Emerging Dimensions of Marriage in Asia

Asia, comprising as it does 60% of the world’s population and a wide diversity of cultures, religions, political systems, and levels of social and economic development, also encompasses a vast diversity of family and marriage systems. It was therefore rather ambitious to hold a conference at the National University of Singapore in July 2020 entitled “Emerging Dimensions of Marriage in Asia”, with the objective of bringing scholars from multiple disciplines to update and broaden our understanding of the rapidly changing patterns and issues related to marriage in the different regions of Asia. Nevertheless, the effort was well justified because many aspects of marriage in Asia remain under-researched and in urgent need of further investigation.

Key papers delivered at this conference were selected for further revision and inclusion in the set of papers that make up this special issue. They cover a wide range of topics, but they all make an original contribution to our understanding of different aspects of marriage in the region. In many ways, this special issue can be seen as a follow-up to the special issue we edited in 2014 in this journal entitled Marriage in Asia (Yeung and Jones, 2014, Volume 35, Issue 12). In that issue, we gave readers a taste of the diversity of Asia, by including articles on countries from Turkey in the west to the Philippines in the east, two of Asia’s three largest countries—China and Indonesia—and a country in the South Asia—Sri Lanka. The articles examined the trends in marriage (mostly first marriage) and explored the possible factors contributing to these trends in different national circumstances. We explored why, although similar forces continue to shape changes in the institution of marriage, sharp differences in marriage patterns and systems persist throughout the region. These variations reflected profound differences in gender ideology, institutional arrangements, social relations, and different patterns of change in these aspects over time. We speculated that diversity in marriage patterns in different parts of Asia will continue in the future and called for further research to examine the extent of unmarried cohabitation in Asian countries and the extent to which marriage trends in Asia are being influenced by the “second demographic transition” (Jones and Yeung, 2014).

In this second special issue “Emerging Dimensions of Marriage in Asia,” we further explore issues related to the second demographic transition including cohabitation and divorce in the Philippines, China, Indonesia, and Taiwan and remarriage in Thailand. Two important issues in Asian countries are investigated—the trend of child marriages and the marriage behavior of males. An emerging type of marriage in Asia in the past decade is the increasing transnational marriages in many countries, but we know relatively little about how these marriages fare to date. Two papers in this issue explore how this type of marriage affects gender dynamics, family relations, and child-rearing practices. A key factor that shapes modern marriages in Asia is women’s education. Two papers address how the increase in women’s education continues to affect marriage formation patterns in very different developmental and cultural contexts—Japan and India. In recent years, technology has changed dating and mate-seeking behavior in many ways. We include an article that examines how digital matchmaking applications affect young people’s mate selection behavior.

In this brief introduction to the special issue, we will set the scene for readers who are less familiar with the region. Detailed discussions on the historical, cultural, and policy contexts for countries in different regions of Asia can be found in our previous work (Raymo et al., 2015; Yeung, Desai, & Jones, 2018). Trends in marriage in Asia are highly diverse but are influencing in very important ways the demographic viability of some countries, as well as challenging the traditional role of the family in many. How do marriage trends influence the demographic viability of countries? In East Asia, the entrenchment of delayed or non-marriage in Japan, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore is closely linked to their ultra-low fertility levels and emerging population declines which began in 2013 in Japan, 2019 in Singapore, and 2020 in the Republic of Korea and Taiwan.

Trends in marriage are challenging the traditional role of the family in many Asian countries. East Asia and South Asia are worlds apart, in several respects—the prevalence of premarital sexual relations, who chooses the marriage partner, age at marriage, the prevalence of cohabitation, consanguinity, and divorce. In some East Asian countries, the rising tide of delayed and non-marriage, in a context of continued popular opposition to childbearing outside marriage, is making it almost impossible to reverse fertility declines. Thus, governments are challenged either to find policies to counter imminent population contraction or to learn to live with diminishing and aging populations. In China, though marriage remains near-universal, a trend toward delayed marriage is clear among well-educated city dwellers; cohabitation and divorce are increasing; and the pace of change in all things associated with marriage appears to be accelerating. At the same time, emerging sharp gender imbalances in the key marriageable ages are placing in jeopardy the chance for many men, particularly less educated and rural men, to find brides. In other East Asian countries, too, men facing problems in finding marriage partners are searching for spouses from other countries.

