The ancestors stipulated that "you should not marry a wife with the same surname". Why is this ancient rule not observed now?

The rule set by the ancestors: marry a wife and not marry a woman with the same surname: very reasonable. The division of surnames began from the rites of Zhou, and it was also based on the paternal relationship, which improved the ethics of the Three Cardinals and the Five Permanent Members. It is considered that the same surname is a blood relationship from generation to generation, and it should be noted that men and women with the same surname got married from the previous generation.

There is an old saying in China, "A blind date with the same surname means that people with the same surname get married, and future generations are not prosperous." . This statement made sense in ancient times when the economy was backward, the traffic was blocked, the population mobility was small, and people of the same family lived in concentrated places, because people with the same surname at that time.

Blood relationship is determined according to the traditional biological chain. At that time, it was generally believed that the marriage of close relatives was likely to affect the health of future generations and was not conducive to improving the quality of the population. As a result, "Marry a wife with a different surname" became the ancestral motto of feudal society.

With the progress of science and technology, since 1950s, there has been a medical scientific conclusion that consanguineous marriage for more than three generations has no effect on bearing offspring.

In the form of law, the state affirmed the legality that men and women with the same surname can get married except for three generations, and provided legal support for non-consanguineous marriages with the same surname, so the ancestral rules that people with the same surname could not get married began to fall apart.

With the improvement of people's education level, young people have a very clear scientific understanding of the harm of consanguineous marriage, which is prohibited by law, so they will consciously avoid blind date. Therefore, the old clan leaders with the same surname all go with the flow, and they do not use clan concept to interfere with intermarriage with the same surname.

More importantly, with the improvement of urbanization and the decrease of rural family population, more and more rural youth have passed the college entrance examination, and the number of young people working in cities or in different places has increased significantly. The space for blind date between men and women has obviously expanded, and the chances of relatives or close relatives with the same surname meeting are slim.

In addition, because a large number of young people have left their homes, they have less and less time to return to their hometown in rural areas, and the family structure in rural areas has become loose, resulting in increasingly weak clan concepts and increasingly alienated clan kinship. In this way, the influence of clan elders on the intermarriage of small clans with the same surname is naturally weakened.

Under the situation of reform and opening-up, a large number of western cultures have flooded into China, which has greatly impacted and destroyed the traditional culture of China. As a result, the etiquette is unbalanced, the clan concept is weak, clan relations and feelings are naturally alienated and severed.

Therefore, the family instructions to the elders at home don't work. With the gradual failure of family precepts, more and more people marry women with the same surname.