The issue of rural bachelors has once again caused heated discussion. 10 years ago, people noticed that the problems brought by rural bachelors were unstable factors, from women to violence; 10 years later, people finally realized that rural bachelors are also victims, but they absurdly opened the wrong door and blamed the wrong person under the concern of persistently low fertility rate. It is not a woman who warms the bed for marriageable men in rural areas, but rural revitalization.
According to the results of the seventh national census, there are 723.34 million men and 688.44 million women, with 34.9 million more men than women. After 2005, there are obviously more men than women in the newly married population, and the problem of marriage squeeze is prominent, making it difficult for low-income people to get married. On the one hand, the imbalance of population sex ratio is getting worse; on the other hand, rural young women's going to work in cities has further widened the rural sex ratio, making it difficult for the "Ding Nan" at the end of the marriage ladder to choose a spouse.
By analyzing the mainstream discourse of different economies and different times, this paper holds that the widening gap between urban and rural areas is the fundamental crux behind this problem.
Stills from "The Bachelor".
First, behind the gender of the rural population: the value of giving birth to a girl is not as good as giving birth to a man.
The important reason for the problem of rural bachelors is the uneven proportion of men and women born in rural areas. Young people aged 20-35 were born between 1986-200 1. According to the demographic data, 1982, the sex ratio of rural population in China is 107.7, that is, for every 100 women born, it corresponds to 107.7 men. 20 10, the figure reached 122. 1, far higher than the recognized normal ratio of 103- 107. According to the data of the previous four national censuses 1953- 1990, the sex ratio of China's total population has been controlled below 107. It is an acknowledged fact that the sex of rural population has increased significantly in the past thirty years.
Why is this happening? The direct reason is the family planning started in 1979. Before that, rural families could get boys through continuous childbirth, but after family planning, they could only control their sex by artificial means. From the data of the sex ratio of the population born at different growth stages, it can be seen that the sex of the second child and the third child has obviously increased. For example, 20 10, and the numbers are 130.3 and 158.4 respectively. The control of the total population has caused the gender imbalance in rural areas.
However, we should think further, why do rural families prefer boys to girls? Most people's understanding of this is the function of the traditional thought of preferring sons to daughters and carrying on the family line. The mainstream explanation also focuses on this aspect. The slogan "All born the same" can be seen everywhere in the countryside. However, there are deeper economic and conceptual reasons behind this.
In China, the status of rural women is not as good as that of men, and the economic benefits of women are not as good as that of men, which is an obvious fact. China is a paternalistic family economy based on small-scale peasant economy, and the ideal family is based on gender and intergenerational hierarchy, that is, men are superior to women, and the elderly are respected and the young are cared for. The era of collective economy experienced "women", including mobilizing women to participate in production, giving them equal rights, freedom of marriage, protecting and raising women, and so on, which greatly improved women's status. But the patriarchy itself has not been broken, which is reflected in the unequal division of labor system, unequal job opportunities, the gender division of housework, and the labor distribution has not taken into account the special rights and interests of women.
Generally speaking, the significance of advocating gender equality at that time was greater than the economic significance, that is, women had the same labor rights as men and the right to participate in public affairs to a certain extent. But objectively, women's all-round participation in labor has laid the foundation for women's economic independence and ideological independence. For rural women, they have become an indispensable labor force in agricultural production.
However, from the perspective of rural families, even at that time, the value of giving birth to girls was still not as good as that of giving birth to boys. When women undertake heavy farm work, men are often sent to work outside the village by cooperatives, and their income is much higher than that of women. For example, building a reservoir can earn more than 20 work points a day, while working as a manager in a neighboring town can earn the salary of a whole family. (Tasha 20 1 1)
In the era, the status of women has undergone new changes. Yan Hairong pointed out that in the context of1980s, "women" were considered to have lost their gender essence, and the mainstream discourse required women to return to the family and restore "feminization", and the relationship between women and housework was completely rationalized. The situation in rural areas is even worse. Due to the collectivization of agriculture and the implementation of the household contract responsibility system, men have restored the absolute dominant position of the family, while women have withdrawn from the public space and returned to the narrow family space.