In South Asian countries, child marriage (below age 18, according to United Nations definitions) remains common, though its incidence is declining. Parental choice of spouse remains the norm, divorce rates continue to be low, and for many women, an escape route from a violent or disharmonious marriage is very difficult to find. The way marriage customs and patterns are likely to be affected by the high rates of economic growth and rising proportions of young women proceeding to tertiary education in recent years in countries such as India and Bangladesh requires careful scrutiny.

Southeast Asian patterns of marriage are more diverse than those in other regions of Asia. Some Southeast Asian countries—notably Singapore, Thailand, and Myanmar—have patterns of delayed marriage among women—especially the highly educated—rivaling those of East Asia. But while the average age at marriage is rising almost universally, as it is throughout Asia, two Southeast Asian countries, Indonesia and Vietnam, have seen a reversal of this trend (as has Sri Lanka in South Asia). Quite high levels of child marriage continue to characterize Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Indonesia. Thailand shows elements of the issues facing both East and South Asian countries—rising levels of child marriage, at the same time as marriage delays are much in evidence, especially among the more highly educated.

The 13 papers selected for publication in this special issue can only address a small range of the issues related to marriage in Asia. Nevertheless, they cover a fascinating range of topics and analytical approaches. While this introduction will not undertake to summarize the contents of each paper, it is worth noting that some papers deal with issues on an Asia-wide or regional basis, including those dealing with men’s marriage trends (Jones & Gu, 2022) and correlates of early marriage (Torabi, 2022). Important trends are identified in each case. The paper on men’s marriage trends notes that between the 1970s and 2010s, there was an overall rise in marriage age for men across Asia and the slope of change was especially sharp in East Asia. Earlier and almost universal marriage continues to dominate men’s nuptiality in South Asian societies. The paper notes that many of the factors that explain the trends toward later and less marriage in East Asia and increasingly in Southeast Asia bear a close resemblance to the factors usually invoked to explain trends in male marriage in Western countries, though there are clearly some specific aspects of the East Asian situation that differ greatly from the Western model. The paper highlights the different marriage prospects facing the highly educated professional urbanite men in East and Southeast Asia and those facing the socioeconomically disadvantaged in these regions—the precariously employed less-educated men, often from rural backgrounds.

Regarding early marriage, Torabi (2022) notes that the majority of the world’s child brides live in Asia, especially South Asia. This paper examines the distribution of early marriages in Asia and assesses the extent to which the existing variation is related to demographic, economic, and gender-related factors. She shows the prevalence of early marriage (proportion of women married by age 18) varies widely among Asian countries with the highest being 59% in Bangladesh. The strongest single predictor of early marriage is the proportion of girls progressing to secondary school. Unfortunately, early marriage is strongly associated with poor health outcomes, for both women and their children.

Most papers, though, deal with a particular country, be it Cambodia, India, Indonesia, China, Philippines, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, or Thailand. The papers are organized by themes. Three papers focus on new trends in Southeast Asia—the rise in singlehood and cohabitation in the Philippines, marriage patterns in Cambodia, and stepfamilies in Thailand. In the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country, the proportion of women in unions has been declining, especially the proportion formally married, whereas the cohabitation rate is among the highest in Asia (Abalos, 2022). Cohabitation and non-marriage are found to be more common among couples with low education. These changes are shown to be accompanied by more liberal attitudes toward marriage and cohabitation in the Philippines. In Cambodia, following the major disruptions to the family during the Khmer Rouge regime, traditional patterns of marriage were largely restored, though in recent years, the transition to self-arranged marriages and toward less marital stability has speeded up somewhat (Heuveline & Nakphong, 2022). Pothisiri et al. (2022) show that remarriage is commonplace in Thailand with more than 1 in 5 of the married women in a remarriage. Women’s educational attainment, urban/rural residence, age at first marriage, and children from a previous marriage are significantly associated with the likelihood for women to remarry. They did not find remarriage has a positive effect on Thai women’s health and life satisfaction.

