The review of the demographic studies on ultra-low fertility in Northeast Asia complemented by the individual-level literature on relationship formation led to the following research questions, complemented by hypotheses to be empirically tested at the individual level with samples of Taiwanese, Japanese, and French young adults.
Research Question One (RQ1): Is it more difficult to enter intimate relationships in Northeast Asia? Chapter Five addresses this research question by examining a variety of relationship measures such as past and current experiences, singles’ dating steps, and singles’
difficulties in entering relationships, among Taiwanese, Japanese and French young adults.
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Research Question Two (RQ2): Are social networks encouraging a criteria-based selection of intimate partners, which in turn hampers relationship formation in Japan and Taiwan?
Chapter Six addresses this research question by comparing social networks and pragma love among Taiwanese, Japanese and French young adults, and by testing three hypotheses related to social networks and pragma love in relationship formation:
Hypothesis H1: Pragma love in relationship formation stems from social networks and is associated with fewer partners for Northeast Asians, but not for the French.
Hypothesis H2: Pragma love in relationship formation stems from social networks and is associated with more dating difficulties for Northeast Asians, but not for the French.
Hypothesis H3: Difficulties in the dating process stemming from pragma love are associated with less progress in dating steps among Northeast Asians, but not for the French.
Research Question Three (RQ3): Are Japanese women (but not Taiwanese women) who reject gender-unequal family roles unwilling to enter intimate relationships? Chapter Seven addresses this research question by comparing the endorsement of gender-unequal family roles among Taiwanese, Japanese and French young adults, and by testing two hypotheses related to gender-unequal family roles:
Hypothesis H4: The rejection of gender-unequal family roles is associated with lower dating intentions among Japanese women only.
Hypothesis H5: The rejection of gender-unequal family roles is associated with fewer partners for Japanese women only.
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CHAPTER THREE: QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS 3.1 INTRODUCTION
As a preliminary step toward the quantitative analysis, semi-directed interviews were conducted to determine how young adults view the process of finding a partner. University students provide a convenient sample to study relationship formation of young adults as many of them are currently in the process of finding an intimate partner. Young adulthood (18 to 25 years old) is the time in life when relationships become serious, intimate, and the object of various experimentations (Arnett, 2000; Cohen, et al., 2003). During the interview, I directed the discussion to understand the implications of significant others, partner selection criteria to be matched, and difficulties in the relationship formation process. In particular, I asked interviewees to indicate the significant others involved and the specific difficulties related to entering intimate relationships. During the interview, information on gender roles was also uncovered.
3.2 PROCEDURE
The interviewees were university students met on campuses and consisting of three Japanese (two women, one man), five Taiwanese (four women, one man), and four French (two of each gender; see Table 3.1 for interviewees’ demographics). The interviews lasted from thirty minutes to one hour. After a few demographic verifications (age, gender, nationality, socioeconomic status, education level, and dating status), I invited the interviewees to describe their intimate relationships and to provide information about members of their social networks who may influence their dating criteria, and particular difficulties they may face in finding a partner. I tried to uncover the key persons involved in the dating process of interviewees, and understand how these persons interfere, positively or negatively, in the process. Then, I guided the interviewees to explain what hurdles they face when searching for a partner. The interviews were conducted in English with Taiwanese, and in native languages for Japanese and French interviewees.
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Demographics of Interviewees
Country Interviewees Age Education SES Dating Status
France
Gender roles. Although I did not directly inquire about gender roles, the perception that each gender has a specific role to play in relationships was discernible among Taiwanese and Japanese. French interviewees did not consider much difference in gender roles with regard to dating. First, the possibility that gender roles hampers dating for women was supported by women in Taiwan: “Today, because I am not married, actually, my freedom is larger. So I can be prone to feelings, because no constraints push me (TW1).” Another Taiwanese woman indicated that she sees the man’s role as a family provider:
“For me, if the man has a job, that is enough, I do not care if he has a lot of money. I look at his potential in the future. If he can be better and better, that is fine. (…) Some girls are very good at social skills, so they may help their husband build up their career (TW2).”
