At present, some young people do not interact with their relatives, and their kinship relationship is showing a trend of becoming weaker and weaker, which has aroused a certain amount of social concern.
Whether it is the discussion of the indifference to young people's kinship in the Internet, or the identification of some researchers' indifference to young people's kinship, to a large extent, it is the comparison between the reality of kinship in today's society and the situation of kinship in China's society decades ago, especially in rural society. That is, the current 40-50-year-old people are used to prove that the current young people are indifferent to kinship when they are young. However, times have changed. Even if it is true that young people at that time were more connected to relatives than young people are today, it does not prove that young people today are indifferent.
Because today's Chinese society has changed dramatically compared to the Chinese society of a few decades ago. This means that they actually live in two different social environments from today's young people. The eminent sociologist Mills pointed out that "neither the life of an individual nor the history of society can understand one or the other without understanding both at the same time." And the things that people experience in various local environments are often caused by social changes. Therefore, when we look at social phenomena, we should combine our personal life experience with the development and change of social history. In particular, changes in people's kinship relationships should be viewed from the perspective of social change.
Whether kinship based on blood and marriage ties is close or loose can be influenced by two important factors. An important factor is the size of the blood and marriage relationship;Another important factor is the geographical range between relatives. Over the past few decades, the development of China's society has undergone major changes in these two aspects, which have greatly affected, especially weakened and diluted kinship relations.
On the one hand, rapid urbanization and the accompanying dramatic increase in social mobility have brought hundreds of millions of young people from rural areas into cities. The trend of population flow has become more obvious, and the scale of the floating population has further expanded. According to the results of the seventh national population census, the number of separated households in the country is 492.76 million, of which 116.94 million are separated from households within the municipal area, and the floating population is 375.82 million, of which 124.84 million are inter-provincial floating population. Compared to 2010, the number of people living in separate households increased by 8852%, and the number of separated households in the municipal area increased by 19266%, and the floating population increased by 6973%。This huge social change not only spatially affected the interaction and interaction between young people who entered the city and their relatives in the original rural communities, but also further limited the frequency of interaction and interaction between relatives in terms of the object and time of interaction.
On the other hand, there have been significant changes in the size and structure of families in our country. A family is a household composed of people who are mainly related to each other and live together. With the decrease in the fertility rate and the decrease in the number of children in the family, the household size has continued to decline, and the data of previous national censuses show that the size of the household has increased from 4 in the 1982 census41 people, gradually declining to 396 people, 344 people, 310 people, 2 of the 2020 census62 people, the average household size in China has dropped to less than 3 people. This is a big change, and it will have a noticeable impact on the kinship of the family.
It is precisely under the combined influence of the above two factors and other factors that the original kinship interaction mode with "visiting relatives" as the main feature has gradually been impacted, diluted and dissolved. With the further development of society, the kinship of young people may be further weakened. The new karmic relationship, academic relationship, geographical relationship, and interest relationship will become an important supplement to young people's interpersonal communication. Therefore, we should not over-interpret the reality that people's kinship is gradually fading with the development of society. In particular, it is not appropriate to use relatively extreme concepts to summarize and describe the situation of kinship among young people, nor should it be worrying about it, or even calling for deep reflection. We should be fully aware of the inevitable results of the modernization process and rationally face the changes that have taken place in kinship relations.
Author: Feng Xiaotian, chair professor of Guangxi Normal University, distinguished professor and doctoral supervisor of Nanjing University).