Chatting with the boss two days ago, I just came up with this topic and shared the results of our discussion with you:
Aside from those who do not marry, most people still have a strong desire to fall in love or get married. The reason why there are more and more singles is not because it is too difficult to find someone?
Okay, let’s talk about why it’s so hard to find someone now. I am born in the 90s and I am currently single. I believe many people are like me. After all, the post-90s are the main force in the current marriage and love market, and they have received too much attention.
In the age when our parents and even grandparents lived, arranged marriages were popular, and the words of matchmaking by parents were the mainstream. So many people get married first, then get to know each other, and then get to know each other. Typically, get married first and then cultivate relationships. And you will find that a particularly peculiar phenomenon among the parents' generation is that the divorce rate is surprisingly low.
It stands to reason that the two lives who don’t know each other are combined together, it is reasonable to have a high divorce rate, and it is unscientific to have a low divorce rate! But we ignore the essence, or the support behind it.
What is kingly way in the era when parents lived? Labor force! . . No need to think about it. So it was really poor at that time, people were prosperous, and patriarchal thinking was more serious, especially in rural areas. If anyone has a few hairy boys running naked and full of villages, Wang Auntie next door will watch more. After a few glances, I was eager to make a baby kiss for her girl.
The decisive factor behind this is labor. Whoever has more children means having more labor, and the direct benefit is that life will be better than others. So everyone can't help but join the fertility competition, especially in rural areas. It is normal for a family to have five, six or even seven or eight children.
Affected by the economic level of a particular era, the labor force is king, and the policy encourages childbirth. The reason why the rate of marriage is high is that the rate of singleness is low because it is difficult for a person to support himself in that era, and everyone lives in groups. At that time, everyone's thinking was relatively simple, and they paid more attention to material life.
But at that time, did many people really want to marry and fall in love? not necessarily. There is really no way, helpless choice, not to marry and form a family, and to share the possible sudden risks and changes in life, there is no way to live well, and sometimes even survival will be tested. It is already enough to eat. lucky.
Then you said that there was really no relationship between husband and wife at that time, and they couldn't make it through? Of course there are, and the number is estimated to be quite large. But why is the divorce rate so low? It is still forced by labor and life. After the divorce, he is single again, facing the pressure of survival alone, the price of divorce is too high.
Therefore, in the era when parents and even grandparents lived, it was not that people had no ideas or personality, and passively accepted the blind dates and marriages arranged by their parents; nor that people at that time had really good temperaments and never produced them. Over the thought of divorce, but can only choose to endure, endure the other party's bad temper and even domestic violence. Everything is for survival, aligning with labor and means of production.
Moreover, this choice is to a certain extent active rather than passive, because everyone is like this. Looking around, whether it is the Erdan at the head of the village, the Sanya at the neighbor’s house, or even the young men and women of the right age in the whole village with a radius of several hundred miles. Accepted the arrangement of the parents, got married and had children on a blind date, and was guaranteed not to divorce. Why are you an exception? After thinking about it, it’s better to be like them...
In this process, it is China's traditional culture, feudal ideas, and clan concepts that play an important role or maintain the operation of this system. Although these three were not unique products of that era, they continued to "glow and heat up" in that era, solidifying the marriage relationship that was simply formed by labor, and having a far-reaching impact.
What kind of result does this create? To put it simply, in the era of parents and even grandparents, if a person stays single for life without getting married, people around you will look at you as much as they appreciate an alien species. And very few people can do that, especially in the countryside. You are either killed by others' malicious eyes or drowned by the spit stars of the Seven Aunts and Eight Aunts.
You dare not get a divorce when you are married. Except for labor factors, the three mountains of traditional culture, feudal ideas, and clan concepts are enough for you! The city may be a little better. In remote rural areas dominated by the patriarchal system, you have to accept the strange look of everyone around you and even your relatives when you are divorced, and it is even more difficult to remarry, and remarriage still cannot change much.
Back to the present, why are there so many single young people? And showing an upward trend year by year?
Because I dare. . To put it bluntly, the times are different, and the level of economic development is also different. Now people have even regarded material life as a minimum indicator. why? Because you can fully support yourself by yourself, and you can live a very good life. Both men and women have this ability.
So there is no need to pair up, no need to wrong yourself and cater to the wishes of others. The pressure of survival that belonged to the parents and grandparents of that era and the influence of cultural concepts are minimal or even nonexistent in this era. Today, who would choose to marry someone who doesn’t understand in order to survive? How many people will marry someone they don’t like simply to meet family expectations?
The current single population is mainly post-90s. What are the characteristics of post-90s? Not to mention being bullied by social labels such as "Beat Generation", "Decadence", and "Non-Mainstream", but the post-90s generation is lucky to catch up with the Internet wave. Children in the city have good family conditions. They may have been exposed to computers when they were young, and ordinary rural children can also access mobile phones, although they are not smart phones.
Later, with the popularization of smart phones, major mobile phone manufacturers moved from first- and second-tier cities to the market sinking in third-tier, fourth-tier, fifth-tier, and seventh-tier cities, eating up the Internet dividends and facilitating people's lives. So the current situation is that one person + one smartphone can live a good life.
