Survey: What do Chinese say about their marriage and sex life?

In January 10^th 2016, Beijing University’s social investigation and research center published “Chinese marriage and sex survey report 2015”, the center conducted online and offline survey for 2 months and collected 80 thousand responses. This report asked Chinese people from different age group, educational background and regions about their attitudes and behaviors in romantic relationships, marriage and sex life.

According to this report, people from Beijing have sex experience for the first time earlier than the rest of the country, at the average age of 20.63; the generation born after 1995 begins their first romantic relationship at the average age of 12.67. It also suggests that women’s stress in marriage has increased, meanwhile more women are cheating on their husbands, and most Chinese couple’s marriage became unstable just after 3-5 year of being married.

Romantic relationship: according to the findings, 51.09% the surveyed population began to have romantic relationships before they turn 18. Child of divorced and separated family start dating earlier, especially when the individual is raised in single family, they start dating at the average age of 15.23.

The findings also suggest that later generation begin romantic relationships earlier than older generation; Chinese born before 1970 started dating at the average age of 19.19, and those born after 1995 at the average of 12.67.

Moreover, people are accustomed to believe that those with PhD degree are inexperienced in dating, especially female Doctor; however,　the report shows that people with PhD degree have more relationships than others, their average number of romantic relationships is 6.87, meanwhile people with college education have on average 3.15 romantic relationships.

Sex Life: the report shows that people live in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao have their first sexual experience the earliest, at the average age of 19.24;Beijingers rank the first among people in Mainland China, at the average age of 20.63. As for the survey respondents, people born before 1980 started sexual experiences later, at the average age of 22.17 while those born after 1995 at the age of 17.71.

With regards to people’s educational background, people with college degree (average age 21) start experience sex earlier than those with Master (22.55) and PhD degree (21.65). The report also shows that those with college degree and above are more likely (45%)to use birth control than those with less advanced educational degree, only 18% of people who went to junior school would use contraception.

When to get married: according to the report, Chinese get married for the first time at the average age between 22-28; 63.29% of men get married after 25, and 83.07% of women get married after 23. Among those respondents, 38% lived with their partners before getting married.

Marriage Life: who has greater stress in marriage? According to the report, as women have to take care of housework, children and the elders while being full time working professionals, women tend to feel more stressful and less happy than men; stress and tension is more likely to occur in families with children. The findings shows, more then 29% of children are predominately cared for by their mother before the age of 3, only 2.1% of fathers shared the responsibility. Furthermore, the report suggests that 20% men and women have cheated on their other half. The findings show that after 305 year of being married, a couple’s sense of happiness and satisfaction drops to the lowest point, 11.1% of those being married for 305 years say that they would not choose the same partner if given a second chance, and 8.9% says that they would choose not to get married at all.