The most striking description of how gender roles may hamper dating came from the Japanese man (JM1):
“I need money in order to build a future. For girls, the risk is lower, because they are protected by society: men have more responsibilities. Men cannot rely on women for money, so men have the burden of the risk. (…) On the other side, women should be modest, care for the house, rather than trying to earn money for themselves. In the past, men were richer and women did not have to worry. They just need to find a rich man and fall in love. As a man, I should think about my house, my future, this is what it is to be a human being. (…) With the economic difficulties, I am poorer than previous generations. I can only depend on myself, so I should worry (JM1).”
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Therefore, despite the fact that demographic studies have especially observed an association between gender roles and women’s unwillingness to enter into relationships, gender roles may affect Japanese men’s ability to find a partner to become their future wife, if they need to provide for a family alone, and integrate this requirement into their partners’ choice.
Social networks (Table A.1 in Appendix). The most striking difference between interviewees was the relative importance they give to other individuals in their dating. For Taiwanese especially, the discussion on intimate relationships is tinged by a heightened awareness of parental interference. A wide range of reasons were given by Taiwanese women as to why parents should be involved: “Of course I care what my family thinks about him (TW2),” “we should listen to our parent’s advice (TW2),” “parents want you to find a safe home (TW2).”
“Parents can see the weakness in your choice of boyfriend. That is why parents, especially mother wants to get involved (TW3).” The Taiwanese man (TM1) went even further:
“My parents will unfortunately get involved. Of course they need to like her [the partner]. For my mum it is impossible to like the girls. This will be a big problem. I already see it for long time. My mother was never satisfied with my girlfriends since junior high school. I think she cares about me too much. She is strict with the girls. I have to find one she can accept. It’s like she [my mother] was my wife in a prior life.
(TM1)”
Such depth of parental involvement was not seen among Japanese or French. A Japanese women nevertheless explained:
“Parents want me to be happy, so they push me to enter a relationship, but their criteria differ from mine. I may not agree with them, but then I will have to promote my boyfriend to them, to make sure they accept him. In Japan, we have to marry, it is not acceptable to stay single. People will look down on you if you are single (JW2).”
In sum, for the Asian interviewees, not only are parents involved, but entering into a relationship is seen as a duty, either to please parents (Taiwan) or because it is unacceptable to stay single (Japan). For the French interviewees, however, the involvement of parents in relationship was minimal, and relationships belong to the domain of “personal” affairs that outsiders should not meddle with: “Parents and friends will support me in whatever choice I make (FW1).” The persons mentioned by interviewees as being involved in their dating choices, are listed in Table A.1 (Appendix). Based on the interviews the influences of participants’
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mother, father, sibling(s), friend(s) and society in general will be used for constructing the variable “social networks.”
Selection criteria. The involvement of parents naturally raises the issue of parents’ criteria, against interviewee’s criteria: Either interviewees have to obey parents, or they expect to negotiate the choice of a partner with their parents. Only the French interviewees seem to have the choice of a partner fully in their hands.
For the Taiwanese and Japanese interviewees, the discussion on dating lead to choosing a husband or a wife. For example, the Taiwanese man explained:
“Criteria differ for girlfriend and wife. Girlfriend can be beautiful, cute. Wife should be traditional, she can cook, she can take care of children and husband, she knows how to satisfy my parents, my family, and the elders. To find a girl like this, I might compromise on the feelings. Because I know a wife is for longtime. For a girlfriend, I do not need to compromise, I can just enjoy the feelings. Of course, it is best if I also have feelings for wife, but I still have to be very careful (TM1).”
Taiwanese women echoed this sentiment, putting it more precisely:
“If I fall in love with a taxi driver my dad would kill me and kill the taxi driver as well…even if we love each other. Because taxi [driver] is not an acceptable job in Chinese culture. You should pick someone from the same background. Feelings do not cross social classes. They should because they are feelings, but they don’t. (…) Chinese like stability, so if a man has a good career, a stable occupation, they give a typical image of reliability. These men do not change after marriage, they can be stable partner when you enter marriage. It is boring, but it is secure. (…) Boyfriends are candidates for husband. Having a short-term or several short term relationships is not interesting.
You waste your time, and you may have to abandon these partners without marriage (TW1).”
Another Taiwanese woman provided a long list of criteria to be met: “I want the man to be responsible, sincere, decent, he should treat others well, he should have good manners, thinks from other’s people side, be interesting for me, humorous, easy to talk [to], not stubborn (TW3),” and a last one was more conciliatory: “To find a person, you need to change yourself a little, to accept differences, a little compromise. Then you will find the perfect one (TW2).”
