A Chinese doctor says a mother he treated suffered from depression because her only daughter was in her 30s and not yet married, reigniting debate on social media about the intense pressure young people are under to get married. Ta.
Gao Panyue, a doctor in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, told Jiangsu Television that he diagnosed a 59-year-old woman surnamed Zhao with depression because she was too worried about her daughter’s lack of marriage prospects.
Gao said Zhao felt inferior to others and thought the community was gossiping about her because her daughter was still single.
The mother constantly argued with her daughter about marriage and cried whenever she could not convince her introverted child to find a partner.
Gao said her mother’s condition improved after receiving treatment at the hospital.
Zhao’s plight has reignited online debate about the pressure many young Chinese people face from their parents to get married.
“The typical form of depression in China is that parents worry about their daughter being single, not having a second child, or even childless,” one source said on Weibo. Told.
Another woman said, “I feel like I’m suffocating just watching this report.”
“My father has similar symptoms and blames his insomnia on being single,” said a third woman.
China’s marriage rate hit an all-time low last year, with just 6.83 million couples getting married. The annual number of marriages decreased for the ninth consecutive year from 13.47 million in 2013.
The last time so few couples got married was in 1979, when 6.37 million couples registered to get married.
On China’s Instagram-like platform “Xiaohongshu,” a woman said she would rather stay single if she can’t find true love. This is because, she says, “Marriage is like icing on the cake, but the individual has to be delicious first.”
Her attitude reflected a growing phenomenon among younger generations who place greater emphasis on independence and self-development.
For them, marriage is not the “final settlement” or “safe haven” that parents commonly believe.
In 2021, a young woman was diagnosed with depression due to pressure from her family to get married.
A doctor at Hangzhou Shulan Hospital told local media outlet Tianmu News that the woman, in her 30s, suffered from severe depression after her father called her a “worthless commodity” because she was single. He was said to have been suffering.
