Survey Report on Intercultural Marriage

Author: Sheik Tanveer

Abstract 

We present a survey report on intercultural marriage. Intercultural marriage is a growing trend. People have mixed feelings and ideas about it. Based on literature review and discussion in ESL 5315 class, we made some hypotheses on this topic. To verify our hypotheses, we made our questionnaire and conducted our survey from a small number of participants at Texas Tech University. After having our results, we analyzed the survey results and presented them in the result section. We found positive responses as well as cautions from our participants. People are more accepting of it compared to their ancestors. It has challenges and pitfalls and hence we have research opportunities to make the intercultural marriage more acceptable and understandable to general people.

Introduction

By definition, intercultural marriage is a marriage where people from different cultural backgrounds get married. These differences can be race, ethnicity, environment, religion, custom, food and so on. Along with the promises, challenges and pitfalls, the trend of intercultural marriage is increasing day by day.

Intercultural marriages were rare in ancient times. People preferred to marry within their locality and stay near their family. However, keeping pace with world dynamicity, people are resettling from one place to another and thus getting introduced to various types of people. They are making new friends, partners, well-wishers etc. When two people beyond their cultural barrier meet and then are attracted to each other, they tend to bind in a relation. Most often, they want to live under the same roof and get married. Depending on the intercultural differences and degree of sacrifices made by the couple, the marriage lasts for a long time or breaks up within a short time.

The number of intercultural marriages is increasing in those countries where immigrants are pretty high in number and different cultural practices are welcomed. In 2013, statistics showed that 41.3 million immigrants lived in the United States (Zong & Batalova, 2015). So far, the United States has been liberal to all cultures and is a neutral living place for all races, which makes it prone to intercultural marriage. The possibility of getting higher education, better life, and a decent job brings immigrants to this land. When immigrants get married to native people, cultural diversities arise.

Though intercultural marriage is a growing trend, not much research has been accomplished yet to know the detail of these marriages (Frame, 2004). As a part of the course ESL 5315 (English Academic Writing), I have the opportunity to learn more on the topic. I want to give general people a fair idea about intercultural marriage: challenges, pitfalls, and advantages associated with the marriage. As our strategy, at first, we made a literature review. Based on the review, we prepared a questionnaire and made a survey among a sizable number of people. As Texas Tech is a renowned school with nearly 36,000 students (Sims, 2015), my main focus was Texas Tech students. After getting data from the survey, I discussed the ideas in detail with the class. We did some brainstorming and came up with some strategic plans for how to keep intercultural marriages lasting for a long time.

Though intercultural marriage has lots of issues, challenges, and a high break-up rate, it has a number of good aspects as well. Intercultural marriage helps people to explore other languages, customs, and so on. In a way, cross-cultural marriage can bring world peace. In the next part of the essay, the literature review followed by ideas from the survey, pros, and cons of interracial marriage will be discussed in detail.

Literature Review and Hypotheses

Intercultural marriage has lots of advantages and disadvantages. With having its pros and cons, the intermarriage trend is increasing with time. People have mixed opinions and experiences about intermarriages. In this section, we will illustrate some of the aspects of intermarriage based on literature.

Jason and Julie settled in U.S. soil, from South Korea and Australia respectively, and are a happily married couple of more than a decade (Arnold, 2008). They are a great example of a cross-cultural couple who suffered a lot to maintain their cross-ethnic marriage. They founded a church, The Bridge, devoted to stand for and mentor couples of cross-cultural origin. From their own experience, Jason and Julie try to mentor these couples to fight for their marriage. The mentorship helps each couple to understand three important factors: good and bad in marriage are sometimes not absolute facts but just cultural considerations; rather than considering cross-cultural marriage as a shortcoming it can be counted as an opportunity to learn best practices from each culture; and it is important to solve critical marital issues over getting frustrated on the unachievable matters.

Love is one of the major motivations in intercultural marriage. Intermarriages have also been seen to happen between persons from two hostile countries, or who have been brought up in dissimilar cultural backgrounds. Elizabeth, a 50-year-old American lady, was married to a Lebanese man for 22 years (Kim Lawler Creative, 2013). They met in Germany and married at a time when both countries had a hostile relationship. They were even raised in two families which followed totally different cultural environments. Elizabeth’s family was individualistic. On the contrary, her husband’s family was collectivistic. After marriage, she gave up American life and started to follow Lebanese culture. They had two kids who also followed the same. Elizabeth believes that couples from cross-cultural environments have to pass their conjugal life through a series of even and odds. The lesser their dissimilarity, the better.  