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For Japanese interviewees, selection criteria appeared to be less associated with parents, and more about finding a “matching” person: “It is about solving problems together when they arrive. It is about ability matching. Also, relationships bring excitement in life, to compensate for difficulties (JW1),” and “Finding the right person is about matching. Emotions come next (JW2).” Finally, “Relationships are not about sex or beauty. It involves a careful consideration of many aspects (JM1).” Therefore, selection criteria for Japanese may derive from the need to carefully consider many facets of the relationship and the future, and less from the imperative to please parents.
For the two interviewed French men, the idea to choose a person based on a set of criteria appeared almost repulsive: “Pragmatic love? I don’t think that exists! This is like a commercial deal: there is no freedom, it is patriarchal (FM1),” and “Pragmatic rationality is cold, compared to passion, which is warmer, based on senses, and encourages us to do things together (FM2).”
French women were more perceptive, but their criteria appeared to compete with personal emotions in the choice of a partner, but not to parental involvements (unlike Taiwanese interviewees), or to the need to find a good match (unlike Japanese interviewees):
“I would like to be pragmatic, but sometimes I fall in love for someone who does not match my criteria, and the relationship is bound to last a short time because passion does not last long…I will have to make concessions on my pragma criteria because I cannot find the matching person. I think young men of 19 years old are not mature, they do not know where they are going for their carrier. They change their mind all the time.
So I may waste my time with someone too young. Once in a relationship, I try to build something nice, but breakups are tiring, on the other hand. Maybe I do not have enough confidence. Men seems to follow their heart more, but they break up after a few weeks….Anyway, I am looking for intimacy, feeling good at being together, something more long-term (FW2).”
Difficulties in finding a partner (Table A.2 in Appendix). The interviewed Asian women offered a long litany of difficulties in finding a partner. Besides issues with their own selection criteria, other hurdles included (a) difficulties with the opposite sex and especially for women, the lack of suitors, and (b) issues with the lack of time or opportunities to meet someone. The interviewed Asian and French men had fewer difficulties to describe.
The first element in the difficulties for women is to find someone matching their own selection criteria: “Men are too traditional, and too boring (TW3),” “Men with good manners are rare
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(TW3),” “Men are self-centered, arrogant and they talk too much (TW3).” A Japanese woman also added: “Men only look for women who are servicing them (JW2).”
Another type of difficulty for Asian women lay in the relative inability of men to approach women: “Men do not have the courage to ask (TW3),” an observation also made by the Japanese woman: “Most men don’t have the general knowledge to approach women. Men are shy and scared: They wonder “what if she refuses (JW2)?”
Asian and French women also appeared constrained by time and opportunities: “I have no time left (after work) to find him (TW2),” a comment echoing Japanese women as well: “It’s very difficult to find someone (JW2),” and “I have no time. I always work and there are no good men at work (JW2).” Also a French woman concluded: “You have to push yourself to go out to find somebody. Women should not wait. They have to go for it (FW1).” Finally, time was an issue for the Japanese man as well:” Dating is not really difficult, but it is troublesome (JM1),” and “I have too much work (JM1).”
Comparatively, men had fewer issues with the dating process: One French man found that
“Women reject men coldly (FM2).” On the women’s selection criteria, only the Japanese man judged that “Women expect him to have a stable job (JM1).”
In sum, the interviews suggested the following “difficulty” constructs should be elaborated:
the lack of time for finding a partner (time barrier), the barrier because of the opposite sex, and for women in particular, not being pursued, and not finding Mister Right.” Table A.2 (Appendix) lists the items mentioned by interviewees.
3.3 CONCLUSION
The purpose of these few interviews was to understand, in everyday-life contexts, how the main constructs of this study are perceived. Interviews also helped identify the key persons involved in dating decisions and the key difficulties in dating, in order to build corresponding constructs and test them on larger samples.
In line with the main hypothesis of this thesis, Taiwanese and Japanese interviewees were more conscious of their social networks when choosing their partner. In turn, the selection criteria of the significant others mattered more in their partner decisions. However, although the link between familial influences and selection criteria was clearer among Taiwanese than for Japanese to whom the criteria appeared related to “matching” and building a future. Finally,
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using selection criteria in relationship formation was competing with French women’s emotions, and was unattractive to French men.
