Breaking up is always hard to do

Since 2004 the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau has established "marriage and family consultation rooms" in district marriage and divorce registries to offer counseling to couples who are seeking divorce.

According to media reports the system is quite effective with more than 50 percent of the couples deciding not to go ahead with a divorce after taking advice from staff who include professional psychologists, lawyers, community volunteers, and workers from the Shanghai Women's Federation.

From a traditional viewpoint I am in favor of any effort that reduces the divorce rate, but I also query whether this is the best way of handling the problem.

The Confucian concept of a family is that it is the basic unit that connects society. A marriage, which leads to the creation of a new family, is one of life's most important events, not only for the couple involved but also for each of their families.

Last year 38,850 couples were divorced in Shanghai, an increase of 4.06 percent on the previous year. More than 90 percent of the couples who divorced did so because of personality clashes or because they had fallen out of love. Most of the couples were under 35. The same year saw 145,870 couples getting married.

The rising divorce rate could show that Shanghai people have more freedom in marriages; or that families and households are more unsettled here and that society holds more risks for marriages. Or it could show that young people marry and divorce too quickly instead of taking the traditional approach and thinking twice before doing anything.

Many young people in Shanghai follow trends and could well be treating marriage and divorce as if they were fashion statements. But should the government be trying to curb the divorce rate by offering counseling when people apply for a divorce? Do these couples really need it then? If they need it, surely they needed it a lot more, and should have had counseling from experts, before they got married.

Most young people in Shanghai are only children. The older members of society have long been concerned about the lack of responsibility and traditional Chinese attitudes in the generation born in the 1980s, but have never come up with a solution.

Perhaps getting married and then divorced might be one approach to gaining this sense of responsibility and embracing traditional attitudes. Young people can marry, make mistakes in the first marriage and then mature, after learning how to accept responsibility and compromise. This would be an immense benefit to their lives, their careers and society.

Japan which shares a similar Confucian tradition and cultural background, has a 50 percent divorce rate but most of these couples are middle-aged or older looking to find happiness in other ways. Society there has not collapsed because of this. It could be argued that we are doing a lot better than Japan if our young people are discovering these same problems a lot earlier in life.