Therefore, "Is the game not fun or the drama not good, are you looking for someone?" popular on the Internet. I have to say that smart phones have changed people's lifestyles and increased the weight of singles against their surroundings. In the past, if you didn't get married, you would either cook by yourself or go out to eat. If you didn't know how to cook by yourself, you would do more. It would be weird to eat out alone. Now that there are all kinds of takeaways, how convenient is it for you?
The popularity of the Internet or smart phones cannot be said to have completely caused the increase in the number of singles, but at least it has also exacerbated this phenomenon. It has provided great convenience for the singles’ self-care, increased confidence, and enrichment. The amateur life and spiritual world of singles should not be too boring and boring.
People nowadays really pay more attention to enriching their inner world, pursuing spiritual enjoyment, such as reading and traveling, either with the soul on the road or the body on the road. Whether reading a book or looking at the world, I want to know more, experience more, know more, and increase the thickness and breadth of life. In this regard, I have to admit that people now have a good sense of investing in themselves, and the post-90s are of course no exception.
In addition to pursuing the spiritual world, one thing you have to admit is that people now pay more attention to their inner feelings than people at any time. Therefore, everything is contingent, Buddhist, and let it be. I will not force myself to contact the people I hate, let alone fall in love with or marry the people I don’t like, and everyone’s tolerance will be reduced to zero.
It is the norm to be together when happy, and to separate when not happy. Rather than making others happy and making themselves uncomfortable, single young people now prefer to please themselves and do not want to be wronged. Although singles face loneliness and urging marriage, it is better to maintain the so-called elegant singles than to resonate with people who are not on the same channel.
Without the pressure of survival, even women have the ability to live alone, without being attached to the male-dominated labor relationship tied to marriage. There is no worries about the future, and now single youths are completely free. No longer endure the bad temper of the other party, and no longer accommodate certain shortcomings in the other's character. An occasional little quarrel is enough to ruin the romantic relationship between two people.
Therefore, we can often see couples and husbands and wives get together because of quarrels, and because of trivial matters, they get into a breakup or divorce. The logic behind this is actually that no one wants to make concessions and accommodating anymore, and does not want to endure even one point of the other's shortcomings and mistakes, and the patience of the other party has dropped to a freezing point.
Think about it, is it true? Because everyone cares too much about their own inner feelings and feels that life and work are so stressful that it is not easy to deal with it alone, so there is no way to bear more negative energy in the mood and measurement. I really can't ask for more, because it is really stressful. Therefore, most of the time people who are single now feel that people around them, including their relatives, do not understand themselves and cannot empathize with them.
Taking myself as an example, I am currently responsible for the research and development of Alibaba Cloud's website building products. Although there are already two main products, "Sumei" and "Cloud Enterprise", in fact, those who are engaged in research and development are under tremendous pressure. So you said, how can there be time and mind to find a relationship? It's impossible...
When it comes to empathy, my boss and I agree that this is actually a very fake word. In other words, can people really empathize? Does it really exist to empathize with this? nonexistent. Lu Xun said long ago that human sorrows and joys are not interlinked. Therefore, you forcibly let two people who grew up in an environment including two people with different education levels feel the same, which is not realistic in itself.
Because they care too much about their inner feelings, young people’s outlook on life is to be with whomever they are happy with, otherwise they say goodbye. Of course, this phenomenon has undoubtedly intensified the growing trend of singles. To give a simple example, everyone cares too much about their own inner feelings, so they don't want to give people who don't know more patience and more time. During the blind date, the chat broke up before the two sentences were spoken, and then went home and blocked each other's WeChat account.
In addition to caring too much about inner feelings, single people now pay more attention to self-pursuit and self-worth realization. Pay attention to fulfilling yourself and enriching your life, focusing on yourself instead of your vague partner. It can be said that young people in this era spend more energy on themselves than young people in any era, and focus more on themselves rather than others. Of course, they are also a group of more "self".
Regarding the awakening of self-consciousness, in fact, there are many such examples around us. For example, in those years, we have heard the most talk-and-go trip. In addition to the present sorrow, life has poetry and distance, as well as stars and stars. The sea. In recent years, the female consciousness that has been rising constantly, there was a declaration of independence like "Give me love, I earn the bread". Later, there are various feminist searches in order to compete for the naming power of children.
Back to the current post-90s single population, why can these people get used to being single? Or where is the confidence of being single? When we think about this issue, we may have overlooked an important point. The post-90s (including some post-80s) are just in the period of my country’s population policy adjustment. From the previous liberalization of labor for labor, to fewer and better births. Late marriage and late childbearing, these slogans on the country’s population policies were everywhere on the walls in the countryside in the early years.
From encouraging childbirth to controlling the population, the post-90s generation almost coincided with the latter period. In response to the call of the national population policy, the families in the cities are basically only one-child families, and occasionally some people who dare to give birth secretly, they all lose their jobs and are punished. The rural areas are relatively better. Some have two or even three children, but families have begun to respond to the state’s call to have only one child. So in fact, only children account for a large proportion of the post-90s population.