Communication and food habits are also found to be challenges in intermarriages. A good example is the cross-cultural relationship between a Taiwanese boy, Lawrence, and a Texan girl, Amanda (Adams, 2010). In their post-marriage life, the first challenge was communication. They found sharing emotions and decisions with a partner who is a non-native speaker is a challenge. The second challenge was choosing similar food, which they overcame by selecting their own version of American-Taiwanese food.

Mike and Jensie, who are Republican and Democratic respectively, and have several differences from each other, are also a good intermarriage example (Trice, 2012). Despite their differences in race, political views, skin color, family issues and so on, they are committed to each other.  

Intermarriage is not a new idea. In ancient times, intermarriage was seen between families of rulers of countries to make nations united (Kasbow, 2016). The author mentioned a person named Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon who understood intermarriage as a way of world peace. Rev. Moon invited young people from the rest of the world to work in the U.S. He arranged numerous group intermarriage ceremonies within different races. Most of those families are still stable and united. Rev. Moon managed to get the author to marry a lady from Japan, a country hostile to the U.S. at that time. He dreamt American president from an intermarriage which came true after 30 years with President Obama.  

Intermarriage is also common among people of the same town and same religion, but from different races. An author took interviews from several interracial couples, scholars in human resource areas and some others in Lubbock, Texas, who are exposed to intermarriage (Ballinger, 2011). He interviewed an intermarriage couple, Siu and Lap, who were afraid of their children getting discrimination in school. Scholars had different opinions on the experience of children who come from intermarriage families.  The author was optimistic about the fact that intermarriages are increasing and general people are getting feedback from intermarried couples. Intercultural marriages are more acceptable now than in past decades.    

Children raised in bi-racial families are open minded about intermarriage (Idmakanti, 2009). About 1 in 12 marriages in the United States is an intermarriage (Clark, 2014).  The young generation is more open minded to intermarriage compared to their previous generations. It is wise to judge people not based on their race and ethnicity, but their personality and character (Guillen, 2016). An author mentioned four key matters to follow to sustain the intermarriages: one needs to know one’s beliefs, needs to focus on similarities rather searching for differences, one should not force one’s partner to change and one should keep the family member’s influences out of conjugal life (Hoffman, 2013).

Based on the literature reviews, we can make hypotheses on intermarriage:

1.     Intermarriage is a growing trend. I believe the young are more open to it compared to the old.
2.    I believe one out of twelve Texas Tech students are exposed to intercultural relationships at least once in their life.
3.      Most of the Texas Tech students will say that intercultural marriage is good for society.
4.      I believe most of the Texas Tech students will say that they will support their child’s intercultural marriage.
5.      I also believe students will agree that children brought up in intercultural marriages have some advantages i.e., they are open minded, learn more about cultures, and can have better education.
6.      I believe Texas Tech students will admit that religion and communication are the challenges in intercultural marriages.

Methods

As a part of the English as Second Language (ESL) course 5315, the class was asked to write a survey report on either cell phone usage inside a classroom and during driving, or on intercultural marriage. Half of the students chose cell phones and the rest chose intercultural marriage. Students were asked to review literature on their corresponding topics. Each student reviewed at least 12 articles. I, as a part of the class, chose intercultural marriage as my topic. I summarized the literature that I reviewed and wrote a literature review. Based on the review, I made six hypotheses.

We wanted to know people’s opinion on these two topics. To do so, the best way was to conduct a survey. The class was divided into two groups based on the topics. Each group discussed cell phone and intercultural marriage separately. Each group did some brainstorming and discussed the literature that students had already reviewed. Based on that, each group made preliminary questionnaires. The instructor, with his prudence and experience, finalized the questionnaires and made a single questionnaire for all. For ease of all, the survey was made available on paper and online.

We wanted to cover a variety of people in our survey. As we were studying at Texas Tech University, which has a very large number of students, including Texan, all other Americans and international, we chose Texas Tech students as our participants. We agreed to conduct approximate 240 surveys. Each of us conducted 13 surveys, including six American males and six American females. We asked the students their age, sex, and marital or relationship status. We also asked them their experience with or exposure to intercultural marriage. We asked what their parents thought and what they thought about intercultural marriage and whether there was any difference or not. We asked their opinions on its impact on society, its impact on children raised in intercultural environment and on whether they would allow their children for having an intercultural marriage or not. We wanted to know what people think are the obstacles and challenges in intercultural relationships and sought their opinion on pastoral counseling for intercultural marriage. We also asked them whether they would do it again or not if they had a chance to go back to the past.             

After getting all the paper surveys, we put them online. We categorized all the answers based on male and female participants. For better illustration, we made some statistical analysis and created some graphs.    

