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With rapid economic growth, China has undergone substantial social, cultural and ideological transformations over the recent decades. In the meantime, trends in China's family structure have changed dramatically as well. However, due to data limitations, research on trends in divorce has been very rare in China; especially the quantitative studies at the macrolevel. The literature indicates that despite the very low divorce rate from the 1960s to the 1970s, China's divorce rate has increased greatly in recent decades, but this increase has been uneven in both space and time. Therefore, this paper analyzes trends in China's divorce rate at the national, regional and provincial levels. The research results suggest that China's divorce rate has witnessed a steady and noticeable increase in the recent two decades, with the Crude Divorce Rate (CDR) increasing by 178% and Refined Divorce Rate (RDR) increasing by 211%. Among the four provincial-level municipalities, Chongqing shows strikingly high divorce rates, whereas the divorce rates of Beijing and Shanghai have leveled off in recent years. Among all the provincial level units, the Moslem-majority Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region ranks first, whereas Tibet ranks last. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of the future of families emerges as a topic especially during times of rapid social change and uncertainty. Typically, the trends of the future are anticipated on the basis of existing expert knowledge. However, the interest of this paper will be in ordinary people, especially young adults' knowledge and ways of envisioning the future from their position in life. The approach is based on an interpretative, fictive and narrative perspective to the future, using the role-play method with students. As a result, three different story types of the futures of families are found: families can strengthen, families can weaken or a catastrophe threatens families and puts them in danger of being destroyed. In all of these future stories the young adults explain the changes in families in terms of economy, values and religions, family policy and ecological factors. The results add to knowledge of how culture and values reshape family change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As long as we know, marriages have always existed in Europe. When Christianity came the rituals also came or changed. In, for example, Iceland, these new rituals were only to some extent accepted for hundreds of years. In most other countries marriage the Christian way became also a concern for the states. And the few existing non-marital cohabitation couples were "deviants" in the meaning that they did not follow the rules of the social institution of marriage. Many of these were based upon poverty. During the 1960's many of the traditional way couples lived were questioned, especially by activists, and changes came in some countries and in the beginning of the 1970s in other countries. The three Scandinavian countries were first with the changes. Cohabitation rapidly came as a social institution along marriage. To start with people in these new cohabitations were actively against the social institution of marriage and were in that sense "deviant". Soon many became followers and they were certainly not in opposition to the societal values. These changes will be discussed with a theoretical background on what marriage has meant and means today together with a view on a follower of the changes and cohabitation, namely LAT relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]