Flight from Marriage and Parenthood in Asia

Over decades, both the marriage and fertility rates have declined sharply in many Asian societies. Recent scholarship has pointed out that the flights from marriage and parenthood are not entirely driven by the cultural shift to individualism. In some Asian countries, marriage and parenthood are still important, but people feel the tension of rapid social and economic changes, such as increasing costs of living, the increasingly “greedy” workplaces, and rising expectations of intensive parenting. Gender scholars also highlight the varying degree of pressure on women and men and thus their different attitudes in family formation and parenthood.

Despite marriage and parenthood being closely related, the flights from marriage and parenthood have been discussed quite separately in the literature, the debates on the underlying causes remain unsettled, and its variations among Asian countries are understudied. To date, we are still uncertain how young adults in different Asian countries vary in terms of the meaning and aspirations of marriage and parenthood and the challenges that they are facing given the different policy and social contexts. Particularly, due to the endogeneity of marriage and fertility with other aspects of life, pinning down the causal mechanisms of how various social processes shape marriage and fertility is challenging. We invite all relevant empirical research papers that contribute to our understanding of the flight from marriage and parenthood in Asian societies. Papers investigating the complex relationship between marriage and parenthood aspirations and behaviors and pinning down the causal mechanisms are especially welcome.