Anxious Parents Decide to Take a Gamble: Chinese Parents’ Use of Online Matchmaking Platforms

• In Event: Family Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1: Adult Children and Their Parents

Abstract

Parental involvement in mate selection used to be a tradition in China and many parents still actively engage in their children’s mate selection process in contemporary China. Since the 2000s, they have organized matchmaking corners in public spheres to find potential partners for their children. While these on-site matchmaking corners continue to operate, the digital era has enabled parents to join online matchmaking platforms in recent years. The digitalization of matchmaking corners is an emerging trend, and this study is one of the first studies to investigate the operation and interactions on these platforms. By conducting in-depth interviews with 25 frequent parent users, this study finds that the predominant attitude when parents use digital platforms to arrange blind dates for their children is one of taking a gamble, especially when traditional offline matchmaking resources have been extensively utilized. Even though a significant number of parents harbor doubts about the reliability of online platforms, those who find themselves at an impasse feel compelled to take a leap of faith and try their luck in the digital realm. Although online matchmaking platforms provide parents with the convenience of temporal and spatial flexibility, behind the seemingly abundant resources lie issues such as misinformation and fraud, leading to a relatively low conversion rate from online interactions to offline meetings. As a result, the majority of parents often discontinue their efforts after a few months of engagement. The interviews further reveal that parental involvement in online matchmaking platforms reflects characteristics of neo-familism, emphasizing child-centeredness and intergenerational intimacy, prioritizing the autonomy and happiness of adult children while fostering collaborative and supportive parent-child relationships in modern Chinese families.

Author

• Yilin Wang, Hong Kong Univ of Science and Technology