I Articles
Involuntary Bachelorhood in Rural China*
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Li Zhang
Fudan University
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Yan Wei
Xi’an University of Finance and Economics
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Despite the universality of marriage in Chinese society, involuntary bachelorhood exists, and is becoming an
increasingly critical issue. While many studies have addressed the problem from the standpoint of demographic
imbalance, we argue that the issue should be understood as a manifestation of the gendered features of the
marriage system which work against low-class men. This understanding relates involuntary bachelorhood to
the combined effects of spouse selection and marriage practices. To elaborate our argument, the present study
explores nuptiality plights of involuntary bachelors. In particular, it examines their marginalisation in the
marriage market, defiant choices in the face of market exclusion, and instability of marital relationships.
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Keywords: Involuntary bachelorhood, the gendered features of the marriage system,
sex imbalance, criteria of spouse selection, women’s hypergamy
INTRODUCTION
A salient characteristic of the Chinese demographic system is an unbalanced marriage
market from a gender perspective. From the sixteenth through the late nineteenth century, around 7 per cent of all 40-year-old men were still bachelors and the proportion
of spinsters was virtually zero (Lee and Wang 1999). According to the latest national
census, by 2010 rates of the never-married had been higher among men (5 per cent)
*
This research is supported by the National Social Science Foundation of the PRC (13BRK025).
CHINA REPORT 51 : 1 (2015): 1–22
Sage Publications Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore/Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/0009445514557388
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Yan Wei and Li Zhang
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than women (less than 1 per cent) (Population Census Office of the State Council &
the National Bureau of Statistics of China 2012). This marked variation in marriage
rates by gender implies a marriage squeeze against men. Men who have to delay or
forego marriage usually belong to the bottom rungs of the social hierarchy and are
often concentrated in the poorer rural regions (Davin 2007; Ye and Lin 1998).
Involuntary bachelors, referring to those who become unwanted in the marriage
market, suffer a socially undesirable fate in their marital lives. They are well past a
culturally defined ‘appropriate age’ for marriage, but fail to marry in the conventional
way.1 In a society that treats marriage as an essential institutional setting for the continuation of the patrilineage, non-marriage is both rare and stigmatised. Bachelorhood is
regarded as a failure in the man’s life course and receives a low level of social approval.2
Despite facing slim chances, involuntary bachelors are pressured to terminate their
single status and make ‘unusual’ attempts to get an offer of marriage. Even so, their
efforts often fail to produce desirable outcomes.
These nuptiality plights suggest that involuntary bachelorhood is a dynamic process of
marriage marginalisation, attached to several distinct attributes like marginalisation in the
marriage market, diverse practices of ‘lower’ (or less socially acceptable) forms of marriage
in the face of marriage exclusion, and instability of marital relationships. These attributes
do not exist in isolation; instead, they interact with and are shaped inexorably by patriarchal
culture that defines the gendered features of the marriage system in Chinese society.
If involuntary bachelorhood is part of China’s demographic reality, how we understand
it is critically important for policy. In previous studies, the intertwined attributes of the
nuptiality plight are often treated separately. Most of the attention has been directed
towards problems on the ‘supply side’ in men’s search for partners. For instance, some
studies heighten the significance of the prevailing sex imbalance on the male marriage
squeeze (a situation with fewer marriageable women than men in the population). Some
posit that marriage exclusion is a form of poverty and the risk of bachelorhood is greater for
men from impoverished families. By contrast, available literature rarely analyses issues such
as men’s motivations for marriage, coping strategies and the resulting consequences.
The present study conceptualises the entangled relationships between marital obstacles, options and outcomes from the gendered features of the Chinese marriage system.
The conceptualisation ties involuntary bachelorhood to a broader matrix of asymmetric
gendered roles and relationships in marriage which is rooted in Chinese patriarchal culture. It takes cognisance of the criteria of spouse selection and the prevalence of virilocal
marriage that makes the marriage squeeze have its primary effects on males at the bottom
of the social hierarchy. To develop our understanding, the article will first highlight
1
The ‘appropriate age’ of marriage is defined variously from one culture to another. A study observes
that the minimum or upper limits of age-at-marriage norm tend to be inversely related to the levels of
development. This suggests that the normative age of marriage seems to be lower in underdeveloped areas
than in developed areas (Billari et al. 2002).
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A survey conducted in 2009, which covered 264 villages in 28 of China’s 31 provincial-level units,
reports that unmarried men aged over 40 have suffered social discrimination, meaning that bachelorhood
is recognised as something unacceptable (Jin et al. 2013).
China Report 51, 1 (2015): 1–22
Involuntary Bachelorhood in Rural China
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theoretical propositions framing our empirical analysis. Drawing on statistical data
and field information, the article will then analyse the magnitude of the bachelorhood
problem, the reasons why some rural men are prone to be marginalised in the marriage
market, marital coping strategies and the outcomes associated with their strategies.
CONCEPTUALISATION OF INVOLUNTARY BACHELORHOOD
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How does involuntary bachelorhood come into existence in any given society?
A demographic perspective explains that the sex ratio imbalance produces adverse
conditions in the marriage market for the numerically smaller group. The reasoning
is straightforward. In a society where men or women are in short supply, members
of the group containing a surplus are forced to either marry later or remain single.
