Why Women in China Are Saying 'No Thanks' to Marriage and Children

“Marriage is a woman’s destiny.” My grandmother repeated this like a refrain throughout my childhood. The moment I turned 20, she began reading matrimonial advertisements aloud to me. To Nai, my single status was like a rash, growing more irritating with each passing year. She feared I would miss the marriage boat and end up a miserable old maid.

How things have changed.

In today’s China, marriage is no longer the default life plan for many young women. For some, it is something to be postponed. For others, something to be negotiated. And for a growing number, something to be declined altogether.

The shift is visible in the numbers. After peaking in 2013, China’s marriage registrations fell for nine consecutive years, from 2014 to 2022. There was a modest rebound in 2023, widely attributed to postponed weddings after the pandemic. In 2024, the figure fell to a record low — just 6.1 million registered marriages. The deeper change lies elsewhere — in the slow reshaping of expectations, desires, and the meaning of a life well lived.

Over the past two years, I travelled across China, speaking with women in cities from Shanghai to Nanjing about their attitudes towards marriage and motherhood. What struck me most was their clarity, the quiet certainty with which they knew what they wanted, and what they did not.

Mina, a 34-year-old interpreter in Shanghai, once imagined a conventional timeline: marriage before 30, two children by 35. Instead, her career took off. She built her own company, providing interpreting services for international conferences. Somewhere along the way, the idea of marriage and children slipped quietly out of the picture.

“I still believe in love,” she told me. “But my career is a safer investment. If I work hard, I know what I will get. In marriage, there are no guarantees.” She added that few of her married friends were truly happy: one had discovered her husband was cheating; another felt she had fallen behind at work after having a child; several had already divorced.

China’s transformation from a poor, tightly controlled country into the world’s second-largest economy with far greater personal freedom has reshaped not only its cities but its expectations of women. Education has expanded. Careers have opened up. Financial independence has become far more common among urban women. With that independence comes a quiet but decisive shift: marriage is no longer necessary.

At the same time, the costs of marriage have risen, both materially and emotionally. Housing prices in major cities remain high, while raising children has become an increasingly demanding undertaking, shaped by fierce competition and rising costs.

Yet economics alone don’t explain the change. For one thing, there has been a rise in individualism in a society that was once all about the collective – meaning women are putting their own needs before those of others. More important is the widening gap between women’s expectations and the reality of marriage. Although young men contribute more at home than their fathers did, women continue to do the majority of childcare and domestic work, even among affluent urban couples. For many, marriage looks less like a partnership than an added weight — a second shift waiting at the end of the day.

All of this points to a growing gender divide. A 2021 survey found that 44% of urban young women had no intention of marrying. The retreat from marriage is not gender-neutral; women, particularly those who are educated and economically independent, appear to be leading it.

The pattern mirrors that of other societies where education and economic independence have loosened marriage’s hold on women’s lives, from Europe and the US to other Asian countries including South Korea and Japan.

There are also distinctly Chinese threads in this story. The one-child policy, in force for decades, has left a lasting imprint. Women of childbearing age today largely belong to the only-child generation, raised with concentrated parental attention. As adults, they tend to be more independent and self-directed, and less inclined towards parenthood. Without children in the equation, marriage becomes less compelling.

What has changed, above all, is attitude.

In Nanjing, my hometown in eastern China, I met Angela, a young office worker engaged in a quiet standoff with her parents. They had hoped to introduce her to a suitable husband, but she refused. Even when her parents threatened to disown her, she remained unmoved. “I am their only child,” she said with a cheeky smile. “They need me more than I need them.”

She insisted she was not allergic to romance. But it would have to meet certain conditions: no pressure to have children, and a partner willing to share domestic responsibilities equally. Without those, she saw little point.

Such conditions would have been unimaginable to my mother’s generation, let alone my grandmother’s.

In some ways, I understand Nai’s sense of urgency. Marriage had altered her own fate. As a young orphan, she was sold into a brothel, where she met my grandfather. He later installed her as his concubine, though she was bullied by his wife. After the Communists came to power and monogamy became the law, he chose to keep his gentle-natured concubine as his legal wife.

When I was a young woman my mother, more restrained but no less convinced, also urged me to make finding a husband my priority.

I was always quick to point out that her own marriage had been unhappy. At 20, she had been introduced to my father through a neighbor, and later Nai pressured her into marrying him within the year. He proved selfish, ill-tempered and, at times, violent. Divorce, however, was out of the question. Women of her generation were expected to endure. As the saying went, “Marry a dog, stay with a dog; marry a rooster, stay with a rooster.”

Despite this, I too assumed I would marry, not because I had examined the idea, but because it seemed woven into the fabric of life. And indeed I did - when I was 24, I fell madly in love with a scholarly young man. I married him two years later, and together, we brought up our two beautiful daughters, who are now fully grown.  

For the young Chinese women of today, that sense of inevitability has faded. Many no longer see marriage as a necessary passage or a defining measure of happiness. Meanwhile divorce, once deeply stigmatized, is increasingly common, and women are often the ones initiating it. In urban China, it has become more acceptable to leave an unhappy marriage than to remain in one out of obligation.

At the same time, society has grown more tolerant. A marriage certificate is no longer a prerequisite for a sex life. And life, in its many forms, is being reimagined. Alternative paths — singlehood, delayed marriage, even single motherhood — have become thinkable, if not always easy. Even the term ‘leftover women,’ used to stigmatize singledom, has been reclaimed by young single women, who proudly post videos of themselves on social media to showcase their solo lives. The hit TV series “Nothing but Thirty” came out in 2020 and focused on the lives of three Chinese women living in Shanghai as they turned 30, one of them single and resisting pressure from her parents to return to her hometown so they could help her find a husband.

In Shanghai, I interviewed a successful businesswoman who had chosen to raise a child on her own. When she became pregnant after a fling, she decided to keep the baby. “My child is more likely to love me than a husband,” she said, half in jest, half in conviction. She has never regretted her decision.

Such choices remain complicated. Social expectations have not disappeared, particularly among older generations. When I told my mother I was getting a divorce 20 years ago, she was heartbroken. Once again, she began urging me to find a man. “A woman is nothing without a man,” she insisted.

Nothing? I was a divorcee, yes, but I was also an internationally published author who had lectured at universities including Harvard. Was I truly a nobody simply because I did not have a husband? I kept these thoughts to myself, knowing there was little point in arguing. Until her death seven years ago, my mother， mortified by my divorce, treated my single status as something to be concealed. She never told the neighbors that I’d split from my husband. To her, it represented both a personal failure and a disgrace to the family. 

Fortunately, fewer and fewer people hold such views today .

China has been transformed since I was born in the 1960s. Women today inhabit a wider horizon. They can pursue careers, travel independently, delay or forgo marriage, and define fulfillment on their own terms.

But love hasn’t lost its appeal. Many of the women I spoke to still hoped to find a partner. But the terms have changed. Marriage is no longer the starting point of adulthood, nor its inevitable destination. It is one possibility among many, and one that must now earn its place. Young Chinese people – and particularly women – are less likely to settle for a partner just for the sake of getting married.  

Even though my own marriage ended in divorce, I consider it a success. Would I remarry? Only, perhaps, if I were to fall madly in love. Not out of necessity, but out of choice.