The space of marriage: Power, bargaining, and conflicts in urban Chinese households

The current dominant frameworks for research on marital relationships include the resource perspective and the gender perspective as well as their variants. These frameworks have ignored the influence of the immediate external context on marital interaction. In so doing, they disconnect themselves from the historical trend in which the family disintegrates itself from surrounding institutions. Present changes in and around Chinese households generate new interaction patterns between husbands and wives. This study sets out to understand the processes of marital relationships through the socio-ecological perspective by analyzing marital bargaining and conflicts in urban Chinese households. Specifically, I define the immediate socio-ecological environment of marital relationships to include three elements: the household structure, the community ties, and the kinship networks. Urban Chinese women usually enjoy high autonomy in personal spending and high authority over household expenditure. However, their power over family expenditure also reflects their heavy duty in doing housework. Chinese men help in some areas but mainly in the form of sharing housework with their wives instead of doing it solely on their own. Marital disputes are not uncommon in urban Chinese households, and they decrease marital satisfaction. Some marital disputes escalate into physical abuse. Spousal hitting in urban China is pervasive, with wives being more likely to be hit than their husbands. I argue that all these processes are influenced by the afore defined socio-ecological forces. The presence of other adults in the household limits the interaction space of the married couple and reduces their opportunities for potential marital disputes and spousal hitting. It also lowers the married couple's housework load. Sharing facilities with other households increases husbands' housework load. Living in a work unit quarter reduces chances of marital disputes and spousal hitting. Support from kinship networks often escalates marital conflicts and incurs even more spousal hitting. Marital relationship, a process in private sphere, cannot be effectively studied if its socio-ecological environment is ignored. Evidence comes from analyses of data from two sample surveys.