Voluminous studies have concerned a negative impact of China’s current one-child
policy that reinforces the exigencies of culturally induced son preference and generates a significant shortage of brides (for instance, Banister 2003; Bossen 2005; Das
Gupta et al. 2010; Ebenstein and Sharygin 2009; Klasen and Wink 2003; Poston and
Morrison 2005; Tuljapurkar et al. 1995; Zeng et al. 1993).3
This concern with demographics has simplified the problem of involuntary bachelorhood to a general consideration of sex ratios in the available mate pool. It emphasises
the significance of marriage-market equilibrium as measured by demographic balance
and propositions the deficit of women as a crucial determinant of marital probability
for men. However, the demographic explanation tells us little in a sustained way about
how involuntary bachelorhood is affected by the criteria of spouse selection and marriage practices, which are critically related to gender relationships of dominance and
subordination in the process of marital formation and sustainability.
The gendered features of the marriage system are pertinent to varied socio-economic
roles men and women perform upon marriage. In the family, men are assumed to
be the main financial providers while women remain at home as home caregivers. In
the responsibility for the expenditure on marriage, the financial contribution of the
groom should be much larger than that of the bride under the dowry/bride-price
system. In post-marital residence arrangements, the married woman is supposed to
reside with the husband’s family. In carrying out the duty to ensure the continuation
of the ancestral line, men must carry on the family lineage, with women serving as a
reproductive tool. These gendered distinctions ‘discriminately’ assign men to play a
dominant role compared to women in the family’s well-being and social reproduction
within the Chinese patriarchal, patrilineal system. Something important to note about
these gender-differentiated roles is that, interacting with other sorts of inequality (such
3
The sex ratio at birth in China has been steadily increasing, climbing from 104.88 boys per 100 girls in
1953 to 118.06 in 2010 (Peng 2011). The abnormal masculine sex ratio at birth (108.47) was first reported
in 1982 and had worsened since then.
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as class, income and education), they underline the social function of marriage and
the criteria of spouse selection in explaining men’s probability of marriage.
An asymmetry of gendered roles in marriage and in family reinforces and is
reinforced by the social function of marriage which powerfully shapes the practical
criteria of spouse selection and marriage pattern. Finding a spouse may be a difficult,
if not insurmountable, matter for men who are on the bottom of the social hierarchy.
Instrumentally, marriage serves as a segregating and interlinking mechanism for the
reproduction of social relations, which may in turn influence the choice of marriage
partners. In addition to its functional link to family formation and human reproduction, the marital relationship, in effect, involves transactions of property, status,
entitlements and obligations among families, usually in different ways for different
classes (Blossfeld and Timm 2003; Gould and Paserman 2003; Watson and Ebrey
1991). This means that the marriage market is segmented by class at each layer of the
social hierarchy, creating various marriage pools, instead of one big pool, in association with different layers of the hierarchy. In many cases, economic standing trumps
most other considerations in spouse selection.4 Educational attainment and political
status also rank highly (Zhang 2013). The criteria of spouse selection have significant
negative effects for men when women favour men with better prospects. Men of
lower socio-economic status either are unable to get married or have to make socially
less desirable marriages. Treating the mate-selection process as similar to the matching of demand and supply in commodity markets, prior research has noted that the
problem of involuntary bachelorhood is more structural than numerical in terms of the
market availability of potential spouses (Becker 1981; Lichter, McLaughlin et al. 1992;
Lichter, Qian et al. 2006; Qian 1998; Qian and Preston 1993). That said, involuntary
bachelorhood (or a male marriage squeeze) is essentially spurred by the structurally
unfavourable marriage market that low-class men face.
Involuntary bachelorhood is compounded by marriage patterns which conform
to the patrilineal power structure where men outrank women in many respects.5 In
stratified societies where males have more power and control a greater share of wealth,
the popularity of hypergamy (the need/desire to marry up socio-economically) among
women can be seen as an instance of women using marriage as a leverage to negotiate for
social equalities. Given their generally subordinate status under the Chinese patriarchal,
patrilineal system, women tend to compete for resources and upward mobility through
marriage or inter-regional marriage migration. Social as well as spatial hypergamy has
a strong effect on the scanty marital opportunities for impoverished men. As women
move out and up, a shortage is created at the bottom layer of the hierarchy in certain
localities. Earlier studies document that marriage is often taken by low-class women as
4
According to a national survey, what most people have meant by economic standing has been economic
variables such as cash income and the wherewithal to make marriage payments (National Survey Research
Center at Renmin University of China 2009).
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For example, daughters are socially constructed less valuable than sons due to their gender, and are
regarded as a burden on the family.
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Involuntary Bachelorhood in Rural China
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a means to trade or compete for wealth and status among various layers of the society.
Thus, the collapse of marital prospects for men usually occurs in poor areas of the
country, since many women migrate from poor areas in the countryside to wealthier
urban areas in pursuit of men of higher status (Bossen 2007; Coontz 2005; Ebenstein
and Sharygin 2009; Fan and Huang 1998; Kaur 2012; Oppenheimer 2000).
