Cultural and socioeconomic influences on divorce during modernization: Southeast Asia, 1940s to 1960s

摘要

It is commonplace to observe that modernization leads to a rise in divorce. Although such is the trend in the United States and in some other Western societies, it is not a universal pattern. In several Asian countries, including Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Indonesia, moderately high patterns of divorce existed prior to modernization and industrialization (Goode 1993; Jones 1994). In contrast to the Western trend of rising divorce, these societies have experienced declines in divorce with modernization (Heaton et al. 2001; Jones 1997).