China's divorce rates spike for a multitude of reasons
On June 25, former Olympic champion hurdler Liu Xiang announced he and his wife Ge Tian, an actress, were getting a divorce, ending their marriage of only nine months. Liu's announcement on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like microblogging service, said that he and his ex-wife didn't adapt well as a couple.
Liu, born in 1983, and Ge, 1988, got married last September after a four-month courtship, but since then, they were rarely seen together in public.
Today, one out of every four marriages in China ends in divorce. Liu and Ge are characteristic of what is becoming known as the "younger-generation divorced population": They were both born in a single-child family after 1980 and divorced after a short marriage.
In order to rein in the surging population, China tightened birth control in 1980 by allowing most urban couples to have only one child and allowing most rural couples to have two if their firstborn was a girl. In late 2011, couples across the country were given the option of having two children if both of the parents are themselves from one-child families. Restrictions were further eased in December 2014, when the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, decided to allow families to have a second child if one of the parents is an only child.
"Most post-80s babies don't have any siblings to communicate with and are the focus of the attention of all senior family members," said Sun Yunxiao, Deputy Director of the China Youth and Children Research Center. "This hinders their ability to communicate effectively with their spouses. Marriage is an art of compromise."
Forget-me-not
According to figures released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) on June 10, a total of 3.6 million Chinese marriages broke up last year. Among them, the 25-29 age bracket represented 38 percent of the total, up 2.8 percentage points from 2013.
"The reason the divorce rate is high among these groups is that they value their own interests and rarely care about others' feelings," said Sun, who revealed that many young people now divorce for trivial reasons. "Some reasons sound absurd. For example, I heard that a woman wanted a divorce because she couldn't bear seeing her husband using a toothpick after meals."
Zhang Xiao (pseudonym), a 30-year-old Beijing resident, recently divorced after 13 months of marriage. "I tied the knot with my ex-husband after six months of dating," Zhang said. "But during our 13-month marriage, he refused to do any housework and I had to wash all the clothes. Neither of us could cook, so we seldom ate at home. It didn't feel like a home at all."
"Many young people now get married impulsively before they truly know what marriage is," said Chu Yunlu, a lawyer in Beijing who mainly handles divorce proceedings. "The image of marriage in their mind is mainly from movies or TV dramas. Some believe love at first sight can last forever and every day needs to be super romantic. When real life doesn't meet those expectations, they get disappointed."
Chu suggests the government and/or non-governmental organizations hold marriage awareness campaigns, telling unmarried people that the spousal relationship is more about responsibility than romance.
"Only after getting married did I realize marriage is not only the union of two people but also that of two families," said 28-year-old Gao Min (pseudonym), who divorced in May after a four-year marriage.
"I heard this saying before, but didn't think much of it," Gao said. "I thought as long as we loved each other, we could overcome any obstacle."
A graduate from the prestigious Tsinghua University with a master's degree in economics, Gao fell in love with her ex-husband, who graduated from the same university with a doctorate, in 2010. The two got married in 2011.
"The first two years after getting married were sweet and happy," Gao noted. "Things changed after my ex-mother-in-law moved in with us in 2013."
Gao's ex-mother-in-law is all but a vegetarian, but Gao loves meat. "What I like doesn't mean that much to her. She only cares about her son. As she is the cook, I had a hard time eating meat at home," said Gao, who complained to her ex-husband but received no positive response. She then started to eat outside most of the time.
According to Gao's ex-mother-in-law, children help hold a marriage together. However, Gao's daughter's birth didn't stop her marriage from breaking up.
"I had many arguments with my ex-mother-in-law over how to take care of my daughter, and all this made the whole situation even worse. Love is weak in the face of complicated family issues," Gao said.
Now, Gao lives with her daughter alone. "I think sometimes about how to tell my daughter about the divorce when she grows up. I hope she can understand," she said.
"Many parents of the post-80s generation like to get involved in their children's marriage," said Zhou Qiangyun, a lawyer in Shanghai. "One reason is that most young people are the only child in their family and parents don't want to leave them. In addition, many parents believe they are obliged to be involved because they have spent a huge portion of their savings on their child's marriage, including the wedding ceremony, housing, cars and other expenses."
Data from the Shanghai Putuo District Mediation Board for Women- and Children-Related Disputes revealed that among all marriage-related mediation cases involving post-80s generation couples, over 90 percent of the divorce seekers were accompanied by their parents during the proceedings. In many cases, the parents handled the majority of the divorce process on their children's behalf.