When there are strong cultural and economic imperatives for men to marry,6
bachelors with inferior socio-economic characteristics must employ diverse strategies
to cope with the unfavourable marriage market and a shortage of women who can
be seen as potential matches. In addition to relatively obvious responses such as lowering spousal preference, bride purchase is one reaction. Brides are bought or abducted
from a long distance away, or even across national borders.7 Another rational reaction
through which men with few assets attempt to escape bachelorhood is to opt for marital
arrangements that would not be a drain on their family resources (for example exchange
marriage or wife-sharing), though such arrangements may not necessarily have positive
outcomes, or may even constrain their long-term socio-economic prospects. As we will
discuss later, involuntary bachelors engage in marital practices (for example, marriage by
purchase, uxorilocal marriage, levirate, widow remarriage) that are considerably abnormal
in contrast to conventional marriage in order to fulfil their marriage hopes.8
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METHODOLOGY
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Information from a single source is hardly able to capture the specifics of involuntary
bachelorhood. For analytical purposes, we draw together three sets of data/information
(censuses and national surveys, press reports and interviews), which are complementary
in that they allow us to establish connections between broad and narrow scales. We use
census age-specific marriage data to estimate the magnitude of the nationwide population
of rural involuntary bachelors. We also use the data from the Chinese General Social
Survey (CGSS) to investigate how marriage patterns can affect the man’s marriage prospects.9 These macro data allow us to get a handle on the context of broad socio-economic
structures that shape personal experience.
6
The all-marriage tradition is said to be institutionally linked to partilineal ideology characterised by
a strong son preference. It can also be seen as an outcome of economic necessity in agrarian societies that
require both male and female labour to ensure the family’s viability (Kaur 2008). The authors would like
to thank a reviewer for raising this important justification for universal marriage.
7
Anonymous sources reported that in China about 20,000 women were abducted and sold into marriage
every year. Trafficking accounted for 30–90 per cent of marriages in some villages. See US Department of
State (2006). Additionally, see Chu (2011) and Zhao (2003).
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Though not found in our field study, some cases of polyandrous arrangement are reported in the media,
in which the wife of one man is shared by several others.
9
The CGSS is an annual questionnaire survey of China’s households aiming to investigate systematically
the changing relationship between social structure and quality of people’s life. More information is available
on its official website, http://www.chinagss.org.
China Report 51, 1 (2015): 1–22
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Involuntary bachelors are common throughout vast areas of rural China. Regrettably,
quantifiable countrywide data on their personal characteristics are unavailable. Instead,
we construct the profile of involuntary bachelors by compiling scattered press reports.
This is done through reading about 1300 cases reported in the past 10 years. These
cases cover 16 villages of 12 cities in 11 provinces. Although cases gathered from media
sources may not be statistically representative, they are instrumental in providing
stereotypes of involuntary bachelorhood (Table 1).
Table 1
Summary of Stereotypes Associated with the Nuptiality Plight of Involuntary Bachelors
in Rural China
Characteristic
Individual
Age: Ages span from men in their late twenties to their seventies,
with the bulk of the sample between 30 and 45 years old.
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Background
characteristics at
the various levels
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Educational attainment: The vast majority of cases report an
elementary education or less.
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Source of income: Most have agriculture plus short-term
off-farm jobs.
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Skills for daily living: Capable in menial, labour-intensive
jobs only.
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Personality: Low level of self-esteem, weak socialisation with
few social ties to the communities they are attached to.
Family structure: Primarily large-sized families with multiple
adult children.
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Family
Work capacity: At least one adult family member without
work capacity.
Living arrangement: Co-residence in the parental home with
unmarried siblings.
Housing condition: Dilapidated and shabby structure
awaiting reconstruction.
Family well-being: Prevalence of extreme poverty surviving on
less than a specific level of income (the poverty line) per day.
Village
Geography: Mountainous terrain featured by karst landforms
inaccessible to motor vehicles.
Resource: Scarcity of farmland and water.
Economic structure: Domination of low value-added
rudimentary agriculture; disconnection of the villagers’
livelihood to the market as a result of lacking cash crop
farming and household side business.
Income level: A per capita annual income of 200–2000 yuan,
putting them in the lowest level of the national rural areas.
(Table 1 Continued)
China Report 51, 1 (2015): 1–22
Involuntary Bachelorhood in Rural China
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(Table 1 Continued)
Attribute
Characteristic
Causation of involuntary bachelorhood
Poverty as the prominent factor constraining available choices.
Martial strategy
Increase of family income to attract potential wives.
Expansion of the pool of potential brides by lowering the
criteria in choosing wives.
Illegal or abominable forms of marriage, such as wife purchase.
Marital outcome
Continuation of involuntary bachelorhood despite many
attempts to find a wife.
High risk for being victimised by marriage scams.
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Devoice shortly after marriage as wives refuse to endure
perpetual economic hardship.
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High pressure driven by responsibility for taking care of
elderly and disabled members in the conjugal family.
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Source:Compiled from press reports.
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Our analysis is also based on the examination of qualitative information from
interviews, which allow investigation of poignant personal experiences with a
considerable degree of qualitative analytical depth. The interviews were conducted
during several visits to three villages (labelled X, Y and Z as pseudonyms) in two
townships in western China from 2010 to 2012. Though not representative of all
of rural China, these villages resembled other poor villages of the countryside. Our
fieldwork sites shared similar features in terms of geographic setting, demographic
profile, economic structure and living standards, and were regarded as the areas
worst affected by problems of involuntary bachelorhood in press reports. They were
scattered in a mountain belt (from 500 m to 1900 m above sea level), accessible
only by mud tracks. Each village had about 250 households and 1100 residents.
Farming there was labour intensive but not very productive. Labour migration was
the most important channel of cash income. Poor accessibility and unprofitable
agriculture resulted in per capita income in these mountainous villages far below
the national average.10
Interviews were carried out with a total of 16 individuals. All of the interviewees
had a hard time trying to fulfil their marriage hopes. We reached them with assistance
from village cadres, and included only those who were willing to be interviewed. Not
unexpectedly, interviewees shared unfavourable personal traits described in Table 1,
rendering them among the least desirable participants in the marriage market.