At that time, people thought that under the household contract responsibility system, women could freely arrange housework and by-product work at home, instead of working in the fields even if they were weak, as in the past. In fact, a field survey conducted by scholar Kelkar 1983 in Wuxi shows that women are physically and mentally exhausted under the double burden of heavy housework and by-products or handicrafts. "Women have to get up at 4 am or earlier to engage in by-product production 10- 12 hours ... at the same time, they have to cook, wash clothes, take care of children and empty urinals ... men never share housework ... but the income from production and trade is in the hands of men ... women have no control and decision-making power over family and production."
In addition, the responsibility system itself also strengthens the authority of men. After the decline of the division of labor system, farmers insisted on the principle that the more they produce, the more they earn, but the gender inequality in the division of labor system (men earn 10 division of labor and women earn 8 division of labor) was retained. "A healthy woman can only contract 1.6 mu of land, while men can contract 2 mu of land." (Kelka 1983) Discrimination against women has been institutionalized. Conceptually, rural women's participation in public affairs has almost dropped to zero. In the past, women actively participated in meetings to raise rural women's awareness and fight for their rights and interests, but these meetings were interrupted under the new economy. "Women have no time to wait from morning till night." 1983 the all-China women's Federation admitted that the household contract responsibility system (implemented together with family planning) neglected women's work, and the concept of male chauvinism revived. (Kelka 1983) Under this background, it is obvious that rural families prefer boys. Regardless of status or economic benefits, men contribute more to the family than women.
In addition, under the condition that the rural security system is not perfect, "raising children to protect the elderly" is also the reason why rural families prefer sons to daughters. In the era of collective economy, with the development of agricultural cooperation, it is proposed that rural collectives should solve the problem of providing for the aged for poor farmers: "All cooperatives have the responsibility to help those members who are widowed, widowed and lack of labor (they should be recruited into the cooperative) and those members who have labor but have a very difficult life to solve their difficulties." 1956 promulgated the Model Charter of Advanced Agricultural Cooperatives, which established the "five guarantees" system, so that the old, weak and lonely members who lost their labor force and relied on them have no worries (Song Shiyun). It should be admitted that there were many shortcomings in the rural security and cooperative security system at that time. The protection provided by the collective economy is very limited when its own strength is poor, especially compared with the retirement and other insurance that urban residents can enjoy. However, farmers can at least enjoy collective security. After the disintegration of the collective system, farmers have to rely on family security again, and "raising children to prevent old age" has become a last resort for rural families.
In The Story of forest village, I learned that the collective system was going to be dissolved, and a teenage daughter went to see Ye. "She said that under the collective, she and her daughter can earn work points and maintain their lives. But what if the brigade is disbanded? There are no men in her family. If she has terraced fields, she can't cultivate land. How can she and her daughter live? " (Huang Shumin, 2002) Yan Hairong wrote in "New Countryside, Empty Subject" that the once production responsibility field changed from 1990 to "welfare field" to absorb the sick and disabled, but in fact, even if the rural labor force returned to the countryside, faced with abandoned farmland and imperfect social security system, there was no "welfare".
Second, the cost of marriage in rural areas has caught up with that in cities, and the double rise in prices has brought about a vicious circle.
There are too many men and too few women, which is the objective reason for the formation of the bachelor group. But we need to investigate further. Who are those bachelors who are nobody's business? Why can't they get married? Although the mainstream discourse is full of romantic expressions of marriage, it emphasizes love, fate and appearance. In rural areas of China, the economic base of men is still the primary condition for deciding marriage.
