ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that Chinese young people have largely shed direct parental influence on their marriages in moving from marital contracts that are formed in the interest of family, economic and kinship interests, and instead employ free-choice, romantic interests. It describes the couple which illustrates the confluence of a number of conflicting trends that we have seen repeatedly in Chinese marriages: the lingering influence of the old cultural tradition and family patterns that supported parents’ rights to arrange and influence marriages. They also include: the rise of free-choice marriage and the painful imprint of childhood trauma and other issues of deprivation or loss. The influence of the parental generation is often represented often in the form of attacks on these marriages represent a betrayal of the parents’ right to the loyalty of their sons and their cultural right to determine and control their marriages.
