Re:Marriage Costs in China Are Out of Control
by thrower123 on Sunday September 30, 2018 @07:53PM
(#18109119)
It's been a considerable time since I was doing coursework on that period, but in broad strokes I recall it went something like this:
1.) Culturally, there was a broad understanding that males remain within their birth family lineages, whereas women leave and join their husband's family.
2.) Male children were expected to provide for their parents in old age, whereas (again if I recall correctly) it was customary to offer a dowry when female children were married.
3.) As a result wealth tended to transfer from female-heavy lineages to male-heavy lineages.
4.) When new land was available, or technology or new crops could make old land more productive, this effect was manageable, but increased pressure when population butted up against technical limits of agriculture, so that additional new arable land (wealth) could not be easily made available. Particularly when infrastructure and ecological failures strained or reduced the capacity of productive land. In that more zero-sum environment, male children were correspondingly more valuable, and there were upticks in female infanticide.
There's another dynamic in play with regards to the Chinese bureaucratic governmental system, which only men could take advantage of - in the archtypical system, entry into the bureacratic class was at least nominally meritocratic, and through grueling work and education, one could become eligible to take and pass the examinations to gain the bureaucratic degrees, which conferred massive benefits, which were again expected to accrue to not only the newly-minted official, but their family groups. So there are instances of family lineages and even entire villages pooling their resources behind a favored son, investing massively in classical education in hopes of hitting the lottery that way.
1.) Culturally, there was a broad understanding that males remain within their birth family lineages, whereas women leave and join their husband's family.
2.) Male children were expected to provide for their parents in old age, whereas (again if I recall correctly) it was customary to offer a dowry when female children were married.
3.) As a result wealth tended to transfer from female-heavy lineages to male-heavy lineages.
4.) When new land was available, or technology or new crops could make old land more productive, this effect was manageable, but increased pressure when population butted up against technical limits of agriculture, so that additional new arable land (wealth) could not be easily made available. Particularly when infrastructure and ecological failures strained or reduced the capacity of productive land. In that more zero-sum environment, male children were correspondingly more valuable, and there were upticks in female infanticide.
There's another dynamic in play with regards to the Chinese bureaucratic governmental system, which only men could take advantage of - in the archtypical system, entry into the bureacratic class was at least nominally meritocratic, and through grueling work and education, one could become eligible to take and pass the examinations to gain the bureaucratic degrees, which conferred massive benefits, which were again expected to accrue to not only the newly-minted official, but their family groups. So there are instances of family lineages and even entire villages pooling their resources behind a favored son, investing massively in classical education in hopes of hitting the lottery that way.