Shuangshuang Liu

This study explores cohort changes in first marriage timing in China, focusing on how evolving socioeconomic disparities shape marriage behavior. Using event history analyses and lognormal models, the research draws on 105,209 person-year records from 12 waves of the Chinese General Social Survey (2003–2021), covering individuals aged 18–80. Findings support the Cohort Accretion Hypothesis, showing that more educated and urban adults are delaying marriage, widening the marriage age gap compared to their lower socioeconomic status (SES) counterparts. However, the marriage age gap between individuals with secondary and primary education is narrowing. Women with less education and rural hukou, representing the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, show an increasing tendency to marry earlier. The shift from romance-oriented to more pragmatic, secular marriages highlights the polarization of marriage preferences, where capstone marriages challenge traditional cornerstone marriages, illustrating the Maslowian Preference Drift Phenomenon across educational and urban-rural groups in China.

Building on the stress process model and adopting an intersectionality framework, this study highlights the formation of a stronger intergenerational family symbiosis system in China. It offers a systematic understanding of the association between multigenerational caregiving and sandwich women’s stress, extending prior research by exploring the mitigating effect of husbands. Drawing upon China Health and Nutrition Survey data, findings indicate that sandwich women experience less stress than non-sandwich women. Particularly among sandwich women, upward care has a stress-reducing impact, while downward care has a stress-enhancing impact compared with carefree sandwich women. Providing active dual care has no significant effect, but when active help shifts to passive need, sandwich women’s stress reaches a peak. Husbands living at home could not buffer wives’ stress. These analyses depict the vulnerability of Chinese sandwich women under the revival of patriarchy and the imbalanced population structure and warrant a sounder public care system.