How Cultural Differences Impact Marriage Speakers, Authors & Christian Marriage & Relationship Coaches
In the United States, for example, minor children have a right to be supported materially by their parents or other legal guardians. Parents have a responsibility to support and nurture their children. Spouses have a right to mutual support from each other and property acquired during a marriage is considered “common property” in many U.S. states unless specified otherwise by a pre-nuptial agreement. Many such responsibilities are reinforced by religious or other ideological notions. This distinction mostly matters in societies with patrilineal or matrilineal descent because in such societies one set of parallel cousins is in your own kin group, while cross-cousins are generally not. So, in a patrilineal society, children will be in the same kin group as their father, their father’s brother, and their father’s brother’s children. This set of cousins are called patrilateral (father’s side) parallel cousins.
You are definitely not left alone and things https://www.clcbham.com/armenian-women/ are not left to chance. Some anthropologists have argued that marriage IS primarily about children and “descent”—who will “own” children. If a family had two sons and one was already married and still living with his natal family, the second son might live with the wife’s family at marriage if that family had the space. In these situations, which were not considered ideal but still were in the range of acceptable alternatives, young married women found themselves living with their own mothers rather than a mother-in-law.
Experienced again and again, these disagreements cause significant marital and familial conflict. Many of my patients struggle to bridge a cultural divide between them and their spouse–who is of a different culture, country, and/or religion–or between immigrant parents and first-generation children. Communicating across this chasm takes understanding, empathy, flexibility, and most importantly, practice.
Couples who pursue the third option are often the most successful, although it’s arguably the most difficult, precisely because they are forced to address conflicts most frequently. First, take some time on your own to write down your thoughts about each of the three areas. Listen to and acknowledge each other’s responses, resisting any temptation to diminish or discount your partner’s fears. Next, note where you have common ground and where your values and boundaries diverge. No couple has perfect overlap in those two areas, but if they are too divergent, negotiate a middle ground. If, for example, one of you could tolerate living apart for a period but the other could not, you’ll need to shape a boundary that works for both of you.
The list of things people want from their spouses and partners has grown substantially in recent decades. So argues Eli Finkel, a professor of social psychology at Northwestern University in his new book, The All-or-Nothing Marriage.
Clearly, this is not a community in which men do not fulfill responsibilities as fathers. It is one in which the responsibilities and how they are fulfilled varies markedly from those of fathers living in other places and cultures. This does not mean that romantic love is purely a recent or U.S. and European phenomenon. Romantic love is widespread even in cultures that have strong views on arranging marriages. Traditional cultures in India, both Hindu and Muslim, are filled with “love stories” expressed in songs, paintings, and famous temple sculptures. One of the most beautiful buildings in the world, the Taj Mahal, is a monument to Shah Jahan’s love for his wife.
A Asian dating sites dowry was important for a woman to take with her into a marriage because the groom’s family had the upper economic hand. It helped ease the tension of her arrival in the household, especially if the dowry was substantial.
Think, for a moment, about our taken-for-granted assumptions about to whom children belong. Explain how family patterns represent and reflect cultural contexts. Her brother-employer thought the baby would make their lives more hectic. But because they had “such a great comfort level, that would make it work,” Khris Middleton said. But when he returned to Los Angeles in January 2015, the mood changed. He was also still struggling with the death of his mother a few years earlier.
- The Household Questionnaire was used to identify female adolescents eligible to be interviewed with the Female Adolescent Questionnaire.
- In many societies, marriages are affirmed with an exchange of property.
- Now we’re planning an Ohio wedding from California, and relying heavily on my parents to lay the groundwork for this event.
Increasingly, many couples establish a residence together before marriage or may skip the formal marriage altogether. Partners in cross-national couples may have to learn and adjust to how the interactions with the local community and the host country impact the immigrant partner and, as a result, the couple.Different stages in life can present different issues.
Holidays as an Interracial Couple
While such tests cannot be conducted without variation to study, behavior in other animal species may shed light on these theories. Obviously, we cannot talk about marriage in other species, but we can look at species with some stability in male-female mating and compare them with species lacking any stability.
Polygyny
There is often marked age asymmetry in these relationships, with husbands much older than their wives. In polygynous households, each wife commonly lives in her own house with her own biological children, but the family unit cooperates together to share resources and provide childcare. The husband usually “visits” his wives in succession and lives http://seiinac.org.mx/an-introduction-to-traditional-chinese-culture-shen-yun-learn-resource/ in each of their homes at various times .
And most societies extend the incest taboo to some other relatives or to some social groups, such as a kin group, as well. Generally, divorce is universally seen as something negative across many cultures. For example, cultures that focus on collective identity tend to perceive divorce as a failure of societal duties that results from a personal flaw or weakness that either or both spouses possess. The family and community looks down on and sometimes blames the couple for not trying hard enough or for being “bad” or “selfish” spouses. However, societal blame tends to focus on the spouse to whom tradition assigns the duty of maintaining the household. As a result, individuals who identify with these cultural values face strong societal pressures to avoid divorce.
