Quickie divorces on the rise for post-1980s generation
By Zhang Xi (chinadaily.com.cn)Updated: 2007-05-23 14:33
Many Chinese couples born after 1980 are choosing to tie the knot but also untie it just as quickly.
In China, women can get married when they are 20 years old, 22 for men, so the post-1980s generation is getting hitched, but data from the Shanghai civil administration show 5,786 20-somethings divorced in 2006, accounting for 15.71 percent of the total divorces. In Beijing, 24,952 couples registered for divorce last year. Among them were 52 couples in their 20s who wanted to split up after being married for less than one month.
One reason why these young couples split up is because it's so easy to get divorced. After the introduction of a new regulation in 2003, married couples can split up easily as long as they both sign the divorce papers.
"A 20-something young couple even got divorce certificates after a 45-day marriage," sighed a civil administration officer in Beijing.
But an even more important reason for their marriage failures is quickie marriages, caused by various reasons.
Li Ziwei, an officer of Beijing Civil Administration once met a young couple who came to apply for a wedding certificate just because they "passed by the registry office and heard that it's a good day to get married."
Li added, "They just knew each other for one month and thought they would get married anyway. An even more extreme example is a couple that came here after meeting each other for 50 hours! How could these quickie marriages be happy and stable?"
Some people choose quickie marriages because they want to escape reality. Some college graduates, especially girls, tend to wed early rather than get jobs, which is more and more difficult in today's society. Many undergraduates who are in their early 20s are busy seeking prospective husbands by attending match-making activities or putting their profiles up on the Internet. They believe finding Mr. Right is another way of getting a good job.
Gao Yue, a senior female student at a university in Southern China's Hainan province revealed the idea shared by many other female students.
"It's too hard to find a decent job now, especially for women," she says. "But if I can find a husband with a good salary, I don't need to worry about anything in the future."
Besides their own decisions of getting married young, some parents also play a vital role in pushing their children to get hitched in hope that they will have "a stable life and children", based on the traditional Chinese concept of marriage. For parents, it is their responsibility to get involved in the "big deal" of their children and they feel relieved after their children get married.
Twenty-six-year-old Wuhan native Wu Wei is working in Shenzhen, a city in southern China's Guangdong province and he has decided to find a wife as quickly as possible to ease his parents' concerns.
"Whenever I go back to my hometown, my parents keep asking me when I will get married," he sighs. "I am really tired of this and have decided to get married soon after I get a girlfriend."
However, many young divorced people of the post-1980s generation have known each other for a long time before they decided to tie the knot. And many assume that they will have a happy marriage.
But a lot of them get divorced soon after they get married, because of their immaturity. They only know it is good for being together but lack the basic understanding of the responsibilities and obligations of marriage.
Most of them are the only child in their families so they
are not accustomed to tolerating others, doing housework and saving money.
Sometimes they have to depend on their parents. Therefore, the reality of living
together as a married couple may be too great a shock for some to handle.
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