Most of the rural bachelor groups reported by the media are cases in poor mountainous areas. For example, in Paifang Village, Guizhou Province, reported by Southern Weekend in 2007, there were 282 bachelors, with males accounting for 1/5. The whole village is almost mountainous, with less than 2% of the land. In 2006, the per capita net income was only over 800 yuan. Most of the villages in Mizhi County, Yulin, Shaanxi Province, reported in the semi-monthly talk are key poverty alleviation villages. "A family can't earn two or three thousand yuan a year, but it takes at least two or three thousand yuan to find a wife, which many families can't afford."
On the one hand, although the absolute value of farmers' annual income has been greatly improved for decades, the growth rate of marriage expenses is faster. It is surprising to examine the ratio of marriage expenses to farmers' annual income for decades. Fei Xiaotong estimated the cost of Jiangcun's marriage in 1936 and needed 500 yuan. This figure is equivalent to a family's annual expenditure. By the early 1960s, Li Yinhe had visited two villages in China, one poor and the other rich. The per capita annual income in Nanshantou Village, Qin County, Shanxi Province is 332 yuan, and the cost of marriage is about 3,000 yuan. The per capita annual income of Nanyang Village in Yuyao, East Zhejiang is 2,000 yuan, and the cost of marriage is between1.5-20,000 yuan. Although the absolute amount varies greatly, the proportion is similar, which is the income of a farmer 10. In Sun Shumin's investigation of Zhao Village in Qin 'an, Gansu Province in early 2000, the average expenditure of wedding bride price in the late 1990s was about1968+0.990. As a mountainous village in a poverty-stricken county, the average annual income of villagers in Zhaocun at that time was only 700 yuan, and the wedding expenditure was equivalent to a villager's income for more than 20 years.
On the other hand, with the frequent population movement and the expansion of the marriage market, we can see that the poorer the area, the higher the proportion of marriage expenses in farmers' annual income. The newspaper in Haojiaping Village of Mizhi Village wrote: "Our village is close to the roadside, and the conditions are ok, but the conditions in places farther away from us are worse. Many of the daughters-in-law we marry here are from those places, where it is more difficult for men to marry their wives and the cost is higher. Marrying a wife is equal to buying a wife. "
There are two vicious cycles in the countryside. First of all, poverty leads to bachelor. In poorer areas, women are more willing to leave the village, resulting in fewer women in rural areas with high gender ratio. And once women go to richer areas, they will never look down on the men in the original village because they are so poor. On the other hand, it is precisely because of poverty that women are more eager to change their poor living conditions through marriage, thus further raising the cost of marriage. Secondly, being single leads to more poverty. Without family motivation and life goals, some bachelors will indulge in smoking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking. The reason why a bachelor can't find a wife is because he is "low in education", "thoughtful" and "predestined", and he typically puts the cart before the horse and blames the victim (Ryan 197 1).
The second vicious circle is that you can't afford to get married-single-you have to pay more money to get married. Fei Xiaotong once mentioned in jiang village economy that when the rural industry was in recession, the system of late marriage and "little daughter-in-law" came into being. However, when the child bride is caught and the man is unable to borrow money to repay the marriage money, marrying indefinitely will result in a large number of bachelors. Once a bachelor is over marriageable age, he will have to pay a higher price if he wants to get married. Moreover, many bachelors are not only facing the problem of old age, but also facing the problems of low education, no fixed occupation, physical defects, hobbies and remote hometown. At this time, they can only marry a daughter-in-law if they pay more money to compensate the "loss" suffered by the woman. This has become an unsolved problem for rural poor bachelors.
It should be noted that the increase in the cost of marriage is not confined to rural areas, nor is it isolated, but a phenomenon under the background of collectivization and comprehensive market economy. Through the analysis of Henan, Hunan and Guizhou villages, Liu found that economic factors played a prominent role in the formation of bachelors from the middle and late 1960s. Another scholar, Xu, came to a similar conclusion by analyzing the changes of mate selection standards in Shanghai and Harbin in the past 50 years, that is, economic orientation became more and more important after the 1960s.