Interviews were conducted individually in a semi-structured, open-ended manner,
covering questions about family background, barriers and approaches to seeking
10
Current per capita annual incomes were about 3000 yuan, 1600 yuan and 1400 yuan in villages X,
Y and Z, respectively. Data were derived from village leaders.
China Report 51, 1 (2015): 1–22
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marriage partners, marital forms, post-marital residence arrangements and relations.
In the following section, we report this written and ethnographic evidence.
EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE
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Figure 1 provides estimates of the percentage of single persons of each age group
who would remain single, based on the national nuptiality tables constructed by the
authors.11 These statistics, disaggregated along gender lines, indicate the marriage trend
and the magnitude of the bachelor population. Though there has been a small rise in
non-marriage rates by age over time,12 Chinese society is still characterised by nearuniversal marriage. Most Chinese end their single status between the ages of 20 and
35 years. People over the age of 35 may be considered as having difficulties realising
their marital aspirations. The proportion of men who never married was apparently
higher than the proportion of women in a similar position. While nearly all women
married at some time in their lives, 5 per cent of men never married. The rural–urban
difference in the size of the bachelor population was also striking. According to the
latest census, by 2010, the number of never-married males was 4.2 million in rural
areas, while the bachelorhood rate was 1.5 per cent. In cities, the same statistics were
1 million and 0.4 per cent respectively (Population Census Office of the State Council
& the National Bureau of Statistics of China 2012). Given the supposed universality of marriage, such a large bachelor population should be viewed as the ineluctable
outcome of structural forces, rather than the result of preferred choices on the part
of bachelors.
Men’s opportunities to marry are affected by women’s hypergamy. Using educational
attainment as a close proxy for economic standing and social status, Table 2 demonstrates that most Chinese women have tended not to marry down socio-economically.
Figures in the diagonal cells of this cross-classification of wives and husbands’ educational attainment showed marriages characterised by educational homogamy, whereas
off-diagonal cells revealed those characterised by educational hypergamy or hypogamy.
While many marriages occurred across educational categories, women seldom marry
down the education hierarchy. In contrast, men tended to be much less likely to marry
women receiving more education. That is to say, there was little prospect of finding
brides for less-educated males.13
For a technical explanation on the construction of the nuptiality table, see Shryock et al. (1976).
Technically, changes in the timing of marriage (for example, an increase in the age of first marriage)
can in part produce a rise of the proportion of unmarried persons at each age.
13
Census data show that those better-educated males were less likely to remain permanently single
(Population Census Office of the State Council & the National Bureau of Statistics of China 2012).
As Telford (1992) notes, in China whether men (unlike women) find a spouse has been primarily conditioned
by their social status. Also see Attané et al. (2013).
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Involuntary Bachelorhood in Rural China
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Figure 1
The Percentage of Single Persons who Remain Single at each Age, by Sex, 1982–2010
90
1982
1990
80
2000
2010
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60
50
40
30
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20
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80
49
47
45
43
39
1990
2000
2010
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60
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50
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40
49
47
45
41
39
37
35
33
31
29
27
25
23
21
19
15
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30
0
1982
O
70
17
Percentage of Single Survivors
90
10
37
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100
20
Age
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Female
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35
33
31
29
27
25
23
21
19
17
15
0
41
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10
43
Percentage of Single Survivors
100
Age
Male
Source:Estimated based on the census data of marriage and mortality provided by the National Bureaus
of Statistics of China.
Table 1 shows that rural involuntary bachelors have certain personal inadequacies in common: low earning capacity, low levels of education, poor sociability and
unfavourable family backgrounds, making them unattractive to women. Men who
come from the poorest families of the poorest villages usually have the lowest chance
of marriage. Educational attainment and family burdens act as other barriers to the
China Report 51, 1 (2015): 1–22
11.7
19.7
31.6
33.5
49.1
14.9
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10.7
20.9
17.1
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31.6
8.9
1.6
Senior Secondary
School
14.7
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17.7
25.6
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10.2
3.9
0.7
Vocational Senior
Secondary School
Educational Attainment of Wife
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Junior Secondary
School
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Table 2
Spousal Matches in Educational Attainment (%)
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Source:National Survey Research Center at Renmin University of China (2009).
2.0
17.0
Vocational senior secondary school
Bachelor degree or above
19.0
Senior secondary school
8.0
36.9
Junior secondary school
Some college
82.7
Primary School
or Below
Primary school or below
Educational Attainment of Husband
T
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25.1
26.7
7.5
4.8
1.0
0.0
Some
College
35.8
7.0
1.3
0.9
0.2
0.1
Bachelor Degree
or Above
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
Total
307
498
719
1,321
3,352
2,503
No. of Samples
(N)
Involuntary Bachelorhood in Rural China
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likelihood of marrying. Two interview extracts from our fieldwork sample justify these
observations.
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A 43-year-old man (Mr C) with elementary education was the last of four siblings.14
His eldest brother had been missing for years. His second brother worked far from
the hometown and seldom visited home. His sister married virilocally in another
village. C lived with his 80-year-old father and third, unmarried brother, who had
suffered from dementia since childhood. The main source of C’s family livelihood
was seasonal crops on a small plot of infertile land. Renting out his two cattle to
others for farming during seeding/planting seasons provided a small, unstable
subsidiary income. As a case of extreme hardship, the family received a 100 yuan
monthly living allowance from the government. Because the two family members
he lived with were incapable of looking after themselves, C could not work outside
of the village for cash income. C had tried dating several times without success,
because few women were willing to be trapped in poverty after marriage. He had
long drifted between hope and despair for marriage.