What are the characteristics of the only child? Although I am not the only child, there are friends around me who are the only child. Through them, I began to understand the world of the only child. A family with only one child, although it is said that they will get more attention and love, the loneliness that they have to face since childhood is also true. If both parents have jobs, they are usually given to grandparents or grandparents, unlike those with a few children, where the eldest and the eldest take the second child, and the eldest child takes the third child...
The only child has his own independent space since he was a child, and has his own baby room during his infancy, and older parents will arrange a bedroom of their own. There may be a lot of fun toys in this bedroom, good-looking story books and comic books, and everything for learning and daily life. However, it lacks the company of brothers and sisters. Over time, you will get used to this kind of independent life.
When I grow up to the age of falling in love, I have to face the end of one person's single life, and accept to get along with another person, live, and live a life of two. I don't know if this is weird for the only child, if someone suddenly appears around him, or if he will get used to this change. But one thing I know is that they are actually accustomed to living the life of a person. Regardless of whether they choose to fall in love or get married, their ability to live independently has actually been cultivated long ago.
This kind of independence can also be regarded as an independent personality, which does not depend on anyone's ability. This is the reason why mainstream singles can get used to being single, or the confidence of being single. To put it bluntly, I have been single for more than 20 or even 30 years. Do I still care about being single for a few more years? Besides, getting married doesn't necessarily make you happy, right? You see that there are so many divorced people, and their loyalty to marriage is almost zero, so there is no spirit of contract!
Therefore, the combination of these reasons mentioned above has caused the current single population to increase rapidly, and finding a target has become a difficult task, even as mysterious and unpredictable as metaphysics.
What impact will the increase in single population have?
Don't worry about this at all, because the current trend of the single population is socially inevitable. Any country will go through a process from backward to advanced, and its population is no exception. If you don’t believe me, go to Europe, America, Japan and Korea to see if you have experienced these stages. After studying, you will find that we are just walking the road of other countries. Of course, this is the law of the development of things, there is nothing to say.
Compared with European and American countries, Japan and South Korea are more referential. We are both Asian countries. In Japan, the proportion of single population is as high as 30%. Among them, the proportion of men who have never married before the age of 50 is 23% and the proportion of women is 14%. In South Korea, among the total number of 19.67 million households, the number of single-living households reached 5.62 million, a proportion of 28%, which is more than three times that of the beginning of the 21st century, and this proportion will continue to grow.
In 2015, 1 in 4 Japanese men and 7 Japanese women was single for life. Last year, 26-year-old Japanese actress Mana Saakura even held a "marry yourself" single wedding. Experts predict that by 2035, about 48.05 million people over the age of 15 in Japan will be single, and about 52.79 million people have spouses. That is, in the future, half of Japan will be single.
The specific impact of the increase in the single population on society will not be discussed in this article, but what can be imagined is that it will have important impacts on the economy, real estate, employment, consumption (such as automobiles), policies, and social patterns.
In China, in the first-tier developed cities represented by Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the single population has become large, but this phenomenon may not be obvious in rural areas. Relatively speaking, the rural areas are more deeply influenced by the concept of clan and feudalism, and the concept of rural areas is also stronger; and the concept of continuation of incense and lineage is deeply rooted in the countryside. Therefore, in the process of single population growth, it must be cities that influence and drive rural areas.
A more obvious example is that in the countryside, in remote rural areas, if someone gets a divorce, it will be considered an unprecedented event, and will be ridiculed by the whole village or talked about by the neighbors. But now you see, with the popularization of smart phones, people’s new world has been opened up. Brands represented by Kuaishou and Pinduoduo are sinking to meet the material needs of the rural population, while also greatly enriching people’s spiritual world. Got the horizon.
Therefore, even in rural areas, divorce is just a common occurrence. There are occasionally one or two single young people who are not married when they reach the marriageable age. The villagers generally choose to close one eye instead of Staring, talking behind the back. To put it bluntly, people are not as boring as they used to be. Is it because the mobile phone is not fun or the online shopping is not enough to go back and chew on the tongue of others? Besides, I still have my own life...
The increase in the single population has become commonplace in cities, and it has been understood and recognized by more and more people. I believe that in rural areas, it is only a matter of time before this phenomenon is accepted. In the end, we may really have to follow the old paths of countries such as Japan and South Korea. As for good or bad, no judgment is made, but it is an inevitable trend of social development. Moreover, the standpoint is different, the standpoint is different, and standpoint determines standpoint.
Finally, I want to say that my boss and I have actually talked a lot, such as unmarried people, egg freezing, DINK and other related topics. Due to space limitations, I won't expand. If you are also interested in these topics, or have different views on the views of this article, you are also welcome to leave a message for discussion. Rational discussion is beneficial and is the basis for raising awareness.
One point to declare: All the knowledge and opinions involved in this article come from the exchanges and discussions with my boss and me. Most of them benefit from the inspiration of the boss to me, not what I personally think. Therefore, after typing so many words, at the end, I sincerely thank my boss for talking so much with me. This is also the reason why I want to share it with everyone.
The above content is original by Alibaba Cloud website technology researcher [Beike], please indicate the source for reprinting. The picture comes from the network, invaded and deleted