Narrative Tension and Marriage-Birth Dilemma: A Study on the Generation Mechanism of Marriage Anxiety among Urban Single Young People

Against the backdrop of continuously delayed age at first marriage and first childbirth among Chinese youth, alongside rising willingness to remain unmarried and childfree, this paper distinguishes the concept of "marital anxiety" from existing research on fertility and marriage intentions, and employs the term "narrative tension" to denote the discrepancy between idealized fertility and marriage scenarios and their practical feasibility. Grounded in narrative theory and a gender perspective, this paper focuses on urban single youth and analyzes the mechanisms underlying marital anxiety at three levels of analysis: macro-level institutional contradictions, meso-level transmission by online media, and micro-level internalization of individual experience, based on available survey data and existing literature. The findings reveal that marital anxiety among urban single youth arises from the convergence of three factors: the failure of marriage and fertility support systems, the amplification of risk narratives online, and accumulated defensive pessimism among individuals. Accordingly, this paper proposes corresponding practical mitigation pathways from multiple stakeholders and multiple dimensions.