Since retiring, Ms. Trieu, 59 years old, from Jiangsu province (eastern China), has always worried about the marriage of her only daughter who is over 30 years old. She often quarrels, fights cold wars and sulks with her daughter because of this girl not yet marriedChinese media reported.
As time passed, Ms. Trieu felt like everyone around her was laughing at her and cried all day. “I feel like I am inferior to others and my life is not as good as others,” this woman said. It was not until Ms. Trieu’s family took Ms. Trieu to the hospital for treatment that they discovered she was depressed.
| Ms. Trieu suffered from severe depression because her daughter was over 30 years old but had not yet gotten married. Photo: Weibo. |
After a period of professional treatment by the doctor, her condition has gradually improved.
Ms. Trieu’s story has sparked an online debate pressure to get married that many young Chinese people have to endure from their parents. “A typical form of depression in China is that parents worry about their daughters being single, not having a second child, or even having no children at all,” one person wrote on Weibo (a social network similar to Facebook). Another woman shared: “I felt suffocated when I saw this article.” “My father is the same, he blames the fact that I’m single for his insomnia,” another netizen said.
China’s marriage rate reached a record low in 2022, when only 6.83 million couples got married. This trend has been maintained for 9 consecutive years, down from 13.47 million calls marriage in 2013. The last time the number of married couples was this low was in 1979, with 6.37 million couples registering their marriages.
On the Xiaohongshu platform (a social network similar to Instagram), a woman said that she would prefer to stay single if she could not find true love because “marriage is like icing on the cake but the filling also needs to be tasty”. She believes that marriage is a fun addition that enhances life, just like icing adds sweetness and appeal to a cake. Before entering marriage, individuals should focus on making their own lives fulfilling, enjoyable and satisfying. This attitude reflects an increasingly common phenomenon among younger generations, who value independence and personal development more. For them, marriage is not a “final stop” or a “safe harbor” as the previous generation thought.
In 2021, a young woman was diagnosed with depression because of pressure from her family to get married. This woman in her 30s suffered severe depression after her father called her “lost commodity” because she was single.