Has Marriage Been Outdated?

Modern people’s understanding of marriage is just like “the blind men trying to size up the elephant -- take a part for the whole”， that everyone has the right sense of touch to the elephant， but no one knows what the whole elephant looks like.

-- Harry Ares， professor of psychology at University of

Rochester， the United States

現代人對婚姻的認識就好比“盲人摸象”，雖然每個人對大象的觸覺都正確，但沒人知道整頭大象長什么樣。

——美國羅徹斯特大學心理學教授哈里·瑞斯

In the US bestseller Determine the Lifetime， a classic interpretation of marriage goes that “Marriage is not only individuals’ romance， but also the strictest social and economic contract.” Over the past few decades， however， the divorce rate has been increasingly rising worldwide. More and more people don’t want to get married and married people divorce soon， which seems that getting married is becoming increasingly out of fashion.

On January 1， 2015， Ministry of Health， Labor， and Welfare (MHLW) released The Annual Projection of Vital Statistics. According to the statistics， the divorce rate of Japan is 1.77， that is to say， 1.77 out of every 1，000 Japanese divorced. Top of the list comes Russia with a divorce rate of 4.5; The United States comes in the second place， 3.6; The third-ranked nation is Germany， 2.19; The UK ranks the fourth， 2.05; Number five is France， 1.97; Japan comes in sixth place; The seventh one is Italy， 0.91.What on earth has changed people’s marriage? We may find the answer from Russia where the divorce rate is the highest.

“婚姻不僅是個人的愛情故事，也是最嚴格的社會和經濟契約。”這是美國暢銷書《定終身》中對婚姻的一句經典的解讀。然而，過去幾十年里，世界范圍內離婚率日益高漲。越來越多的人不想結婚，結了婚的又很快離婚，結婚成家似乎正變得越來越不流行。

2015年1月1日，日本厚生勞動省發布了《人口動態統計年度推算》。數據表明，日本的離婚率為1.77，即每1，000個日本人中有1.77個離婚人士。排在第一位的是俄羅斯，離婚率為4.5；排在第二位的是美國，為3.6；排在第三位的是德國，為2.19；排在第四位的是英國，為2.05；排在第五位的為法國，為1.97，日本排在第六位；排在第七位的是意大利，為0.91。究竟是什么改變了人們的婚姻觀？從離婚率最高的俄羅斯或許可以找到答案。