Our closest friends gave birth to a sweet little baby girl today. We are so excited and as if she was our own we screamed "yay, its a girl!".
I think most of the Taiwanese couples these days are probably screaming with similar excitement as well when they give birth to a daughter instead of a son. There may be a reason for this excitement which lies deep within the centuries old marriage tradition and effects of today's modernization instead of the pretty twinkling eyes of the new born. Unlike most part of the world, when a Taiwanese couple gets married, groom and his family has to pay a huge dowry to the girls parents and this is all but the crux of the stress for the boy and his parents at the time of marriage.
Most of the lavish wedding expenses including pre-wedding photographs, dinners, gifts (could include apartments, appliances, cars, furniture etc) and imported wedding cookies for the girls extended family are to be paid by the groom. All the terms and conditions regarding expenses are negotiated before the marriage is actually finalized. Needless to say, parents take over the wedding negotiations from the couple even if it was supposed to be a cute love marriage. These days Taiwanese women are well educated, self earning and independent which makes weddings even more expensive then they ever were. Brides parents want to recover the cost of raising their well-educated daughters and such attitudes sometimes just crashes the spirit of the marriage or worse, a man's will to get married.
Traditionally, boys have been preferred over girls across most part of the developing countries in Asia for centuries now. In last few decades, sex-selective abortion was on the rise and has given rise to uneven boy to girl ratio which is now 110 males for 100 females in Taiwan. This clearly means there are less females available for marriage. Also, more and more women these days are choosing to be single or delay marriage to focus on career and hence by the time they are ready for marriage, they are either too expensive or little too old to find the right partner. Ironically, divorce rates in the country are extremely high (close to 40%) too and it is also influencing to-be groom's wedding decision as they are getting penny wise and do not want to waste money on extravagant weddings which may end up in a divorce. All these independent trends and more which are not listed here have eventually led the country to earn a record breaking lowest fertility rate in the world. (0.9 children per child bearing female. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Taiwan#Vital_statistics).
All the data above is enough for me to believe that there is also a rise in mail-order brides in Taiwan. It is very common to see a man in Taiwan going through marriage brokers to find brides from countries like Mainland China, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam where brides get married mainly to get financial help to support their families back home while the men gets a life companion for a much smaller amount than a Taiwanese wife.
'Old Culture + Modernization = Disaster?', I wondered as I sipped on my cup of oolong tea.
I think most of the Taiwanese couples these days are probably screaming with similar excitement as well when they give birth to a daughter instead of a son. There may be a reason for this excitement which lies deep within the centuries old marriage tradition and effects of today's modernization instead of the pretty twinkling eyes of the new born. Unlike most part of the world, when a Taiwanese couple gets married, groom and his family has to pay a huge dowry to the girls parents and this is all but the crux of the stress for the boy and his parents at the time of marriage.
Most of the lavish wedding expenses including pre-wedding photographs, dinners, gifts (could include apartments, appliances, cars, furniture etc) and imported wedding cookies for the girls extended family are to be paid by the groom. All the terms and conditions regarding expenses are negotiated before the marriage is actually finalized. Needless to say, parents take over the wedding negotiations from the couple even if it was supposed to be a cute love marriage. These days Taiwanese women are well educated, self earning and independent which makes weddings even more expensive then they ever were. Brides parents want to recover the cost of raising their well-educated daughters and such attitudes sometimes just crashes the spirit of the marriage or worse, a man's will to get married.
Traditionally, boys have been preferred over girls across most part of the developing countries in Asia for centuries now. In last few decades, sex-selective abortion was on the rise and has given rise to uneven boy to girl ratio which is now 110 males for 100 females in Taiwan. This clearly means there are less females available for marriage. Also, more and more women these days are choosing to be single or delay marriage to focus on career and hence by the time they are ready for marriage, they are either too expensive or little too old to find the right partner. Ironically, divorce rates in the country are extremely high (close to 40%) too and it is also influencing to-be groom's wedding decision as they are getting penny wise and do not want to waste money on extravagant weddings which may end up in a divorce. All these independent trends and more which are not listed here have eventually led the country to earn a record breaking lowest fertility rate in the world. (0.9 children per child bearing female. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Taiwan#Vital_statistics).
All the data above is enough for me to believe that there is also a rise in mail-order brides in Taiwan. It is very common to see a man in Taiwan going through marriage brokers to find brides from countries like Mainland China, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam where brides get married mainly to get financial help to support their families back home while the men gets a life companion for a much smaller amount than a Taiwanese wife.
'Old Culture + Modernization = Disaster?', I wondered as I sipped on my cup of oolong tea.
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