Conclusions, Predictions, and Prognostications 227
through the civil affairs bureau which can take as little as fifteen
minutes. Overwhelmingly, the Chinese women are the ones who
end their marriages—often citing extramarital affairs as the big-
gest reason for divorce.
Time magazine has been my favorite “weekly read” ever since
college and they did one of their typically excellent articles on
this Chinese “Flash Divorce” trend entitled, “Breaking Up Is Easy
To Do.” Time pointed out that nationwide in China, the number
of divorces skyrocketed 67 percent just between 2000 and 2005.
Peering into the future through the looking glass of mass media
and the World Wide Web, there is now a ninety thousand member
website for divorcees in China. Fourteen million Chinese were
registered users on matchmaking websites as of 2006, and that
number is expected to triple by 2010. And one of last year’s hot-
test TV series highlighted, you guessed it: Divorce, Chinese Style.
The number of divorce attorneys in Chinese cities has quin-
tupled in the past five years and detective agencies specializing
in marital investigations are proliferating. Divorce as a business
is booming in China.
Some Chinese are so spooked by the prospect of divorce that
(like Americans) they too are tending to avoid marriage altogether.
In 2006, it was reported that almost half a million fewer couples
had married nationwide than had wed just two years earlier.
Upheavals in American households
We sleep in separate rooms, we have dinner apart, we take separate vacations—
we’re doing everything we can to keep our marriage together.
—Rodney Dangerfield
The composition of the American household is changing dra-
matically. There is a definite nationwide trend toward a vastly
increased number of smaller-sized, and differently configured,
households. The size of the average household in America has
declined substantially—from 3.7 persons in 1950 to 2.62 by 1990.
The increase in single-person households, as well as the general
trend toward independent living on the part of young people,
explains much of this phenomenon.