In much of China, the rise of the single-child family has challenged the country’s traditional emphasis on male heirs and family-based eldercare. Now families in some regions, such as the wealthy eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, are responding by embracing a new kind of matrimony.

Known as the “two-sided marriage,” or liang tou hun, this relationship form represents a break from traditional marriage. Instead of a woman being married into a man’s family, two-sided marriages are more contractual: No bride prices or dowries are exchanged, and couples agree to have two children, one of which will take their father’s family name and the other their mother’s. Most two-sided marriage prenuptial agreements also stipulate that the couple will jointly inherit the property of both sets of parents — and assume responsibility for caring for them as they age.

In 2023, I traveled to a village in a southern part of Jiangsu to research the rise of two-sided marriages there. Almost everyone born in the village since the 1980s is an only child. From 2000 to 2010, there were 172 couples married in the village, 70 of which opted to follow the two-sided marriage model.

A village official who had recently organized a two-sided marriage for his son shared his story with me. He explained that according to local custom, traditional practices like the groom going to meet his in-laws continue to be respected, but in two-sided marriages, both the bride and groom visit each other’s families to ensure symmetry. First, the bride and her friends welcome the groom to their home, where the couple performs obeisance to the Kitchen God — their indicating that a new member has been added to her family. Then, the groom and best man take the bride to his home, where they perform the ritual again. At the wedding banquet, each family sets half the guest list, and the cost of the ceremony is split between both sides.

This split is more than just symbolic. Many of the couples I interviewed said their relationships were characterized by a complex process of negotiation and compromise. Take for example what is probably the best-known element of two-sided marriages, at least within China: the inheritance of both family names. Although in theory a two-sided marriage guarantees both families the chance to carry on their name, because of the uncertainties involved in having children, it is important to determine which surname the first child receives. Although it’s common for the first child to receive the man’s surname, this is far from the only approach. One villager told me that when her son had his first child, she and her husband were working away from their hometown and the child was mainly taken care of by their daughter-in-law’s family. As such, they agreed that the first child would take their daughter-in-law’s surname.

In this way, two-sided marriages can challenge the one-sidedness of traditional marriage — in which the husband’s family wields near absolute control over the arrangements. A long list of matters that were once determined by one family, such as the bride price, dowry, who the couple stays with on the wedding night, and the right to naming the child, is now open to negotiation.

A clear example of this shift is the number of couples in two-sided marriages that choose to live with the woman’s parents. During my research, I stayed with the parents of Qiu Shuang, a young woman in a two-sided marriage. Qiu gave birth to a daughter who shares her surname and a son who has her husband’s surname. Qiu, her husband, and her daughter live at her parents’ home during the week, then visit her son at her mother-in-law’s house on the weekends.

But while a two-sided marriage can be said to protect the rights of some women, their families’ interests and their own interests are not always aligned.

This is most obvious when it comes to reproductive decisions, which can pit families against their children. Parents expect their children to have two or more kids to carry on both family lines, while young couples, and women in particular, are concerned about the costs of having children, both financially and to themselves as individuals. When women’s families insist the couple carry on their family line, parents will often rationalize away the costs of both giving birth and childrearing — costs still generally borne by wives rather than their husbands.

One woman I interviewed said that before she got married, both her parents and her fiancé’s parents agreed she would have two children, and she acquiesced. However, after going through the pain of giving birth to a son, who was given her husband’s surname, she decided she didn’t want another child. Both her in-laws and her own parents wanted her to have a second child. Whenever she met relatives, they would always ask when she was going to have another kid. Her only way to resist the pressure was to pretend that she hadn’t made up her mind.

Perhaps because of the involvement of the couple’s families in the marital negotiations, two-sided marriages often struggle with the question of how to create intimacy and autonomy within a small family. The above-mentioned Qiu told me in passing that, because she relies on her mother to tidy the house on weekdays, she often feels like she’s not fully in control of her own life. “I’m in my 30s, and even though the house is big, I’m only able to be responsible for my bedroom,” she told me. “When I’m at my mother-in-law’s house, I’m a guest. Whereas when I’m at my parents’ house, I’m not a guest, but I’m not the master either.”

During my research, I discovered that when a married couple is not well-off, they will continue to depend on their parents, who will also intervene more, with the parents coming to dominate family life. However, when the couple is economically independent, they are more likely to handle childcare and make decisions themselves, with the husband-wife relationship being closer than that of the parent-child.

Interestingly, when I asked residents of the village if they thought the next generation would continue the practice of two-sided marriages, they all answered “no,” even as the reasons they gave varied wildly. Younger parents said that their children will likely care less about tradition and surnames than they do, while older parents thought that their kids will be less interested in involving themselves in their own children’s marriages.

In other words, the current trend toward two-sided marriages in eastern China may just be the product of a particular historical period and socioeconomic environment. After all, the success of this form of marriage requires parents to continue providing material and moral support for the development of their adult children and the next generation.

But their impact on women’s quest for equality within marriages may prove more far reaching. As women become more economically independent and their social status improves, they are realizing the structural disadvantages they face in marriage and on the labor market are not going away anytime soon. At the same time, marketization and commercialization mean that all kinds of family affairs can be outsourced, and even marriage equality is becoming negotiable. The significance of two-sided marriages lies in the fact that it reproduces the ethics of carrying on the family line in women’s formal and everyday lives while creating bargaining space for equal treatment in a traditionally patriarchal institution.

Translator: David Ball; editor: Wu Haiyun.

(Header image: Visuals from VCG, reedited by Sixth Tone)