China provides premarital counseling to delay the pace of divorce
China provides couples state-sponsored therapy until they get hitched in an effort to ease up divorce rates. Over the past two decades, marital breakups have surged as divorce laws have been liberalized and more women have become more financially stable, preferring jobs first, and family second.
According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, last year 4.15 million Chinese couples untied the knot – up from 1.3 million in 2003 when spouses were first allowed to divorce without going to court by mutual consent. In an effort to reverse the trend, marriage registry offices around the country can provide premarital therapy facilities to avert “from getting-go” conflicts.
According to the Civil Affairs Ministry and All-China Women’s Federation Guideline released Tuesday. It is not clear whether both partners are obligated to get advice before they get married, or who will pay for it. Higher divorce rates have been a problem for officials who want to raise birth rates and keep China provides premarital counseling from becoming grey until it gets rich.
But, in the past, state involvement in private affairs has caused uproar. When it was approved in March, a month-long cooling-off period for couples filed for divorce — included in a civil code that takes effect next year — was met with intense online criticism. The current guidelines also aim to make the process of recording marriages more “solemn and intense.”
Present marriages at the city hall will take just minutes. The marriage rate of the country reached an 11-year low in 2018, with just around 10.14 million couples marrying the knot, down 4.6 per cent from the previous year, civil affairs ministry data shows. The recommendations were received with derision, with more than 670 million views on popula on the hashtag “My country needs to improve marriage registration”
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