Challenges in Cross-Cultural Marriage: When She is Chinese and He Euro-American

Abstract

In order to explore how cultural issues emerge as challenges for intercultural couples, intensive interviews were carried out with 12 couples in which she was Chinese and had grown up in Asia and he was Euro-American. The greatest challenges were communicating without a shared language in which both were equally fluent, the difficulties of living in his home country, and dealing with certain areas of cultural difference. The most challenging areas of cultural differences were zuo yue.zi (a set of postpartum rituals and practices), parenting standards, and filial piety. No couple reported issues with racism directed at them from families of origin or community like those that are common in the experience of black-white couples in the United States. The findings have implications for understanding the relationship course of intercultural couples.