Rural youths face marital difficulties

Rural youths face marital difficulties
www.chinanews.cn 2007-08-06 16:11:32







Chinanews, Taiyuan, August 6 – Nowadays, more and more rural youths in China have chosen to work in cities as migrant workers. Life in the cities has brought a great shock to the traditional view on marriage. Besides, the problem of husbands and wives living apart in two different places has also caused many troubles. Thus many of them have started to think about their marriage over again.

Take a small city in north China as an example, where 50% of divorce cases involve rural couples (most of them being migrant workers), averaging 2,500 every year.

Most migrant workers return to their hometowns only on the Spring-Festival holidays, and that is the only time for them to think about love affairs: dating and marriage. Many of them get married in a rush, and then leave their spouses to work in the cities. The next time they can see each other is probably the next Spring Festival.

Many young girls in rural areas are no longer content with the life there. Instead, they wish to start careers of their own in cities. In fact, quite a large number of them got married with men from cities.

With great gender imbalance in rural areas, young men there find it even more difficult to find wives. Local governments should take immediate action to solve the marriage problem in rural areas, before it starts to affect social stability.