New | Chinese couples delay divorce until after children’s exams, figures suggest

Statistics in China show that the number of divorces spike between June and September, suggesting that many couples wait until after the gaokao, the country's gruelling university entrance examinations, to split up to avoid affecting their children’s studies.

The trend was found in eight provinces, based on divorce records over the past six years, the Beijing Morning Post reported. In Changsha’s Wucheng district in Hunan province, the number of divorces doubled the week after the exams ended.

In one case, a couple kept their divorce from their daughter for five years, according to the report, which interviewed a youth psychologist and a divorce lawyer. Since the girl returned home from boarding school only on the weekends, the couple would pretend they were still together only on Saturdays and Sundays while living separate lives for the rest of the week.

In another case, a woman remained married to her abusive drug-addict husband because she was afraid the split might affect her daughter’s studies. But the girl witnessed her father putting out his cigarette butts on her mother’s back, and pressured her mother to leave the man. The woman eventually did so, but only after her daughter’s exams. The girl did well in the exams.

One psychologist, Jia Hongwu, believed parents should delay their divorce even longer for the sake of their children’s well-being. Jia said young people had to face the challenges of adapting to university life after their entrance exams, all of which put huge pressure on them. Parents should wait until their children’s lives had become more stable before splitting up, the psychologist said.