In the era of collective economy, efforts should be made to eliminate the differences between urban and rural areas, between body and brain, and between workers and peasants. No matter under the rural division of labor system or the urban state-owned enterprise system, there is not much difference in personal income, so the material requirements for marriage are not high, and sometimes personal factors are more important. However, after collectivization, under the influence of personal interests and material thoughts in the market economy, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened, the material requirements for marriage have been rising, and there has even been a trend of "commercialization of marriage", which is the profound meaning behind the villagers' "taking a wife is equal to buying a wife". Yan Yunxiang found that1mid-1980s, the local bride price gradually changed from physical object to cash (called "dry discount" locally), and the requirements for bride price were more "upscale and modern". "This list even includes street furniture, which has just emerged in rural areas, such as sofas. Some requirements, such as four sets of high-end bedding, completely exceed the actual needs of newlyweds. "
On the other hand, with the rapid development of cities, the income level of rural areas can't keep up. With the migration of population and the expansion of intermarriage circle, the marriage expenses in developed areas even increase steadily, which is also a sudden increase for backward areas, and it is difficult for rural areas to catch up with cities. As long as there is a price difference in the middle, women may be further lost, which is a kind of "double price increase". What's more, it is common for working-class people to get married because they don't have a house or a car, let alone in rural areas. After investigating the countryside, Liu concluded: "In the southern countryside, people are increasingly inclined to ask men to buy commercial houses in towns, counties and even urban areas when they get married, while in the northern countryside, people strongly tend to build new houses in the village when men get married. As for the bride price, the north and the south are the same. "
Since 1980, the phenomenon of high consumption of marriage, that is, rural areas and county towns are on an equal footing, and county towns and towns are on an equal footing, buying houses in cities, imitating the standards of bride price in cities, has become more and more legal in rural areas. With the highly differentiated economic structure and the widening gap between urban and rural areas, the double squeeze of the geometric increase of marriage expenses and the serious imbalance of marriage is an important reason for the sudden increase of rural bachelors.
Third, will leaving under the difference between urban and rural areas bring a way out?
There are few rural women and poor rural men. Under the background that the floating population is still growing, the situation of rural bachelors may continue to deteriorate. The data shows that from 1982 to 2022, the floating population in China has increased from 6.6 million to 370 million. The migration of population leads to the expansion of intermarriage circle, especially under the marriage of "men are superior to women", women are more likely to find partners outside the traditional rural intermarriage circle (about 30%), and 80% of men's marriages are solved by the local traditional intermarriage circle, which makes rural men have fewer choices for marriage. (Liu 200 1) This confirms the gradient theory of the marriage market. Women want to change their destiny through marriage, so they are more inclined to find men with better conditions than themselves. Therefore, what is left in the marriage market is the "Ding Nan" at the bottom and the "Jia Nv" at the top. (Jiang, Sanchez-Baricat 20 12)
For women to go out to work on a large scale to seek marriage, the previous mainstream concept thought that this was an important aspect of their pursuit of self-worth and happiness in life, and it was the embodiment of women's courage to break through the narrow geographical constraints. But now there are a group of "big picture" men who ask women to stay in the countryside as "sex" to solve the problem of bachelor and even serve men.
In fact, in the previous analysis, we can already see that rural women have low status and low income; Compared with cities, rural areas are facing huge differences between urban and rural areas. They are what Yan Hairong described as "double cheap labor". Because of this, rural women began to flow to cities, "behind which are the monopoly of cities on modernity and the transformation of rural areas". However, this helpless choice based on gender gap and urban-rural gap is misinterpreted as "leisure hates work" and "money worship".
