The Research On The Transformation Of The Society And The Changing Of Values On Family And Marriage

With the transformation of the economic system and the deepening of the political reform, great changes have taken place both in whole society and in Chinese values, which are bound to influence the Chinese marriages and families so deeply as to cause some great change. According to the writer, any change in the field of marriage and family must deriver from the changes of people's values about them. Therefore, this essay is mainly focused on the changes of people's attitudes towards choosing the marriage partner, reproduction, sex and divorce and some social phenomena such as celibacy and unmarried cohabiting .Through this discussion, the author tries to analyze the sources and characteristics of the changing values towards marriage and family and make a prediction about the tendency of them.I. The Theoretical Structure of The Research about Family and Marriage The starting point of this essay is to fix on the theoretical structure of the research on family and marriage within a new framework on the basis of classifying previous studies. There are some modern family theories in western academic circle: The Structural and Functional Theory by Parkinson; the opinions of feminism and so on. Meanwhile, the author of this essay classifies the studies of Chinese scholars on family and marriage into three categories: 1. Stressing the importance of keeping marriages alive with special rules and bearing the duty to raise children.2.Emphasizing the individual feelings in marriage and the implement of various choices in marriage and family.3.Doing some research about family and marriage on the basis of traditional Culture .The writer believes that people's attitudes towards family and marriage have been greatly changed as well as their general values with the transformation of the social background in this transitional period. Therefore, the writer gives five pieces of the assumption: 1. In family life, people are more conscious of their respective position and they consider it important for the individuals to search for one's full freedom.2.The status of loves as the foundation of marriage is reinforced.3.Money becomes increasingly important for marriage and family lifeApelple'value on sex is no longer conservative and they are more tolerant with some extra-marital affairs in family life.5.Democracy and Equality are advocated in family relationship.II. Changes of values on family and marriage in the transitional period. These changes can be learned from the social phenomena such as values on choosing a marriage partner, bearing a baby, sex, divorce, the relationship between a couple, celibacy and unmarried cohabiting, etc. When one selects a marriage partner, the range is expanded from relation and region to working connection. For example, one can choose the partner in his own way and he or she will pay more attention to the partner's background. When it comes to bearing a baby, people's value is changing from tradition to modernity because more and more people tend to few birth, prepotency and late birth. As for the value on sex, sexual behavior within marriage is for the sweet of life and love rather than only bearing a baby and people are more tolerant towards extra-marital affairs. When people talks about divorce they no longer think it is disgraceful. Furthermore, people's opinion on divorce is becoming more and more tolerant, and the divorce rate is rising every year, while the causes for divorce is shifted from contradictions in daily life to emotional reasons, from economic reasons to partners' characters. At the same time, the traditional family relationship as "man manages the outside affairs and woman does housework" has been changed and the concept of democracy and equality is entering the field of family life. The mew social phenomena of celibacy, having lover and cohabiting just show that people have more freedom in the choice of marital behavior and social pressures on marriage is lessened. Meanwhile, it also shows that the values on marriage are becoming various. III. The sources of the chang...