Mu (2022) found that in China, where a third of the 2010–2012 marriage cohort were involved in premarital cohabitation, cohabitation before marriage is related to a higher likelihood of divorce and lower marital satisfaction. The negative association between premarital cohabitation and marital quality is weakened by better education, higher income, and rural origin. Using data from a panel survey in Taiwan, Wang & Yang (2022) estimate that by the early 30s, about one-third of those born between 1985 and 1988 had cohabited. They show that women who were not employed, were living in a less developed area, and had ever had sex (especially at an earlier age) and those who were more open to premarital intimacy were associated with higher odds of cohabitation. The authors conclude that cohabitation in Taiwan is more in line with the POD (Pattern of Disadvantaged) perspective, where cohabitation is an adaptive strategy for people with relatively fewer economic resources.

Divorce has increased in Indonesia in the past 20 years. Drawing from in-depth interviews on Muslim divorces, Rinaldo et al. (2022) show class inequalities in divorce experience in Indonesia. Middle-class women who are better educated have become much less tolerant of men’s behaviors such as domestic violence, infidelity, and failure to provide financial support. Many emphasize their ability to support themselves through working and a desire to be free of a bad marriage at any cost.

Two papers address how female employment and education affect recent marriage trends in Japan and India. Tsuya (2022) shows how changing marriage and employment aspirations are related to educational attainment in Japan. She found that obtaining regular employment as a first job strongly enhances the likelihood of first marriage for both men and women although the marriage-enhancing effect is stronger for men than for women. The improvement in educational attainment is found to have caused a decline in first marriage among young Japanese women. In India, Vikram (2022) shows that college-educated women marry at later ages, enjoy greater autonomy in choosing their husbands, and have a more egalitarian relationship with their spouses. She found that college education among women appears to have a transformative effect on marriage in India even when there is not a concomitant increase in women’s labor force participation.

Two papers address the challenges faced by those involved in the rapidly increasing transnational marriages across Asia. In Singapore, transnational marriages between Singaporeans and non-Singaporeans (mostly Singaporean grooms with foreign brides originating from lower-income countries in Asia) have increased significantly to account for more than one-third of all marriages. Compared to local couples, cross-national couples are characterized by relatively lower SES and more disagreements about child-rearing, and a higher level of family conflicts (Yeung & Lu, 2022). In South Korea, Kim and Kim (2022) examine power relations between spouses and found that Korean husbands’ decision-making power on children’s education affects whether the foreign wife’s language will be taught to the children.

Technology is changing the nature and process of partner search in many countries. The final paper examines how young people in Shanghai use online dating mechanisms to find Mr/Miss Right. Shen and Qian (2022) show vast heterogeneity within online daters with different motivations and diverse dating platforms. The seemingly “modern” dating technologies are found to be used to fulfill the traditional function of matchmaking. As online dating tends to result in homogamous matching on socioeconomic status, race, and other characteristics, the authors suggest that online dating may reinforce social inequality in China’s marriage market.

The vast size and complexity of Asia mean that the papers in this collection can cover only a small selection of the emerging issues related to marriage in the region. While some of the trends and relationships discussed appear rather ubiquitous, others are clearly time and place-bound. The cultural, developmental, and policy contexts in Asia are distinct from those in the Western world. Examples touched upon in this special issue include the one-child policy in China, the low legal marriage at age in many Asian countries, the historical context of the war in Cambodia, the caste system and the culture of arranged marriage in India, and many more. While signs of the “second demographic transition” are observed in some countries, the prevalence of divorce and cohabitation remains relatively low compared to European countries and the United States. What the collection achieves, we believe, is to highlight the importance of understanding issues pertaining to marriage in Asia, to answer some questions that can indeed be answered, and to relate some of the issues and explanatory approaches toward marriage change in Asia to those widely observed in other parts of the world. We trust that readers will find much that is relevant to their interests in this collection of papers.