Skip to main content

Marriage and Family

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
  • 800 Accesses

Part of the book series: Gender, Development and Social Change ((GDSC))

Abstract

This chapter focuses on women’s experiences and expectations of marriage and family. Enabled by changing practices relating to housing allocation, the re-constitution of the private sphere away from the workplace has facilitated women’s enactment of power play in marriage and family. For ‘left-over’ single women, despite being ridiculed at work and pressurized to marry by their parents, these women actively delayed marriage to preserve agency and autonomy in their mate selection. For married women, by reclaiming the traditional divide between inside and outside, they wielded considerable interpersonal power and prevailed over their husbands in decision making at home and in general family life, albeit at the exploitation of senior generations of women who took on housework and childcare.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Bibliography

  • Blood, R., Jr., & Wolfe, D. M. (1960). Husbands and wives. New York: The Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, D. S., & Friedman, S. L. (2014). Wives, husbands, and lovers marriage and sexuality in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and urban China. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Delphy, C., & Leonard, D. (1992). Familiar exploitation. Oxford: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dong, C., Sanchez, L. E., & Price, R. A. (2004). Relationship of obesity to depression: A family-based study. International Journal of Obesity, 28, 780–795.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Farrer, J., & Sun, Z. (2003). Extramarital love in Shanghai. The China Journal, 50, 1–36.

    Google Scholar 

  • Folbre, N. (1994). Who pays for the kids? Gender and the structures of constraint. New York: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hartmann, H. I. (1979). The unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism: Towards a more progressive union. Capital and Class, 8, 1–34.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hershatter, G. (2004). State of the field: Women in China’s long twentieth century. The Journal of Asian Studies, 63(4), 991–1065.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hochschild, A. R. (1989). Second shift: Working parents and the revolution at home (with Anne Machung). New York: Viking Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hu, X., Zeng, X., Zheng, L., & Flatt, C. (2010). How does wives’ unemployment affect marriage in reforming urban China? Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 41(5), 717–734.

    Google Scholar 

  • Liu, J. (2007). Gender and work in urban China: Women workers of the unlucky generation. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • McDonald, G. W. (1980). Family power: The assessment of a decade of theory and research 1970–1979. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 42, 841–854.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Okin, S. (1989). Justice, gender and the family. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Potter, S. H. (1988). The cultural construction of emotion in rural Chinese life. Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, 16(2), 181–208.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scanzoni, J. (1979). Social exchange and behavioral interdependence. In R. L. Burgess & T. L. Huston (Eds.), Social exchange and developing relationships. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sen, A. (1989). Gender and cooperative conflict. In I. Tinker (Ed.), Persistent inequalities (pp. 123–149). New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shangdu Estate. (2013). The impact of new changes in Marriage Law on the property purchased prior to marriage. Sina Housing. http://anyang.house.sina.com.cn/news/2013-08-05/09552321656.shtml. Accessed 20 Mar 2016.

  • To, S. (2015). China’s leftover women late marriage among professional women and its consequences. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tzeng, O. C. S., & Gandarillas, M. (1992). Theological view of love and marriage. In O. C. S. Tzeng (Ed.), Theories of love development, maintenance, and dissolution: Octagonal cycle and differential perspectives (pp. 241–263). New York: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walby, S. (1990). Theorising patriarchy. Sociology, 23(2), 213–234.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yi, C. C., & Chien, W. Y. (2002). The linkage between work and family: Female’s employment patterns in three Chinese societies. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 33(3), 451–474.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zang, X. (2011). Family and marriage. In X. Zang (Ed.), Understanding Chinese society (pp. 36–52). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zurndorfer, H. (2015). Men, women, money, and morality: The development of China’s sexual economy. Feminist Economics, 22(2), 1–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Jieyu, L. (2017). Marriage and Family. In: Gender, Sexuality and Power in Chinese Companies. Gender, Development and Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50575-0_8

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics