On Tuesday, February 22, 2022, due to the harmonic sound of "2" and "love", many couples chose to register their marriage on the same day. (Xinhua News Agency/Photo)
On March 18, 2022, the latest statistics released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs showed that the number of marriage registrations in mainland China in 2021 was 7.636 million pairs. This is after falling below the 10 million pairs mark in 2019 and 9 million pairs in 2020, the marriage registration logarithm fell below the 8 million pairs mark again, hitting a new 36-year low.
When the national marriage rate is declining, what is the willingness of young people to marry and have children?
On April 14th, the Seminar on China's Concept of Marriage and Childbearing sponsored by the Population and Development Research Center of Chinese Min University was held in Beijing, at which the research conclusions of the "Report on the Concept of Marriage and Childbearing of Chinese College Students" and "The Mate Selection Preference and Fertility Concept of Contemporary College Students" were introduced. The researchers found that college students still have expectations for marriage and childbearing. Li Ting, a professor at the Population and Development Research Center of Chinese Min University and director of the Family and Gender Research Center, pointed out, "It is not that most college students do not want to get married now, but their marriage and childbearing value basis has changed, not to say that they want to be guaranteed, but to serve their emotional and spiritual values." ”
Surveys show that this generation of young people face greater resistance to marriage and childbearing, but show significant differences in gender needs. Li Ting explained, "For example, male college students are more concerned about the cost of marriage and childbirth, because boys position themselves as an spender of marriage and childbirth costs, but female college students are more concerned about the opportunity of self-development." ”
The cost of marriage and childbirth and the balance of family work are the prominent considerations that affect college students' entry into the marriage hall. Li Ting believes that public policy needs to integrate the needs of both sexes, and a single "cost reduction" or "giving money" has little effect. The overall mental outlook of college students is still positive and optimistic, but anxiety problems are also widespread.
The questionnaire of the above survey was released to 30 colleges and universities, including 4 double first-class, 18 general undergraduate and 8 specialties, covering 22 provinces and 26 cities; more than 10,000 copies of the questionnaire were recovered, of which nearly 10,000 were valid. Li Ting introduced that the survey includes five parts: the basic information of college students, the willingness and concept of marriage and love, the willingness and concept of childbearing, the spiritual outlook and the concept of marriage, and the Internet participation of college students.
Zhai Zhenwu, president of the Chinese Society and director of the Population and Development Research Center at Chinese Min University, believes that the survey largely represents the chinese youth's concept of marriage and love. "Because college students now make up nearly 60 percent of the youth population."
The willingness to marry is more optimistic than expected
Do college students now have the will to get married? What is the ideal age to get married? This is the most important concern for researchers.
Li Ting introduced that the data displayed in the questionnaire is somewhat unexpected: the ideal marriage age of college students is now 27.82 years old, boys and girls are very close, the choice of "will get married" accounts for 61% of the whole, higher than expected, and the people who clearly express their willingness not to marry together account for only 7%, which is more optimistic than imagined.
According to the order of importance factors, college students pay more attention to mate selection: age, real estate, education level, appearance, whether they are only children, occupation, "Specifically, men rank their spouses slightly higher than women, and women rank slightly higher than men in real estate and education." Wang Donghui, a lecturer at the Population and Development Research Center of Chinese Min University, pointed out that this generation of college students prefers young age, good looks, high education level, housing, only children and high incomes when choosing a spouse.
In addition, men and women have slightly different career preferences in their spouses, and women prefer their spouses to come from institutions and institutions or foreign companies, that is, she still has higher requirements for her spouse's future development or potential income. Wang Donghui interpreted that men are different, if the potential spouse is a foreign company or a private enterprise, it will be considered a deduction, "these occupations may be more work pressure, time demand is relatively high, men are not inclined, that is to say, men he has certain expectations for the future wife's contribution to the family." The researchers selected 32 scenarios, combined into 16 pairs of multiple-choice questions, randomly distributed to the respondents, and gave the above answers through the spouse selection experiment.
