The impact of globalisation in recent years, and its consequent increases in population and labour mobility, longer working hours, unstable employment patterns and diversified lifestyles, has posed formidable challenges to the stability and solidarity of family life in Hong Kong. In this process, we have seen traditional family values steadily and rapidly undermined by seemingly irreversible trends of rising divorces rates, family violence and declining marriage rates and fertility. Family problems have become distressingly familiar, but policy and professional intervention to support families can vary significantly from country to country, mainly due to the differences in cultural traditions and the...

Social scientists analyzing marriage and inequality in Chinese society point out that, from the classical period on, continuities in marriage customs and practices have been remarkable (Ocko 1991). In China, there were few significant changes in marital conventions until the Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China of 1950. It declared marriage to be based on free choice, monogamy and equal rights; prohibited bigamy, concubines, child betrothal, interference with the remarriage of widows; and included provisions for divorce (Meijer 1971). Hong Kong followed with the Marriage Reform Ordinance in 1971, restricting marriage to one husband and one wife, and...

Generally, couples first meet each other as adults. When a person comes for marital counselling with his spouse, he may complain that his spouse is a person with annoying characteristics that he perceives as static and fixed. He may feel “that is the way she is”. He does not see that his spouse is a human-being-in-process, that she has been evolving from a past, and is still in the process of transforming into a person-to-be in the future.

The former is a frozen view, but the latter is much more tentative and fluid and provides more room for change. The...

Hong Kong, like many societies, has been slow to respond to the vulnerabilities of children who have been sexually abused. Though the plight of abused children led to the founding of a non-government society, Against Child Abuse, in 1979, and the establishment of a government Child Protective Services Unit in 1983, the Task Group on Handling Procedures on Child Sexual Abuse under the auspices of the Health and Welfare Branch was not formed until 1995. The vulnerabilities of adult survivors of child sexual abuse, however, have received even less recognition, and it has been very much left to the individual...

Several characteristics of couples struggling with infidelity challenge the therapist’s clinical stance, ethical position, and epistemology of human needs, intimacy, and meaning of the marriage and of existence (Tuch 2000; Weeks & Hof 1987; Humphrey 1983; Young & Long 1998; Pittman 1989; Brown 1991; Glass & Wright 1988). Many couples caught up in the throes of tackling infidelity experience multiple layers of ambivalence, at the moral, behavioural, psychological and emotional levels, about themselves and others. At the same time, their turbulence sometimes produces drastic responses from the extended family, friends, church members, and work associates, so that what goes on outside the couple...

Forgiving, a process of giving up or ceasing to harbour resentment for an offence is an inherent aspect of social living. This is reflected in many cultures from ancient Greek to Judeo-Christian times, and in the Taoist, Confucius, and Buddhist traditions (Kwan 1994). From early times, the Tao-Te-Ching has highlighted the value of “recompensing injury with kindness”. Confucian teaching emphasizes benevolence, ren (仁) as the cornerstone of a harmonious society (Lee 1993, 275). Ren has been defined as 1) being self-controlled and compliant to social norms, 2) being considerate to other people, 3) being humble and embracing in interpersonal relationships,...

The rapid rise in the divorce rate is a worldwide trend, which is also reflected in Hong Kong. Marital dissolution poses a serious threat to family cohesiveness and stability for a society which values marriage as the basic foundation of family relationships. Whereas a good divorce can reduce unnecessary hurt and pain, and free energy towards the reconstruction of a new lifestyle in a different family form, the actual period when the decision whether to divorce is being made is clearly a critical period in the relationship. It is critical because another choice, reconciliation, may help the couple rebuild trust...

Divorce is a traumatic event for most Chinese women (Kung, Hung, & Chan 2003). A considerable number of these women remain in a state of grief, loss, and despair, feeling abandoned, helpless, and hopeless for prolonged periods after divorce (Yi, Chan & Lam 2002a). In Hong Kong, three main reasons for divorce were noted: extramarital relationships (Young et al. 1995), domestic violence, and gambling, but extramarital relationships were the most often cited (Kung et al., 2003). In many cases, the divorce decision is attributed to several causes, such as the husband being physically, sexually, emotionally abusive towards the wife and children, and...

As the divorce rate has been rising in recent years, there is increased attention to the vulnerability of marriage and family institutions in Hong Kong. However, we do not as yet have an adequate understanding of the parties involved, in particular, the perspective of the divorced men. A knowledge gap remains, although fatherhood studies from overseas offer some indications of certain aspects of their situation (Dowd 2000; Marsiglio, Amato, Day, & Lamb 2000; Amato 1999; Lamb 1997; Dongen, Finking, & Jacobs 1995). In Hong Kong, there has been some murmuring against continuing child support from non-custodial divorced fathers, though in general the...

Similar to data in many developed countries, statistical data in Hong Kong showed a marked rise in the remarriage rate over the past twenty years, despite a drop in the marriage rate (Census and Statistics Department, 2002). It is postulated that the increase in remarriages is a consequence of the sharp increase in divorce over the same period. Table 1 speaks for itself.

The rising trend of divorce and subsequent remarriage calls for attention from the community to the challenges facing remarried couples and their families. Yet, despite an increased body of research in the area of remarriages in the...

Traditionally, marriage in Chinese society was considered mainly a permanent, lifelong bond between two partners for the purposes of reproduction and the survival of the family unit. It was a common practice, even within the early twentieth century, that marriages were arranged by the elders of the family, in the interest of the extended family. Now, for many Hong Kong people, the major goal of marriage has shifted to that of attaining personal satisfaction and mutual support from each other. In a study on the attitudes of premarital couples toward marriage in Hong Kong, most of the respondents (ninety-eight percent...

A marriage is a legally recognized union between a man and a woman in which they are united sexually; cooperate economically; and may give birth to, adopt, or raise children (Strong et al. 2001). In most countries, marriage is also normally assumed to be heterosexual and monogamous, and embedded with enduring love and companionship as its ideal purposes. This model of marriage, however, is facing serious challenges, as illustrated by several phenomena. The divorce rate and the proportion of single parent families are growing. The birth rate and the marriage rate are in decline, and alternative family types, such as...

Each author in this volume has, in his or her own way, tried to address challenging questions posed by the tension between professional values and the cultural imperatives of the Chinese tradition that still constitutes the bedrock of Hong Kong society. The challenges are further sharpened and rendered more poignant both by social changes emerging from within Hong Kong society and by social movements in the wider international community, bringing about a gradual shift in traditional perspectives and conventional understandings of the meanings of marriage and the values of the family.

Two such social movements are of particular significance to...