A Case Study On Love And Marriage Values Of Single People Aged27-35in Shanghai

China is now seeing “the fourth single wave” and “the post-80s divorce wave”.As match-making programs are permeating through TV, apart from laughing away theentertaining effects, people begin to pay more attention to love and marriage values,which is part of our national value study. Shanghai is one of the major metropolises inChina both in economic development and population. Young people in Shanghai getmarried at an older age than any other cities. This thesis aims at exploring the loveand marriage values of single people aged27-35in Shanghai.This thesis summarizes and analyzes dozens of studies on “love and marriagevalues” and “being single” from CNKI3. Most of the research focuses on singlewomen, highly-educated people, at school university students, and post-80s people.Most of the research results show that, with the development of society, people’sattitude towards love and marriage has been changing. In respect to how to choose aspouse and set up a family, people have more personal ideas and criteria rather thanholding the same views like their parents do.In order to study the love and marriage values among the single people aged from27to35who are currently living in Shanghai, the author adopts Zhang Jinfu’s4questionnaire (2006) to do a social research consists of basic personal information;motivation, criteria, and channels for choosing a spouse; factors influencing love;attitudes towards love; attitudes towards family and marriage; views on theimportance of love, marriage, and family; and attitudes towards some socialphenomenon. Each item is given a certain score by the respondents.The result of the83effective questionnaires shows that this group of singlepeople is single mostly involuntarily for certain unspecified reasons that are notrevealed in this research. These single people are looking forward to and are willingto sacrifice for true love. They pursue happy marriages and harmonious families in the ways they suppose proper. And they do not regard bearing children as a necessityright after marriage.Both socially and ethically speaking, these single people hold reasonable andpositive attitudes towards love, marriage and family. But it waits for future research tounfold the reasons why they are still single.