Until social, economic, and political revolutions overthrew the old order, people in China gave their daughters out in marriage shortly after puberty and took in place wives for their sons. The exceptions were a few people who adopted a girl at an early age and reared her to be a son's wife, and a few others who, lacking male children, called in a husband for a daughter and employed him as a substitute son. One could find examples of these alternative forms of marriage in most communities, but they never accounted for more than a tiny fraction of all marriages. Rearing a son's wife was despised because it was associated with extreme poverty, and substituting a son-in-law for a son was avoided as a breach of patrilineal descent.

This book's goal is to demonstrate that while these rules are a fair representation of many communities, it is a misrepresentation of others. By examining a painstaking detail the decisions taken in nine districts in norther Taiwan from 1845 to 1945, the authors hope to show that Chinese marriage and adoption practice were not the simple reflections of uniform ideals. Rather, they were the complex reflections of a variety of forces, demographic, economic, and psychological, that interacted to shape family organization.