Why Are Young People Souring on Marriage? Moral and Sentiment Patterns in Chinese Social Media Discourse

Frank Tian-Fang Ye, Xiaozi Gao, Division of Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong , School of Professional and Continuing Education, Hong Kong SAR, Department of Early Childhood Education, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR

Journal of Family Issues

Published online on June 30, 2026

Abstract

Journal of Family Issues, Ahead of Print.
China’s marriage registrations have declined substantially, dropping from 13.47 million couples in 2013 to 6.1 million in 2024. This study examined sentiment and moral patterns underlying 219,358 marriage-related posts from Weibo and Xiaohongshu using ...