A Study On The New Uxorilocal Marriage Of Suburban Village In The Context Of Urbanization

The marriage system is an essential social system. The changing process of marriage system is not only the performance of the social development, but also it will influence the change of society. Thus it becomes one of the important research topics of sociology. Uxorilocal Marriage, as a form of marriage has a long history in China.There are many descriptions of uxorilocal marriage in books and TV-shows which focus on ancient or modern life in China. But compared with the patrilocal marriage, the uxorilocal marriage is rare in traditional society.In recent years, however, the uxorilocal marriage became a popular form of marriage in some rural areas especially in some suburban villages. Scholars analyzed this phenomenon from different angles, but majorities of research focus on statistical analyzing, lacking for the analysis of the causes of the sudden popularity of uxorilocal marriage. The existing researches fail to answer this core question.This study focuses on this core issue. This study, under the perspective of urbanization, analyzes the uxorilocal marriage in a village and explores the various factors which promoting uxorilocal marriage with the method of case study. This study found that the uxorilocal marriage has its particularity. The uxorilocal marriage is closely connected with the process and policy of urbanization. Popular uxorilocal marriage differs from traditional uxorilocal marriage in many ways, such as the goal of marriage, mating methods and the marriage rules. The purpose of uxorilocal marriage is to protect the interests and increase wealth. The way of choosing a spouse is more biased pn free love. Females pay more attention to the mutual satisfaction and the ability of the son-in-laws. However, there is no need to change son-in-law’s first name. Mostly, the children follow female’s surname, but a phenomenon of’second son back to the ancestor’has appeared. Last not the least, son-in-laws have right of inheritance and family power, and uxorilocal marriage couples need to support both of their parents.This uxorilocal marriage is close to modern marriage. It could be called as a new type of uxorilocal marriage. This Study found that the primary cause of uxorilocal marriage is the special policies in the process of urbanization. Because these policies adjust the interest distribution according to the traditional marriage relationship, the villagers had to practice uxorilocal marriage to protect their propriety and interest. These actions cause the increasing number of uxorilocal marriage. And strict family planning policy, the rules of the marriage and the transformation of marriage concept and the high economic level of suburban village, provide the basis of uxorilocal marriage.The special policy is the root cause of the uxorilocal marriage, it can be said that this marriage is a kind of policy uxorilocal marriage. Village demolition triggered a series of response and social consequences, including the change of marriage forms.