The family-reform ideals of the Chinese New Culture Movement in the early twentieth century gained widespread popular support from the nation’s young men through periodicals, such as Family Research, which encouraged individualism and attacked patriarchal society. Their absorption in individualism blinded them to the inherent misogyny in their search for the ideal wife—one who was educated and politically conscious. However, it lacked the appeal necessary for a socioeconomic revolution, as those young men did not subscribe to all of the Movement’s radical ideas; often, they subconsciously preferred traditionalism despite their ambition to form a modern state. Moreover, the Chinese Communist Party retroactively revised and imposed the New Culture Movement’s xiao jiating, or conjugal family, by forcing individuals to devote themselves equally to their emotional relationships and the state.
In her monograph, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953, Susan L. Glosser argues that those who started Family Research believed family reform was the ‘necessary first step in China’s modernization’, as individuals must first be ‘happy at home’ in order to provide their full contribution to the urban reform movements throughout China.1 The primary obstacle preventing young men from this domestic happiness, they contended, was the patriarch. Under the Confucian standard, the patriarch held great control over his children’s lives. Thus, to free themselves for their ultimate goal of a ‘transformation of the Chinese economy’ and ‘political structure’, they began by attacking the patriarch due to his control and ‘as a stand-in for the nebulous forces of “power” and “class” that strangled China’.2 It was only then, with the happiness from their new family, that they understood that China could modernize economically and socially.3
As happiness, and thus productivity, was believed to be derived from the family, those involved in the New Culture Movement ‘developed a new set of expectations for their wives’.4 In opposition to traditional arranged marriages, they argued in favor of a concept of marriage based on romantic love, in which the couple involved jointly shared ‘intellectual and political interests’.4 However, Glosser declares, these young men failed to consider what an ideal husband might be, and pushed unrealistic standards onto the women of their time.5 Thus, they thought only of what would make them happy in marriage, while expecting their wives to work independently in the domestic sphere and join other social spheres, revealing a misogynistic core behind their advocacy for women’s rights.
The surveys of two Chinese sociologists, Chen Heqin and Pan Guangdan, that Glosser examines, reveal that despite the insistence of the New Culture radicals, many young men appear ‘to have been willing, and even happy, to make their peace with much that was traditional in the Chinese family’.6 The primary family-reform ideals of the New Culture Movement that they supported were the rejection of arranged marriages and the education of women. However, many young couples were not too interested in establishing ‘households independent of their parents’.7 Moreover, despite wanting to choose their own wife, the qualities they looked for in a wife were more traditional than they might have anticipated—over three-quarters of Chen’s respondents did not list any interest in an ideal wife’s talents.8 In conclusion, Chen and Pan found that many of their respondents simply picked and chose certain aspects of the New Culture’s xiao jiating and ‘ignored or modified others’.9
The Marriage Law, passed by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1950, promised the right to choose spouses and ensured equality among men and women.10 It was described by the Party as the final step in ‘the long fight, begun by the New Culture Movement, against the “feudal” customs of traditional China’.11 However, the Party initially hesitated to enforce the law due to concerns that the peasants might react negatively toward legislation that abruptly hindered tradition. Glosser contends that the Party ‘promised to resolve the tension that the conjugal family ideal had created between the individual and the state’ through their ‘version’ of the ideal xiao jiating.12 Although, their method of doing so was to absorb the citizens entirely into the state and make the state the sole legitimizing factor of marriage. Thus, the individuals were forced to jointly devote themselves to their emotional relationships and the state, as marital privacy was stripped away, disguised as the Party’s loyalty to New Culture ideals.