Economically, the rural economy has experienced the historical development process of collective production digestion, agricultural input decline, rural economic concession and urban development. In the era of collective economy, the development of industrialization is to narrow the differences between urban and rural areas and between workers and peasants. In the late 1970s, five small industries and agricultural machinery industries began to feed back agriculture. One-third of the grain purchased and sold by the state is used to help rural areas that lack food. From 1950 to 1980, the investment in agriculture always accounted for more than 10% of the total investment, once reaching 17.6% (Yan Hairong, 2005). Later, the "three major differences" disappeared from the mainstream discourse and were replaced by words such as "GDP", "modernization" and "globalization", accompanied by "economic transformation" (Yan2008). Cities have become the focus of new economic deployment; Attracting foreign investment has become the main factor of economic growth (Punand Chan 2012); Not only did rural investment drop sharply to 3.3% at the end of 1968+80' s, but it was also subject to the priority of urban development (city governing county) in the administrative system. In the past, the welfare and education security provided by the collective economy have all disappeared (Yan Hairong 2005); The transfer of urban heavy industry to light industry has led to an increase in the demand for migrant workers (Punand Chan 20 12). Under the great difference between urban and rural areas where the rural economy is depressed and the cities are prosperous, urban capitalists can further exploit them by offering meager wages and attracting a large number of farmers to the cities a little.
At the same time, the countryside has gradually become synonymous with "backwardness" and "ignorance" from the ideological highland and the subject of propaganda, while the city has the superior position of "modernity" and "civilization" (Yan Hairong, 2005). Mainstream discourse often uses "low quality" to describe migrant workers. Yan Hairong pointed out that the word "quality" was constructed by modern discourse and used to describe the migrant workers' lack of "cultural capital" such as education, etiquette and taste. When it becomes the label of migrant workers, it means that the binary opposition between urban and rural areas has been deeply rooted in people's hearts. The article talks about an engineering critic, political worker, who said that "they raise their children like pigs and dogs in rural areas" (Yan Hairong 20 10b), which is a vivid embodiment of this consciousness. Under the double standards of economy and concept, there is no way out in rural areas, and young rural laborers will leave their homes.
Since 1982, the scale of female floating population has been on the rise, reaching 48.3% in 2022. However, the sex ratio of floating population continued to decline after reaching the peak of11.9 in 2022. In the working age range of 15-45, the concentration of female floating population is high, that is, a higher proportion of rural women choose to work in cities. On the one hand, women are less likely to continue their studies after completing compulsory education than men, which can be seen from the fact that the average academic qualifications of floating women are mainly junior high schools (45.08%) and primary schools (24.36%) (Duan et al., 2009). On the other hand, this set of data once again verifies that the value of having a daughter mentioned above is not as good as having a man.
For rural unmarried women, although they are still at the bottom of the city, it is still possible to find a man with slightly better conditions than themselves to get married. For rural bachelors, they are at the end of the marriage gradient chain, and even if they go to the city, there is still no way out.
According to the relevant newspaper mentioned above, a young man from Paifang Village who worked in Shenzhen for four years went back to his hometown to prepare for a wife and children, because it was difficult to make a girlfriend outside. "'our conditions are too poor and too poor, and there are too few girls who want to come to Guizhou. Deceiving girls is not a good idea. When some girls heard that it was Guizhou, one of their reactions was:' Is it very poor there?' After returning to his hometown for three years, he didn't even have a chance to date, because there were almost no unmarried girls in the village. Even if you find a wife who goes out to work in the countryside in the city, you will face the situation that your wife runs away from home and lives apart from home.
Some remarks think that rural bachelors can expand their social circle, broaden their horizons and improve their chances of getting married after entering the city. In fact, many migrant workers have no time and energy to fall in love except for work and rest under the exploitation and strict control of capital after entering the city; They also have a narrow social circle. It is conceivable that a construction worker who goes to work during the day and sleeps in the dormitory at night can come into contact with men who are also on the first floor and may not be married. Migrant workers under transnational capital studied by Punand Chan 20 12 are regarded as machines that can't even guarantee their basic right to subsistence, let alone fall in love.
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Editor in Charge: Zhu Fan
Proofreading: Xu Yijia
The above is related to the better marriage age of 1999 rabbits, and it is about the sharing of marriage and family. I saw 1999 how old a bunny got married. I hope this will help everyone!