Li Ting found in the questionnaire survey that "emotional support for marriage" is considered to be the key to college students, "they regard the value of marriage and its emotional and spiritual meaning and companionship factors as the most important, rather than some other things." Among them, women's choices for both emotional and material support for marriage are significantly higher than those of men.
On April 2, 2015, in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, a post-80s couple held their babies to attend the master's graduation ceremony. (Visual China/Photo)
More than half of female college students are concerned about the risk of childbearing
In the consideration of fertility, emotional and value meaning is equally important. Questionnaire data show that the primary consideration of contemporary young people's parenting is the emotional and value significance of children to themselves, and the traditional concept of "raising children and preventing the elderly" is no longer the goal of a new generation of young people.
For college students who have not yet entered the palace of marriage, is it meaningful to explore their fertility intentions and fertility concepts?
Li Ting's answer is yes. "We specifically asked two questions, one is called the ideal number of children, and the other is the number of willing children." The former asks "How many children do you ideally want to have?" and the latter asks "If you want to have children in the end, how many do you plan to have?"
The researchers believe that the difference between these two numbers represents a perception of college students' fertility obstacles. The actual results show that the average ideal number of children of college students is 1.85, which is similar to the average ideal number of children of other families of childbearing age in other surveys, that is, about 1.8 to 1.9. The average number of willing children fell to 1.36.
"It still has a very big gap, what is this gap? It is the unfulfilled will to procreate, which is what we call the obstacle to procreation. Li Ting said, "I think the focus of the policy is to make up for this gap in the middle as much as possible." ”
"There's also a very interesting phenomenon." The research team found that the ideal number of daughters of all college students exceeded the number of ideal sons, Li Ting said, "We have long been studying a Chinese culture, that is, to talk about the preference of having sons. But this generation of college students has a strong preference for daughters, including rural ones, including family backgrounds that are not particularly good. ”
For the resistance to fertility, women perceive it more strongly than men.
The biggest resistance perceived by male college students is the cost of marriage, which can be understood as the need for boys to buy a house or pay a bride price to get married. More than 50 percent of female college students have some concern about "fertility risk," more than the researchers imagined.
The facilitative effect of the parental allowance was not significant
The researchers also tried to explore what kind of policies can improve the willingness of college students to marry and have children. The results show that groups from different backgrounds have differentiated policy needs. The highest approval rate for college students is the following 5 items: reduce the cost of buying a house, the cost of childbirth, the cost of medical care, the cost of childcare and the reduction of employment discrimination.
Wang Donghui's fertility situation experiment also showed that college students believe that family economic level, childcare support, childcare services, and housing subsidy measures can all promote fertility.
"But we also found the bad news that the childcare allowance does not have a significant effect on fertility, and it is almost the same for men and women." Wang Donghui said that the context setting includes a childcare allowance of 500 yuan, 1,000 yuan, 2,000 yuan or 5,000 yuan per child per year, "Our initial interpretation is that the amount of childcare allowance that may be (designed by us) is low and does not meet the expectations of contemporary college students for making up for the cost of childbirth." He hopes that this conclusion will have some inspiration for the childcare allowance for 0 to 3 years old in the future policy-making process.
The results of the questionnaire also reflect this: fewer people agree that economic stimulus can promote fertility, only 5% to 6%. Li Ting explained, "That is to say, just by how much money is awarded for having a child, in fact, college students don't care so much." ”
"It's basically about reducing costs and ensuring women's employment." Li Ting pointed out that in general, the cost of marriage and childbirth and the balance of family work are the prominent considerations that affect college students' entry into the marriage hall.
There is also a clear gender difference between these two needs, "men have a strong need to reduce costs, because men may be the direct bearers of many costs of the family; but women are strongly demanding work support, and women's demand for self-development actually exceeds her desire for cost reduction." Li Ting analyzed.
"I looked up the data, and we have more college students in school now, more women than men. Even so, women are still the main force in housework, raising children and caring for the elderly. Yuan Xin, vice president of the Chinese Society and professor at the School of Economics of Nankai University, pointed out at the meeting, "This kind of opposition between the public and private spheres may make us women feel more pressure." ”
Southern Weekend reporter Gao Yichen Southern Weekend intern Zhang Xiaoyu