Marriage Costs in China Are Out of Control

If you work in a Western country (Europe) and have a decent job, there is no way that you save that much unless living with flatmates or parents for years.

Yearly income is around 10k, 20k or 30k before taxes, depending which part of Europe it is. It all goes to taxes, then rent, then food and car.

This. This thread is killing me. This might be the only comment so far to even consider women as having agency. When you give women control over their own bodies and equal enough rights to support autonomy — so, treat them like people, basically - it turns out they don’t want to have so many kids, because growing and birthing humans is incredibly taxing and traumatic. The trauma, in particular, is weirdly something that people don’t talk to young women about, and that often remains hidden from view. Reach a certain age (as a woman) and get alone in a room with other women of a certain age and the stories are absolutely harrowing. Of the women I’ve known personally who have given birth, all but one had PTSD from the experience.

I am, frankly, dreading the replies to this comment, as the thread already tilts heavily towards the sort of dehumanizing abstraction of women’s rights that often precedes more explicitly misogynist arguments cloaked in utilitarianism, so I will just say that if you consider coercing women into traumatizing and often debilitating situations to be an acceptable “cost” of a hypothetical economically optimal birth rate, I do not consider you to be capable of engaging in good faith and will not respond.

I would also suggest that concerns about “birth rate” or other abstracted metrics are often a screen for concerns — from men — about access to sex. I mean, in the context of intensifying climate change, a decreasing birth rate is not really our biggest problem as a species. It might actually be an asset.

There were the famous studies from a few years ago in Israel and Germany that sparked a small cultural spat in the West about regretting motherhood and having a child being a source of immense unhappiness.[1][2] It's of course obvious why they generated so much outrage, centuries of propaganda about motherhood being bliss and the highest calling for women.

To quote from the WaPo article below (some people may not be able to read it):

"it turns out that having a child can have a pretty strong negative impact on a person's happiness, according to a new study published in the journal Demography. In fact, on average, the effect of a new baby on a person's life in the first year is devastatingly bad — worse than divorce, worse than unemployment and worse even than the death of a partner."

"Researchers Rachel Margolis and Mikko Myrskylä followed 2,016 Germans who were childless at the time the study began until at least two years after the birth of their first child. Respondents were asked to rate their happiness from 0 (completely dissatisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied) in response to the question, "How satisfied are you with your life, all things considered?""

"On average, new parenthood led to a 1.4 unit drop in happiness. That's considered very severe. To put things in perspective, previous studies have quantified the impact of other major life events on the same happiness scale in this way: divorce, the equivalent of a 0.6 "happiness unit" drop; unemployment, a one-unit drop; and the death of a partner a one-unit drop."

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-israeli-study-regretting...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/0...

> Taking into account all the abuse she had to take from them

Some unsolicited advice, because internet: I really hope you understand what you're getting yourself into. I have no idea how familiar you are with Chinese culture, but be aware that family, especially parents, are very important in China. I'm sure you heard the "in China, you're not marrying a person, but a family" thing before. It really is deeply ingrained in Chinese culture, so depending on at which age and for how long she has lived in the West, despite her parents treating her bad, she might still feel a great urge to abide by her parents and pull an emergency bailout.

Even if she decides to cut ties with her family, which might very well happen if you don't pay a dime and make her parents lose face, keep in mind that now you need to be extra sure she is well integrated locally (friends, activities, social life). Again this depends a lot on how westernized she is, if not that much, having Chinese friends is crucial if you're living in an entirely different culture. Just don't let her get all reclusive and spend all time on Chinese social media. This might sound like a joke but I've seen it happen. The culture barrier is real. I've seen Germans struggling to adapt to the American way of living and vice versa, and they're ridiculously close compared to China and any Western country.

Also I hope the way her parents treat her doesn't trigger too much of a protective instinct. It's noble you want to help her but be really sure you know the person and want to stay with her. Breaking up now and sending her back to her parents might make her life miserable, or maybe not and she'll find someone back in China, but marrying her, fucking up her relationship with her parents and then realizing it doesn't work after a year or two will quite likely make her life miserable. (But depending on how ugly it has gotten, you might actually like that at that point).

Again this is general precautionary advice, mostly assuming worst case conditions.

But the argument is that women want to have more kids but can't because of career, maternity leave, benefits, etc. Also, survey after survey says that women want 2 or 3 kids ( average is about 2.5 ). But the fertility rate is far less than 2. So there is a disconnect between what women want and what women have. The question is why? Why aren't women able to achieve their goals? Of all the answers given, all of them are suspect.

> The trauma, in particular, is weirdly something that people don’t talk to young women about, and that often remains hidden from view.

Everybody talks about it. It's why society discourages girls from getting pregnant.

> Of the women I’ve known personally who have given birth, all but one had PTSD from the experience.

Well your experience is rather the anomaly. Most first time mothers choose to get pregnant again? 80% of first time mothers choose to do it again. Sure the birthing process isn't a walk in the park, but to say it is "trauma or PTSD" is absurd from a statistical and evolutionary point of view.

> I would also suggest that concerns about “birth rate” or other abstracted metrics are often a screen for concerns — from men — about access to sex. I mean, in the context of intensifying climate change, a decreasing birth rate is not really our biggest problem as a species. It might actually be an asset.

It's obvious your bias leans towards low birth rate but this is absurd and makes it hard to take you seriously. To say concerns about "birth rate" is about access to sex is nonsense. You do realize that pregnancy and higher birth rates gets in the way of sex right? It's one of the reasons why men invented condoms and birth control. Greater access to sex.