Parental involvement and spousal choices in Shanghai

• In Event: Marriage Strategies in East Asia

Abstract

In the long history of China, parents directly intervened in children’s family formation – made decisions for their children of when to marry and whom to marry. While this direct parental intervention on marriage formation is on the wane, parents have still involved to various degrees in the partner selection process of their children. Yet so far few studies have empirically examined the parental influence on partner selection. In this study, I argue that parental involvement is positively associated with the “exchange” model of marriage, often in the form of status exchange and female hypergamy. To examine this hypothesis, I used FYRST survey, a recent data collected on young adults who were born in the 1980s in Shanghai. The couples are matched on three dimensions: age, household registration status, and educational attainment. Specifically, the analysis will examine: (1) whether couples that were introduced by parents are more likely than couples met by themselves to form status-exchange marriages; (2) whether the status exchange is often in the form of female hypergamy; and (3) whether this relationship between parental involvement and spousal choices differ by couples’ educational attainment.

Author

• Felicia Tian, Fudan University