Results

After conducting the survey, our results were compiled. We used Survey Planet for data entry. From that software, we exported our data to excel and conducted the detailed comparisons. In the next part, I will illustrate our survey results and will make a comment on that.

We conducted our survey on 229 people. 124 of them were female and the other 124 were male. Most of them were young. We found 1 student aged below 18 years, 121 students aged within 18-22, 62 students in the 23-27 range, 32 students in the 28-35 range, and the other 13 were above 35 years old. As intended, most of them were American. 114 were from Texas, 63 were from the United States but outside Texas and the other 36 were international students.

In the first hypothesis, I assumed that the young were more open to intercultural marriage compared to the old. We asked Texas Tech students whether they felt more supportive of it than their parents or not. I found that they were positive about intercultural marriage. Around half of the students said they felt more supportive than their parents, a few said they were not, and the rest said they felt about the same. Both the male and female participants responded the same way; based on responses regarding this question, we could not distinguish them. So the survey results supported the hypothesis. The comparison is shown in the figure presented below. Precisely, 50.2% students felt more supportive, 46.7% students felt about the same and only 3.1% felt less supportive to intercultural marriage than their parents. 

My second hypothesis was that one-twelfth of Texas Tech students would be exposed to an intercultural relationship at least once in their life. But our survey results showed that the portion was more than I anticipated.

            From the figure shown below, we can see that around one-third of the Texas Tech students are exposed to it. Within the one-third who were experienced, 46 persons were involved in intercultural relationship once, 10 of them said they grew up in one, and the others said they are in one now. So the intercultural trend is greater in Texas Tech students than I expected.

         

I also hypothesized that intercultural marriage would be welcomed by most Texas Tech students. They would say that it is good for society. 54.1% participants believed it is good for society, only 2.2% said it is not and the remaining 43.7% were neutral about the fact.

                 

   

That remaining 43.7% of participants believed that it does not make any difference in society. We also tried to categorize the minority of participants who believed intercultural marriage was not good for society, but we could not characterize them based on gender, experience, or family. So we can say that people are accepting of intercultural marriage, but still some of them have doubts about its beneficial aspects in society.

I believed most of the Texas Tech students would say that they would support their child’s intercultural marriage. The survey outcome is presented below.         

      

 Irrespective of whether exposed to intercultural relationship or not, most Texas Tech students said that they would support their child’s intercultural marriage. 72.9% of students supported if without any condition, and 21% supported if with the condition that they would like to warn or advise their children who would be involved in intercultural relations. Only 6.1% of the students said they do not want their children involved in intercultural marriage.  

I believed the Texas Tech students would agree that children raised in intercultural environment would be advantaged by being bilingual and by being adaptive to change and cultures. We asked the students several questions on how they would like to characterize children of intercultural marriage. A complete pictorial view of the characterization is shown below.

In general, females are more positive about the children raised in intercultural marriage than the males. 6 participants agreed with all the aspects. 49.8% people admitted that children of intercultural marriage are advantaged by being bilingual, are open-minded and more adaptive to change and cultures. 45 of them were males and the remaining 69 were females. Some of the people also pictured some negative sides of being children of intercultural marriage. 16.5% of people though the children may be teased by other kids, and 17.9% thought they would be either confused about or less interested in religion. 

My last hypothesis was that Texas Tech students would admit religion and communication were the challenges in intercultural marriage. We asked them what they thought are the most difficult aspects of intercultural marriages. Results are shown below in a bar chart.  

As expected, most of them said religion and communication were the two greatest challenges in intercultural marriages. 140 people chose religion, 86 chose language differences, 15 thought food was the most challenging fact, and the other 49 people made a different comment on that. We found some interesting responses that we did not consider before. A bunch of people mentioned that cultural difference is the most difficult aspect for people in intercultural marriage. Celebration of traditional holidays, rituals, and family beliefs are some of them. Two participants mentioned racism from society might be the most difficult aspect. From my own survey experience, I found one participant who mentioned lack of sense of humor is an important challenge in the intercultural marriages. She found people have various ways to express their feelings in different cultures.

Discussion

Our survey results were very informative. We found some valuable responses on the intercultural marriage. We have some research opportunity as well as some survey improvement opportunity that we need to discuss.

We thought one out of twelve Texas Tech students would be engaged in intercultural marriage at least once in their life. From the survey, we found that around one-third of the Texas Tech students were exposed to it. That indicates that the intercultural relationship is a growing trend and exists on a larger scale than we anticipated.

As expected, most of the participants felt that intercultural marriage was good for society. A good portion of the participants also thought that the intercultural marriage (ICM) does not make any difference in society. We could extend our research by asking the participants what motivated them to give these opinions. Some of the participants might be motivated by their friends or family, whereas some might feel that way from social media. We also found a minority of participants who thought ICM was not good for society. We need to investigate what motivated them to say so. It could be from personal or family experience. It was also possible that those minority participants were raised in a conservative family where ICM was strictly prohibited. 