Mr D was now in his late thirties. D’s 66-year-old father suffered from a chronic
disease and his mother was disabled. Both needed a certain amount of regular
expenses on medical care. A small plot of contracted farmland provided the family
with food. D was employed in drilling highway tunnels, with a monthly income of
around 3000 yuan. Nonetheless, D had to spend most of the income on his parents’
medication and on hiring someone to farm the family’s land, since neither of his
parents could undertake labour-intensive farming. With high family expenditures,
D was unable to save sufficient money to build a matrimonial house, which cost at
least 30,000 yuan in his village. D had had two dating experiences, but both cases
ended in failure. His marital dream had been crippled by his heavy family burden.
After years of failure, D no longer expected that he could secure a marriage.
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Figure 2 illustrates individual vignettes selected from our informants, that can
exemplify how involuntary bachelors struggle for marriage, and the problems associated with their marital life.
A 40-year-old (Mr E) with 3 years of schooling lived in Village Z, which was full
of frustrated bachelors because of extreme poverty (Figure 2(a)). Girls of the village
often had their pick of potential husbands in richer areas. For E, getting a wife
from the local community proved nearly impossible. After he managed to accumulate enough cash, he and two villagers, arranged by a marriage broker, travelled
thousands of kilometres to a border province to purchase brides. Each bride cost
about 30,000 yuan. Mr. E locked up his bought wife to keep her from escaping.
Rather than condemning this action, villagers applaud this case of ‘buying a bride’
as a palatable option for involuntary bachelors. They sided with those men who
14
Pseudonyms are used to keep the anonymity of our informants.
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Figure 2
Martial Forms and Residence Arrangements by Involuntary Bachelors, Selected Cases
E
Marriage by
purchase
(a)
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Uxorilocal
marriage
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(b)
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(c)
Virilocal
marriage
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Uxorilocal marriage
Marriage by
purchase
(d)
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Levirate marriage
Lenged
Male
Marital
relationship
Female
End of marital
relationship
A co-resident
with interviwee
Person
already died
Kinship
Number of
children not shown
Source: Drawn by the authors based on the information from interviews.
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parted with their life-time savings to buy wives and kept a tight watch over their
purchased brides. Not long after being purchased, the woman took the chance to
run away with two brides who were also sold into marriage on the same occasion.
Fearing the possibility of another loss of both wife and money, E did not intend
to buy a wife again and remained unwed at the time of interview.
Mr G, from a neighbouring township, married uxorilocally with a woman from
an economically better-off family in Village X when he was over the age of 30
(Figure 2(b)).15 G came from an impoverished family with five brothers while the
woman had two sisters reaching marriageable age. The couple had one son and
one daughter. The daughter inherited G’s surname but the couple’s son was given
his mother’s surname. This effectively ended the transmission of G’s family name.
With financial support from his father-in-law, G bought a 30-seat coach and began
operating a short-distance passenger transport business. Having benefited from his
marriage, G became affluent by local standards.
Mr H from Village Y could not get married till his late thirties (Figure 2(c)).
Finding no prospects of getting a local wife because of his less-desirable personal
traits, he paid 30,000 yuan to marry a girl from another province, who was in fact
a member of a marriage scam gang. The girl fled just a week after the wedding
ceremony. Making several attempts to get a wife without success, he finally married one of his female cousins. The woman’s ex-husband had been killed during a
mining accident, leaving her with two young children. One year after the death of
her ex-husband, the impoverished widow married H uxorilocally. H resided with
the widow’s ex-father-in-law after marriage. H’s marriage was a case of exchange
marriage between brothers. The woman’s father was a younger brother of H’s
grandmother, and H was a cousin of the woman’s ex-husband. H’s wife was not
able to bear children after her new marriage. It was not unusual in Village Y that
involuntary bachelors chose to marry widows.
Mr J remained single because his parents could not afford to build him a
matrimonial house (Figure 2(d)). As requested by J’s parents in his early forties,
J was married to the wife of his third elder brother, who had died in a mining
accident leaving two young daughters. The family of the deceased man received
6,000 yuan cash in compensation. J’s parents demanded such levirate marriage
(a type of exchange marriage among family members) in order to satisfy two
material concerns. First, it avoided expensive cost for J’s marriage, since J’s parents
had already paid the bride-price for the wife of their deceased son and the woman
15
Uxorilocal marriage, where a man marries into his wife’s family, follows three cultural rules. First,
at least one of the children, or all children, born from the marriage has to adopt the mother’s surname.
Second, the groom is required to reside with the bride’s natal family. Third, an uxorilocally married
man holds the responsibility for taking care of the wife’s parents and is entitled to inherit the property
of the wife’s family. Because a called-in son-in-law has lower social status under the patrilineal family
system, uxorilocal marriage is still relatively rare in rural China, representing only about 5 to 8 per cent
of marriages (Jin et al. 2006).
China Report 51, 1 (2015): 1–22
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was considered to be the property of the family that had ‘bought’ her. Second,
it eliminated any possibility of the transfer of the compensation payment for J’s
deceased brother to other families through a new marriage by the widow. This case
was not extraordinary.16
DISCUSSION
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Cross-reading of the written and ethnographic evidence presented in the previous section helps to understand the various interrelated aspects of involuntary bachelorhood:
the magnitude of the problem, contributing factors, marital strategies, motivations
and subsequent outcomes.
