Contesting individualization and individualism in marriage in East Asia: Dual-income couples' monetary practices.

Abstract

This study uncovers Taiwanese dual-earner couples' monetary practices and explores how the marriage institution is conceived of in the context of East Asian familism and the sweeping trend of individualism. Ample cross-national research has investigated household finances and money management among couples over time, yielding mostly Western-oriented insights. It is nevertheless matched with little evidence from East Asian societies that share similar trends of individualization. Drawing from interviews with 22 couples and 3 married individuals (N = 47) in Taiwan, who are at least university-educated, middle-class, and on average in their mid-30s, this paper analyzes couples' monetary practices from a relationship constellation perspective that factors in resources from intergenerational transfer, as well as individual spouses' interpretation of their practices. Individualized management was found to be exceedingly prevalent among Taiwanese couples, unlike couples elsewhere that predominantly adopt pooling. Institutionalized individualization, on the one hand, posed higher hurdles for joint management and pooling. On the other, most interviewees showed an individualistic orientation in their practices, which can be seen as a strategy to anticipate and manage risks-marriage dissolution among others-in a highly uncertain world. Embedding monetary practices in the 'individualization without individualism' debate, this study unveils how the traditional marriage institution is implicitly challenged by not only increasing institutionalized individualization but also an ideational shift towards individualism, often assumed to not have taken root in East Asia. The empirical evidence from Taiwan sheds new light on both resource management in marriage and on how intimate relationships are constrained by institutional and socio-cultural contexts.