper or not) that France's lack of stigma against single mothers props up their TFR, unlike somewhere like Poland. China is much more like Poland than France in this regard!
My personal, D-K addled STEM person who pretends he knows things outside his area of expertise, "fan favorite" theory that's been suggested: the Big Five have been shown to be accounted for 40-60% by genetics and each component is heavily correlated with fertility. What if we're simply in for a rapid shift in human behavior genetics, such as towards greater extroversion, due to the Internet? (What if the Internet is related to neuroticism in terms of higher standards for parenting?) Counterpoints: the effect sizes are not large enough to be meaningful even after 2-3 generations, the effects are due to relative and not absolute measures for each component, etc.
I disagree strongly with the assertion that "introverts" are more vulnerable to digital addiction than "extroverts." That may have been true when digital addiction was mediated through "nerdy things" like having a home PC good enough to play games -- but now, it seems to me that "extroverts" are far more brutally addicted to social media on the whole than the "introverts" I know.
As someone who verts with himself a lot - that's a hilarious joke to those familiar with archaic English by the way - I was done with the way "normies" use social media by about 2008, and they haven't put out a video game I liked in more than ten years. Now I mostly walk around, read books, write things, and watch old movies...and I know I'm tooting my horn, but I've had an unspoken proposal or two -- one from a woman who'd just dumped her very extroverted in-an-indie-band fiancee for doing nothing but sitting on the couch texting other people all day (or instagramming or whatever. it's all the same to me.) She would gush over random suburban houses we passed being "so perfect for kids," and she liked being around her sister's kid a lot, so I think she was very much inclined that way.
If only I weren't such a monogamous pullout king...in any case, my partner says she would, but only if we lived in nature.
Which reminds me -- in that one experiment where they had too many rats, they found that once the available territory had reached a certain rat density, the rats simply stopped reproducing, or even mating very much -- instead they spent most of their time grooming & engaging in unconsummated displays of courtship and/or aggression. The problem might be as simple as "fewer people get the baby bug if they live in a densely-populated area." The evolutionary reasons for that seem obvious: if there's not much space for more people, don't make too many more new people, or everyone might starve. If that dynamic occurs in rats, who are significantly more, er, rat-eat-rat than communitarian compared to humans, it's not a very big leap to assume the same thing in people.
That doesn't mean "cities are fucked" or anything like that, though...there may simply be a density at which human populations tend to level out unless those instincts are "tricked" in one way or another -- and "tricking" those instincts may be simpler than we think. Would soundproofing make people feel more "alone"? Would people feel like they had more space if apartments had more but smaller rooms, or fewer but larger rooms, compared to now? (As far as self-analysis, I feel like if I had to hear my building neighbors' too-loud televisions as usual, *plus* a crying baby, I might have a stroke. And I don't think constant random-hours ambient noise is good for a baby either.)