IA
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The Magnitude of the Problem of Involuntary Bachelors
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Notwithstanding the goal of universal marriage, there are a considerable number of
men who have never married. Chinese unmarried men are overwhelmingly poor, illiterate and rural. Nationwide, currently about four million rural men remain frustrated
in their aspirations to marry, despite the fact that they make efforts to find a spouse.
While bachelorhood is socially acceptable in some countries, in Chinese society marriage has long been viewed as a mandatory part of every individual’s life course. In this
context, bachelorhood should be perceived as a forced way of life brought on by the
vicissitudes of the socio-economic system at both personal and broader levels, rather
than a preferred choice.
T
Factors Contributing to Involuntary Bachelorhood
N
O
China’s rapid industrialisation and increasing labour mobility are reshuffling the
country’s social and spatial hierarchy. Both social and regional disparities are on the
rise.17 Widening gaps in development have intensified competition for brides, and put
impoverished local individuals at a disadvantage. Cases from our fieldwork show that
involuntary bachelors face lives of economic destitution and are the weakest competitors
16
We came across five other levirate marriages on several occasions during our visits to those villages.
In J’s village, the levirate marriage custom, which was a forced marriage of a widow to the brother of her
deceased husband, was conceived as both rational and beneficial. The remarried widows were not treated
any differently from other brides within the villages.
17
For example, consider the following rural–urban gaps. With respect to about 65 per cent of villages
and 46 per cent of rural population, the annual net income per capita was less than 21 per cent of urban
disposable income. For about 31 per cent of rural families, their annual income was less than the national
average (National Survey Research Center at Renmin University of China 2009).
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in the marriage market. Multidimensional factors contribute to the chronic poverty
of the villages and the involuntary bachelors themselves. Topographic features make
land and water resources there extremely scarce, causing challenges in developing commercial farming. With subsistence depending on a fragile ecosystem, the only viable
resource is cheap and less-educated labour. Poor transportation and an adverse living
environment ensure that these villages are isolated from resource inflows (capital and
technology) and are generally beyond the effective reach of government anti-poverty
programmes. Geographic isolation and exclusion contribute to the persistence of
poverty, which in turn translates directly into diminished prospects for the marriage
of impoverished men.
Income inequality and poverty are themselves unequally distributed throughout
the country and across social categories. As can be expected, men disadvantaged in the
marriage market are in the lowest class. For involuntary bachelors who belong to groups
of the poorest residents in poverty-stricken villages, poverty is not only a village-level
but also a family-level phenomenon. Though most involuntary bachelors are able to
work, they come from impoverished families with several members who suffer either
physical disabilities or chronic diseases. Because of the need to care for their elderly or
disabled family members, involuntary bachelors cannot take opportunities to migrate
for higher incomes. Involuntary bachelors also come from poor families with multiple
sons that cannot finance marriage for all sons. The family factors, such as high dependency ratio, low labour-earning capacity and a shortage of off-farm sources of livelihood,
are among the factors that keep involuntary bachelors in a serious predicament, both
in their search for marriage and in their very survival.
Traditional conventions regarding gender roles in marriage and in family remain very
much alive in these poor villages. Villagers are accustomed to the practice deriving from
the patrilineal family institution that upon marriage a woman should fully belong to
her husband’s family (virilocal marriage). They believe that the groom should pay the
most for the marriage. Any marriage organised outside such a financial arrangement
is regarded as ‘deviant’ or ‘inferior’. In considering marrying, women expect that the
economic situation of the groom’s family should be better than their own. Population
registration data in these villages do not show a serious imbalance in male–female
demographics.18 However, many women have married outside their villages when
facing the prospect of not finding local qualified grooms. Involuntary bachelorhood
occurs as not only an outgrowth of poverty at multiple levels (individual, family
and village) but also as a result of the propagation of trans-local female hypergamy,
the marriage pattern responding to the reality of men’s superiority to women under
patriarchy. When hypergamy represents one of the few mechanisms by which lowstatus women can achieve social mobility, these poorest villages experience a net loss
of marriageable women, and men face a socio-economically as well as geographically
structured marriage squeeze.
18
The ratios of male to female ranged between 103/100 and 108/100 in the past 20 years.
China Report 51, 1 (2015): 1–22
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Our findings help enrich previous accounts of causal factors underlying involuntary
bachelorhood. Unlike studies which pay most attention to the significance of a sex
ratio favouring males that generates the shortage of brides, this study addresses the
need to incorporate issues of spouse selection and marriage patterns alongside demographic explanations of the male marriage squeeze.19 Without denying the plausible
constraints imposed by the growing gender disequilibrium on the future of marriage
in China, we postulate that those in the most disadvantaged position of the socioeconomic hierarchy fail to marry largely in the context of a specific marriage system.
Involuntary bachelorhood is shaped not so much by a quantitative shortage of marriageable women as by the males’ qualifications as husbands, and by the tendencies
towards female hypergamy in the context of women’s subordination to men. Seen in
this light, involuntary bachelorhood is better understood through gendered, institutional constraints on marriage. These constraints cannot be easily overcome through
the state’s current efforts to alter demographic imbalance.20
C
Marriage Strategies, Motivations and Subsequent Outcomes
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Our case studies suggest that for men in disadvantaged positions in the marriage
market, marriage is both a necessity and a predicament. Impoverished bachelors do
not prepare for lifelong bachelorhood. Their search for potential wives may go on for
years and extend for thousands of kilometres. Given the dismal marriage market for
them, involuntary bachelors also adopt several alternatives to conventional virilocal
marriage, enhancing their chances of de facto, if not officially recognised, marriage.