As expected, and simply based on the number of issues listed in these interviews, finding a partner appears to be a larger issue among Northeast Asians compared to French. The first reason is that Asian women don’t seem to know where to find “Mister Right:” Men are not available from serious places, such as work or school, but they are available in risky places, such as the Internet and clubs, which attract “those only interested in sex (TW2).” French women did not seem to have similar difficulties. Second, Asian women complained about the opposite sex: men appear not to have the abilities and traits required to approach women (they are shy, scared, ill-mannered), and so single women are not pursued. Similar answers were obtained from French women. And finally, several interviewees mentioned not having enough time to engage in a partner search. The results echo Japanese women views on matrimony (Nemoto, 2008), where “not having enough time” and “not finding the right man were commonly cited as reasons for not being married. Finally, the interviews seem to support the scenario that social networks influences would be transformed into more pragma love. These findings will be used in the next section devoted to quantitative analysis.
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CHAPTER FOUR: QUANTITATIVE METHODS
In this section, I describe samples and instruments used in the quantitative analysis.
Then, I examine if the instruments are invariant across cultures.
4.1 SAMPLE DESCRIPTION
The full sample totaled 1,206 individuals and consisted of 767 heterosexual women (Mage = 19.88, SD = 1.63) and 439 men (Mage = 20.90, SD = 2.40), among which 43% were dating (SD = 0.50). Sample details are provided in Table 3.2. Participants were recruited on university campuses in France (Lille), Taiwan (Taipei) and Japan (Kanto, Hokkaido).
Characteristics of the participants including their age, educational level, socioeconomic status, by gender and relationship status are presented in Table A.3 (Appendix).
Table 3.2
Sample Size by Gender and by Dating Status
Country Dating Status
Participants responded to a questionnaire with answers on a 1 - 5 Likert response format (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = I don’t know, 4 = agree, and 5 = strongly agree). Mean and standard deviations are presented by country and gender in Table A.3 (Appendix) for control variables, in Table A.4 (Appendix) for observed variables and in Table A.5 (Appendix) for constructs. The questionnaire was approved by the Ethics Committee of Tsukuba University (Japan).
Avoiding Bias. To avoid item bias (i.e. the definition of a construct varies by culture), I adopted existing instruments when available (i.e., the family role scale: ISSP, 2016; the pragma love
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scale: Hendrick & Hendrick, 1986). These instruments have already been used across cultures in prior studies (e.g., Dion & Dion, 1993; Hendrick & Hendrick, 1986, for the international comparison of the pragma love scale; ISSP, 2016, for international comparison of family roles).
When available, I also adopted existing translations (i.e., the family role scale; ISSP, 2016).
When French, Chinese and Japanese versions of instruments were not available, questionnaires were translated from English first, and back to English by bilingual students, to detect imprecision and to correct it. Sample bias was avoided by using a sample of students of approximately the same age (20 years old) in each culture, from both genders (non-heterosexual participants are removed), and from both relationship statuses (i.e. single or dating). Administration bias was limited because the same method was used across cultures.
The distribution of questionnaires was done by the author, on campus or in class, and with the only prior explanation that the survey is about dating. There was no interaction between the author and participants, or between participants during the filling out of the questionnaire.
Analytical concept. To test the proposed hypotheses, I use an analytical concept that follows the three dimensions of existence, accessibility and function when comparing cultures (Noranzayan & Heine, 2005). First, the universal existence of the constructs used in the study are confirmed with exploratory and confirmatory analyses (Section 4.4). The literature review shed light on possible differences in the way social networks, pragma love, and gender roles may be conceived across age cohorts and countries. Therefore, instead of using existing
Analytical concept. To test the proposed hypotheses, I use an analytical concept that follows the three dimensions of existence, accessibility and function when comparing cultures (Noranzayan & Heine, 2005). First, the universal existence of the constructs used in the study are confirmed with exploratory and confirmatory analyses (Section 4.4). The literature review shed light on possible differences in the way social networks, pragma love, and gender roles may be conceived across age cohorts and countries. Therefore, instead of using existing