Research On The Phenomenon Of Rural Youth Early Marriage Under The Background Of Social Transformation

With the continuous development of China’s social transformation and acceleration of urbanization and industrialization, a significant social change has been taking place in rural areas of China. Village S is a common administrative village in northern Henan province which is with a tradition of early marriage. Increasingly open and modern rural social changes make early marriage induce many new features instead of disappearance. This thesis is aiming to separate early marriage from demographic consequences what previous studies are focusing on, take it as an independent social fact to describe the situation of marriage and childbearing, and discover the social cause and influence of youth early marriage in the village.This thesis includes four chapters besides the introduction and conclusion.In chapter two, the general picture of Village S and the phenomenon of early marriage in Henan Province were described. Firstly, the basic situation of the Village from the view of geography, traffic and history was described. And then the phenomenon of rural early marriage in Henan Province on the basic of sixth census data was analyzed.In chapter three, the current situation of marriage and childbearing in Village S was dissertated. The commentary was combined with local social traditions and characteristics, as well as the macro background of today’s social transformation. Four conclusions were drawn. First, widespread early marriage, many youths younger than the legal marriage age in Village S have established the fact marriage according to local customs. Second, the process of current local marriage is with both traditional and modern features. It is the intersection and melting of the tradition and modern. Three,"flash marriage" and premarital sex appears start to generally exist in the village. Four,"early, fewer and boy" is the general characteristic of childbearing in Village S.In chapter four, the cause of youth early marriage in Village S was analyzed. In this chapter, the social structure causes of widespread youth marriage in the village was deduce by using theories of Marriage Market, Mate Selection Gradient and so on. Farmers’ real living environment is the basic perspective. The fundamental life value of population reproduction and rural family pension institution are primary forces for parents to urge their children to marry early. The spread of the concept of modern marriage and love may be the reason to make the youth have to marry early because of unwed pregnant. And parents urge their children to marry early in order to avoid this kind of risk. At the same time,"the agent" makes the public opinion environment constructed for early marriage. The formation of national marriage market makes it much harder for males to find spouse. And they have to pay more and more for marriage. Finally, youth and their parents often choose to marry early to lower this kind of economic costs. The soft construction of Marriage Law and absence of governmental regulation have made youth early marriage a living space.In chapter five, the social influence of rural youth marriage was analyzed. The analysis was including three points of view as follows:the development of individual, family relations and pension functions, marital stability and offspring rearing. Early marriage would lead to many social influences such as restriction of the individual overall development, intergenerational relation imbalance, rural pension crisis, poor marriage stability, rural children left behind and so on.