Those with small savings buy women to serve as wives that are not legally recognised. Uxorilocal marriage, in which after marriage a husband resides with his wife’s
parents who have no sons, is another option. Those who cannot make enough from
barren farmland to buy a wife also wed women who otherwise have little chance of
marrying (such as those with physical or mental disabilities), or enter into forms of
marriage bearing socially negative meaning (such as marriage with members from the
same clan-family or levirate marriage). These defiant alternatives can be taken as an
indication that involuntary bachelors attempt to expand the definition of marriageable women by moving away from the cultural straitjacket that privileges patriarchal
marital forms.21 Such alternatives, which provide impoverished men with wives, are
19
Available data show that, from 1953 to 2010, the proportion of bachelors in the population was quite
stable (at around 4–5 per cent), regardless of a tendency of increase in the level of sex ratio at birth (from 105
boys per 100 girls to 118) in the corresponding period (Lu and Zhai 2009; Peng 2011; UNFPA 2007).
20
In recent years, the Chinese government has intensified its efforts against sex selection of offspring.
The measures include prohibition of illegal prenatal sex determination, sex-selective abortion and female
infanticide. The government has also launched several initiatives to raise the status of daughters, such as a
nationwide ‘girl care’ project.
21
See McGough (1981) for more marital forms that deviate from the conventional standards for
marriage.
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tolerable in local societies, because the ‘defiant’ marriages of marginalised individuals
can hardly generate any impact on the existing marriage norms, which are normally
sustained by a long-lasting male-dominated system.
The alternative marital forms (shown in Figure 2) undertaken by involuntary
bachelors break sharply with the tradition of virilocal marriage, but serve as a costminimising way to alter marriage chances in a marriage market that is highly unfavourable for poor men. Impoverished bachelors usually cannot enter into virilocal
marriages, although they are the most common form of marriage in rural China by
far. Virilocal marriage involves different arrangements concerning the responsibility for
ritualised marital expenses, and requires the groom’s family to pay for the majority of
these expenses. This arrangement is perceived as compensation to a bride’s family for
rearing the daughter (Zhang and Chan 1999). In the villages we visited, by custom,
the major items of conspicuous expenditure for a given virilocal marriage include a
furnished matrimonial house, betrothal money, trousseau, wedding ceremony and
payment for marriage-related ritual obligations (referring to the money and goods
given by the newly-wed couple to the bride’s parents shortly after the marriage).22 For
the poor, the costs of those mandatory items can be converted into a large lump sum,
which amounts to many years of their family income and in many cases plunges them
deep into debt. Alternative forms of marriage cut down on the number of expenditures
incurred in a marriage, and therefore reduce the customary marital expenses substantially. In the case of uxorilocal marriage, the bride’s family is usually responsible for
most of the marriage expenses. In the case of ‘bride purchase’, the groom makes a
one-time payment only, and commits to no financial relationship with the bride’s natal
family afterwards, making the post-marital ritualised exchange of cash or trousseau
to the bride’s family unnecessary. In the case of levirate marriage, the groom’s family
‘recycles’ a woman who has married into the groom’s family, avoiding any loss of the
groom’s household wealth. Usually re-married women gain nothing from re-marriage.
For impoverished men, these ‘irrational’ marriage options minimise marital costs,
which are traded for the low prestige of these ‘deviant’ marriage forms. These forms
of ‘irrational’ marriage, usually considered as a marginal practice, are actually the most
accepted form of marriage for the rural poor.
Unusual marriages shed light on the motivations behind marriage. Contrary to
what the social convention assumes, our cases show that the continuation of the
patrilineage is more a perceived cause than a real motivation to form a conjugal unit.
Traditionally, marriage has been cast as a basic bulwark for a patrilineal society that
values the importance of offspring for both family survival and prosperity, and stresses
the necessity of having at least one son. Chinese Confucian ethics condemns life without
sons, stating that ‘being sonless is the most unfilial behavior in one’s life’. Marriage, as
the only socially acceptable route to reproduction, is expected to play a decisive role in
22
Bride prices are rising quickly in China, reflecting an obsession with materialism during a period
when Chinese society has been increasingly commercialised (China Daily 2013).
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the perpetuation of the patrilineage.23 While marriage supposedly links to biological
reproduction of the patrilineage and the possibility of continuing the family line, the
marriages of our informants do not secure male heirs. They either marry uxorilocally
in which case the man’s family name is not always transferred to his male offspring,
or marry with women who cannot bear children that would perpetuate the male line.
Even though involuntary bachelors may have wished to have their own sons, they
have to give up the possibility of doing so in order to secure an offer of marriage. The
overwhelming concern of our informants regarding the marital choices is to obtain a
spouse at an affordable cost, rather than to reproduce their patriline.
A high level of social disapproval for bachelorhood seems to be a primary reason
for the marriage imperative in poor rural communities. Involuntary bachelorhood can
be a profound source of pain for many adult men and their families. Those who have
failed in accomplishing marriage are looked down upon in the villages. Narratives
from our informants show that involuntary bachelors are not regarded as socially ‘full’
persons and are often stigmatised as social outcasts. They experience problems ranging
from feelings of shame to lack of social recognition. In fact, the social discrimination
that involuntary bachelors suffer and the motivation to escape the bachelorhood are
intricately interwoven. At the family level, the single status of the adult sons causes
the parents tremendous psychological stress and deep remorse. To avoid the possibility of unfavourable social pressure, parents tend to identify their sons’ marriage as
one of their most fundamental duties. Parents give top priority to their sons’ need to
be married, and try their best to satisfy it. This, in turn, may reduce the emotional
burden on the family.
