Socially, there were changes in the status system at large. There were also more subtle shifts in the micro world of the family, which remained the basic institution in Chinese practice as well as Confucian theory.

In place of the hereditary aristocracy, which was unable to survive the turbulence accompanying and following the fall of the Tang dynasty, there developed a broader elite that, ideally, based its wealth on land ownership, its prestige on learning, and its political clout on access to office and office holders.

The emergence of this class had much to do with the Song dynasty's commitment to rule by civilian bureaucrats (at the expense of the military) chosen by examination. In a society in which most people were illiterate, or at best semi-literate, the elite stood out by virtue of their reading and writing skills. Male learning was particularly stressed since it gave access to the examinations. The majority of examination candidates failed, but studying for the examinations produced men throughout the land who were educated in the same classic texts.