Households across East Asia look very different from previous generations. Explore our interactive report to see how through the lens of family photos—and learn why governments are struggling to keep up
of Guangzhou was 30 years old when she broke up with her then-boyfriend in 2018. Though she felt social pressure to settle down and start a family, she did not want to put her career on hold. “In the background there's a lot of the past era’s family values,” she says, but “there were so many ideas I had that I hadn’t realised yet.”
Yet in much of East Asia, laws and social mores around marriage and family are lagging behind the new reality. Instead of working to revise and reform them, governments have responded mostly by offering financial incentives to marry and have children, in the hope of reviving the traditional family. The nuclear family is failing East Asia, which seeks to reverse a demographic decline.
Ever more young people across the region are marrying later or skipping marriage entirely. China registered 6.8m marriages in 2022, the lowest number since data became available in 1985, and roughly half the peak of 13.5m in 2013. South Korea saw 192,000 marriages the same year, the lowest number since 1970, when data there began being gathered. In Taiwan there were 125,000 new marriages, a 30% drop from the peak in 2000.
Growing up in Taoyuan, a city in Taiwan’s north-west, Tsou Chia-ching, whose father is Taiwanese and mother is from the Philippines, often saw television reporters discussing foreign brides’ potential to run away and the danger of giving them money or passports. They spoke as if the women were “objects, not humans”, says Ms Tsou, now 26. At school she did not talk about the Filipino side of her family. Neighbours and even some relatives bullied her mother.
But money is at best only part of the story. Institutional and cultural rigidity are also making it difficult for young people to form new families. Changes to patterns of marriage and childbearing in East Asia largely emerge from the tension between rapid social and economic change and the unchanging structure of marriage and family relations, argues James Raymo of Princeton University.
After she came out as a lesbian in 2020, Ms Lee decided to start a family of a different kind. Gay marriage remains illegal in South Korea, so she created a company, Guerrilla, whose members live and work together. The enterprise consists of a school that teaches women language, writing and finances; a property business that rents out space for women; a talent-management company for female artists; and a women’s shelter.
United Kingdom Latest News, United Kingdom Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Energy prices might spike this winter - IEA bossGovernments may need to step in again and subsidise energy bills this winter says IEA boss.
Read more »
East Kilbride man missing for 9 days as family plead 'please phone home'Jamie Reid, 44, hasn't been seen since June 25 and now his family have joined police in appealing for information to help find him, he is described as 5ft 9ins tall, with grey hair and blue eyes.
Read more »
Award-winning author to host event in East RenfrewshireAN award-winning crime fiction author will be hosting an event in Newton Mearns to celebrate the release of his new book.
Read more »
Millions to receive £450 cost of living support payment within daysMany households across Scotland will receive additional financial support to help with the cost of living as prices of bills continue to rise.
Read more »