Life after marriage differs depending on the different types of marriage. Of the
various marital forms, uxorilocal marriages with previously unmarried women often
result in slightly better socio-economic outcomes (Figure 2(b)). In these cases the brides’
families usually have better economic standing and more material resources that can be
channelled into the marital relationship. By contrast, other marital forms (including
uxorilocal marriage with previously married women, as shown in Figure 2(c), are often
associated with desperation. In these cases, the equally poor bride’s family provides the
groom with neither economic means nor opportunity to improve his socio-economic
marginality. ‘Bride purchase marriages’, a kind of coerced marriage, are relatively cheap
but fragile. Those who buy women to serve as wives often suffer marriage fraud, and
are at greater risk of marital disruption than those who pursue other marital choices.
Marital disruption can cripple the families that use up their resources to buy a wife. The
only generalisations that can be made about the various strategies of marriage adopted
by involuntary bachelors is that socio-economic outcomes of marital relations seem
to be complex and unpredictable, rendering risks faced by those who might manage
to get a wife unclear. Simply getting married does not necessarily offset the long-term
deleterious effects of socio-economic marginalisation on marriage.
23
Jones and Gubhaju’s study (2009) indicates that, in China, marriage and parenthood are tightly linked
and sequenced. Few births are found outside marriage.
China Report 51, 1 (2015): 1–22
Involuntary Bachelorhood in Rural China
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CONCLUDING REMARKS
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The present study views involuntary bachelorhood as a manifestation of the gendered
features of the marriage system which discriminate against low-class men. This standpoint acknowledges the strength of cultural norms governing marriage and elucidates
the phenomenon of involuntary bachelorhood in to the light of the combined
effects of spouse selection and marriage practices. It conceives marriage exclusion
among those who share a derogatory Chinese term—‘bare sticks’ (referring to men
who do not have families of their own)—with an etiology of gendered roles upon
marriage. In other societies, nuptial choices and resulting outcomes are intimately
connected to class-based inequalities within constricting social structures, such as
caste hierarchy in South Asia and class structures in Europe (Duby 1978; Hughes
1978; östör et al. 1982; Parry 1979). In the Chinese case, a marriage squeeze against
‘surplus’ men who are unwanted in the marriage market is socially embedded. It is
underpinned by a gendered role structure within marriage relationships and in the
family. ‘Abnormal’ marital choices made by this population, who have much less
control over spouse selection, are in fact ‘rational’ strategies which compensate for
their vulnerability on the marriage market. For the majority of involuntary bachelors,
marriage and life after marriage can be a painful and marginalising process.
Socio-economic repercussions of involuntary bachelorhood at the national level
are far from clear. Nonetheless, the subject merits some attention. In addition to the
plights of individuals, scholars are concerned with social suffering on a broader scale.
Even though the current demographic imbalance will produce no salient effect on the
Chinese marriage market until 10 or 20 years later,24 some speculate that the prevalence
and persistence of involuntary bachelorhood may constitute a ‘social time-bomb’ that
endangers public security and social stability (Edlund et al. 2009; Hudson and Den
Boer 2002, 2004; Yang et al. 2009). Other substantive implications are also possible
but may not be straightforward.25 What we can be sure of is that involuntary bachelors
have to bear the brunt of suffering resulting from their failure on the marriage market.
We can also anticipate that the nuptiality plight of this segment of the population suggests that they will have to face great uncertainties in planning their life course events
(such as family formation, fatherhood and conjugal relationship). Their responses to
24
The statistical significance of involuntary bachelorhood remains to be established. Attané (2006)
estimates that the sex ratio among people aged 15–49 will reach around 117–120 men per 100 women in
2050. Tucker and Hook (2013) project that the number of single men (aged 25–39) will reach a peak at
almost 30 million in 2030.
25
For example, Wang and Mason’s (2005) study argue that the economic benefits of a surplus of adult
single men may include fewer dependents and more time spent on working. Tucker et al. (2005) speculate
that the population of involuntary bachelors could serve as a new transmission path of HIV/AIDS from
high-risk to low-risk populations. Attané et al. (2013) write on the illegal sexual behaviour of involuntary
bachelors. Lee and Wang’s study (1999) points out that, in many regions of China, up to as many as 16 per
cent of all 40-year-old men had not married. For this reason, one may argue that the future surplus of
marriageable young men may not be a serious problem in historical terms.
China Report 51, 1 (2015): 1–22
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the consequences of marital constraints and how the strategies subsequently affect
broader social changes will be important topics from a policy standpoint.
China’s patriarchal culture values males and devalues females in many respects.
Nonetheless, as we have seen, involuntary bachelors do not invariably benefit from a setting of men’s superiority to women in terms of marriage. Many of them remain unmarried
or have to marry in unconventional ways. In the policy arena, rural involuntary bachelors
are often excluded from disadvantaged social categories entitled to state support. In past
decades the Chinese government has launched a large collection of policies devoted to
alleviating the problems of gender inequality and female subordination. Programs are
offered that treat females as victims of patriarchal culture who are in need of more state
protection and care. While the Chinese patriarchal system is being officially undermined,
so far few government measures and resources are geared to helping involuntary bachelors
resolve their marriage problems that may originate from several gendered features of the
Chinese system of marriage. If the presence of large numbers of involuntary bachelors
can threaten the national socio-political order in many ways, how to manage their marriage dilemma will be a matter of concern for China’s development.
M
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