Household Structure and Marriage in Urban China: 1900-1982

Abstract

Most current China experts either advocate or accept the notion that the significant shift from a joint to a conjugal family structure occurred after the 1949 Communist takeover. Using a representative sample of 5,057 ever-married women in China’s five cities, I found that the conjugal relationship developed to a significant degree in urban China at least since the 1930s. The 1949 Communist takeover is not a watershed year for the changeover from traditional marriages and joint families to modem volitional marriages and nuclear families in urban China. The pre-1949 Chinese family revolution may be viewed as a case of a worldwide evolutionary process of family modernization.

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