Who Married How? Modeling Marital Decisions in Early-Twentieth Century Taiwan

Abstract

Marriage in Taiwan in the early twentieth century was a very diverse phenomenon. Marriages could be in the "minor" fashion, in which the bride was adopted at an early age by her parents-in-law. They could also be of the virilocal "major" type, in which young adults married and lived in the household of the husband's parents. Finally, they could be "uxorilocal," in which the husband came to live with his in-laws. The diversity of types reflects a complex mixture of motives on behalf of parents, who aimed to secure the patrilineage, but in the meantime were motivated to save on wedding expenses, safeguard their hold on the younger generation, forge alliances between clans, and bring in additional labor. In our paper, we assess the relative importance of these parental motives by applying a competing risks analysis on household registry data from nine Taiwanese communities. By combining data on the levels of the individuals, the composition of their households, the characteristics of their communities, and economic fluctuations, we demonstrate the remarkable flexibility and adaptability of Taiwanese marriage within the overriding constraint of producing male offspring.

The influence of social niche on cultural niche construction: modelling changes in belief about marriage form in Taiwan

“…Although Han in Taiwan practised a range of marriage forms [27,30,31], there were primarily two forms of marriage in Danei and Jibeishua at the beginning of the twentieth century [28,32]. Virilocal 'major' marriage ( , lit.…”

“…In rural Danei Township and Jibeishua village (in Dongshan Township) in Taiwan's southwestern county of Tainan (figure 1), frequencies of marriage forms changed between 1906 and 1945, both among the ethnic Han (Chinese) majority and the plains Aborigine (Austronesian) minority [27 -29]. Although Han in Taiwan practised a range of marriage forms [27,30,31], there were primarily two forms of marriage in Danei and Jibeishua at the beginning of the twentieth century [28,32]. Virilocal 'major' marriage ( , lit.…”

“…First, we want to be able to compare our results to previously published studies of the Taiwan household registers, which focus on first marriages (e.g. [27,[29][30][31]38,39,40,56]). Second, remarriages occurred with different social expectations, under different economic conditions, and with different cultural views from first marriages.…”