The nuclear family is undergoing a dramatic shift, a new study suggested yesterday after looking at contemporary changes in family structure.
The number of women postponing or declining traditional notions of marriage is on the rise; more singles are opting to bring up children by themselves and more men are increasingly looking for brides abroad, the study by the non-profit Millennium Cultural and Educational Foundation showed.
“What we are seeing is the disintegration of Taiwan’s traditional definition of a nuclear family,” Hu Cheng-wen (胡正文), a director at the foundation, said when releasing the study. “The trend shows no signs of stopping.”
The study shows that more women are becoming upwardly mobile and no longer content to be bound by the confines of marriage.
More than 37 percent of female respondents in the survey said having children outside of wedlock was “acceptable.” That number increases to 62.5 percent for female respondents in their 20s.
The report also showed a discrepancy between spouses that suspected their significant other of engaging in extra-marital affairs and the number of respondents who admitted to engaging in one.
It showed that 24.1 percent of female and 6.9 percent of male respondents have at one-time suspected their spouses of engaging in an affair.
Meanwhile, only 3.3 percent of respondents admitted to it.
“More people are feeling insecure about their marriages ... affairs are becoming the biggest factors in unstable relationships,” Hu said.
All these signs point to the fact that more people choose to focus on themselves rather than a family unit, said Wu Chyi-in (吳齊殷), who conducts sociology research at Academia Sinica.
“Taiwan’s societal values are in a high-speed transformation phase ... many people want to find their own sense of self worth,” Wu said. “Many people feel that they lose this sense upon marriage.”
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift