Split And Succession A Study On The Sustaining Mechanism Of Rural Families

"Bachelor" cannot be regarded as a family by the villagers in South China;"bachelor" can make up a complete community-based family in Midwest China; but villagers in Southern China only think the "pure girl family" as a meaningless family. Why does there exist such great a gap on the cognition of the family among villagers in different regions? How does the concept of family come into being? What is the mechanism behind family continuance? What are the regional differences in the nature of the family and its cultural connotations? How can these regional differences be explained? This article starts with family split and replacement. In this article, family continuance is the research subject, typological comparison of regions the research method,"three elements" of the family the analytical framework of theories and the nature of the family the research goal, all for establishing an integrated explanative framework to understand the family continuance in China. More specifically speaking, this article is aimed to investigate how the child family gets away from the maternal family and what kind of community-based processes it goes through before inhering and developing the traits of the maternal family and becoming finally consistent with the requirements of "local knowledge".This article is divided into four sections. The first section, the analytical framework of theories, abstracts "three elements" of the family from the complex family life, i.e. three aspects of the family, in order to facilitate the understanding of family continuance mechanism. Abstractly speaking, an intact family should have relatively complete property rights, bear reasonable ethnical responsibilities and become a relatively independent community-based family. Family continuance is in fact a dynamic process of generating property rights, practicing ethnical responsibilities and acting out a community-based family when a child family splits from the maternal family. The second section analyzes the family continuance mechanism of rural families in the North China Plain from the perspective of "three elements" of the family. On the North China Plain, patriarchal rights are not strong enough because of a lack of patrimony support and therefore married sons’intense requirement is let alone that they want to have independent property rights from the maternal family, which can further result in property contention among brothers and property rights conflicts between the maternal family and the child family. Meanwhile under the competition of "Men Zi"(a small group of relatives within five generations), parents live for finishing the task of children’s marriages, which makes all family resources flow toward next generation and consequently leads to the serious imbalance of intergenerational ethnical responsibilities. Once the filial generation acquires the "family individuality", they will take place of the maternal family to interact with the community. Therefore, the community-based identity of the maternal and child families takes on a relationship of replacement. The third section begins with the practical pattern of "three elements" of the family and then compares family replacement patterns to find out typological differences of regions. In Southern China, united villages have strict specifications of clan values, and hierarchical intergenerational relationships and power structures are characteristic of the families. Family continuance shows obviously patriarchal rights in traditional big families. Compared with a child family, the maternal family has an advantage on property rights, family resource allocation and community-based processes. The child family grows up under the protection of the maternal family. Just as an old saying goes, when father is alive, son cannot be in power. Only after the father’s death or his initiative transference of family power, the child family can completely get property rights and qualification of participating in the community. In a word, the continuance of clan families in Southern China is kind of "successive pattern." As for the villages in North China, when families of the splitting type extend, the maternal family is divided and replaced by the child family, property controlled by the core family and the conflicts of property rights between the maternal family and the child family formed. In terms of ethnical responsibilities, marriages and independence of next generation worry parents most and imbalanced intergenerational ethnical responsibilities follow. Community interactions do not allow compatible identity existence of both the maternal family and the child family and so the former gradually disappears with the development of the latter. It can be said that family continuance in North China belongs to a "replacement pattern". In the process of family continuance in Midwest decentralized villages, the family is a place for life experience because of the immature nature of the family development. There is no apparent transference of the property. When next generation gets married, the property rights of the maternal and child family coexist. The family lacks transcendent demands of values when it comes to ethnical responsibilities. Parents are not worried about children’s marriages, which manifests a low degree of intergenerational responsibilities. After the children’s marriages, the two kinds of family still keep a high degree of freedom and become two community-based units without mutual interference. Thus family continuance in decentralized villages is a "coexistence pattern." The fourth section talks about another pattern of family continuance "separation without apparent forms". Although family continuance patterns typical of regional villages take the lead, the pattern of family continuance—"separation without apparent forms" gradually appears which is a transcendent regional and national convergent type because the number of children staying at home is rapidly decreasing under the economic background of working outside. Without specific forms of separation, the maternal family and the child family can evolve into two independent bodies from the perspectives of property rights and social relations.Based on the typological comparison of regional family continuance, this article arrives at three fundamental conclusions. Firstly, family nature has typological differences of regions:village families in Southern China are in essence "sacrificial" families aimed at lineage succession; in North China by their very nature they are "competitive" families whose goals of family continuance are to hand "family individuality" down to next generation that should continue to participate in fierce community competitions; nevertheless the essence of village families in Midwest China is "living" families, the family continuance of which is to satisfy individual living experience of worldly materials. Secondly, that three forces constructing the family—"separation, succession and integration"—are differently compounded contributes to different family continuance mechanisms. Thirdly, as one-child families are on increase, family continuance begins to develop from "only son succession" to "son and daughter succession" that is a transcendent regional and convergent pattern.