We asked the participants about the beneficial facts of ICM as well as its impact on children who were raised in them. Some beneficial facts that the participants mentioned: children can get better education, can learn more about cultures and travel, children are advantaged by being bilingual, and being adaptive to change and cultures, and ICM people and their children are more open-minded. These are some of the reasons people think ICM is good for society. People are also concerned about some facts of ICM. Some participants believed that the children raised in ICM might be teased or ridiculed by other kids. Some were concerned about racism. We need to come out with some prospective solutions to alleviate these problems.

Another challenge we found was that children raised in ICM could be less interested or confused about religion. If a child is raised in a family where parents followed two different religions or cultures, it would be hard for the child to choose one from those two. It is also possible that the parents sacrificed their religion or tradition to maintain their marriage. To me, all these challenges can be considered as research opportunities. We can learn how a child is impacted by his family, whether the child is more self-sufficient than other children or not.

We asked the participants whether they would do intercultural marriage again or not if they could go to past. We expected a simple yes or no answer from them. But the majority of them were not exposed to ICM. Some of the experienced people were also unwilling to answer it. We have a research opportunity to learn why people are unwilling to answer the question.

We had limited people to conduct the survey. We managed to complete only 229 surveys. It would be better if we could cover the whole of Lubbock city’s people in our survey. Our participants were mostly young people within age ranges 18-22. One-third of the participants have experience in intercultural relationship, while the remaining were inexperienced. It would be better if we could cover more people aged above 23 in our survey. For our next survey, we can ask Texas Tech University for a handsome amount of funding. We will need some volunteers as well to cover a vast population in our survey.

Conclusion

We presented a survey report on intercultural marriage. From our literature review, we got some preliminary idea about intercultural marriage. Then we made some hypotheses and wanted to see whether our hypotheses were correct or not. So we made a survey questionnaire, conducted our survey on intercultural marriage, and analyzed the results. We found that intercultural marriage is an increasing and accepted trend. The young are more accepting of it compared to their parents. People involved in intermarriage and their children get advantageous from it. Still the marriage is challenging and a lot of issues need to be resolved to make it more accessible to general people. Hence, we can see many research opportunities on this topic.

References

Adams, E. (2010, October 20). Cross culture marriage. Retrieved February 16, 2016, from Boundless: http://www.boundless.org/relationships/2010/cross-culture-marriage

Arnold, H. L. (2008). Cross-Cultural marriage mentoring. Retrieved February 10, 2016, from Focus on the family: http://www.focusonthefamily.com/marriage/marriage-challenges/marriage-in-the-melting-pot/cross-cultural-marriage-mentoring

Ballinger, C. (2011, February 23). Interracial couples face discrimination from others. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: http://lubbockonline.com/stories/022310/loc_566396711#.VuK8r_krLIU

Clark, K. (2014, September 27). Interracial marriages on the rise, but social stigmas persist. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from Deseret News: http://national.deseretnews.com/article/2430/interracial-marriages-on-the-rise-but-social-stigmas-persist.html

Frame, M. W. (2004, January). The challenges of intercultural marriage: Strategies for pastoral care. Pastoral Psychology, 52(3), 219.

Guillen, A. (2016, February 9). Interracial marriage not a big deal to millennials. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from The Prospector Daily: http://www.theprospectordaily.com/2016/02/09/interracial-marriage-not-a-big-deal-to-millennials/

Hoffman, D. (2013, July 2). Why you need to think twice about inter-faith marriage. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from Huffpost wedding: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/damona-hoffman/why-you-need-to-think-twi_b_3530077.html

Idmakanti, H. (2009, February 9). A lbsson initiated by young love: cultural and religious tolerance. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from Huffpost religion: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hannah-idamakanti-/cultural-and-religious-tolerance_b_9162818.html

Kasbow, D. (2016). World peace through marriage and family. Retrieved May 2, 2016, from Family federation: http://familyfed.org/world-peace-through-marriage-and-family/

Kim Lawler Creative. (2013, April 8). True story: I had a cross-cultural marriage. Retrieved February 11, 2016, from Yes and Yes: http://www.yesandyes.org/2013/04/true-story-i-had-cross-culture-marriage.html

Sims, K. (2015, September 11). Texas Tech breaks enrollment record for seventh-straight year. Retrieved May 1, 2016, from Texas Tech University: http://today.ttu.edu/posts/2015/09/texas-tech-breaks-enrollment-record-for-seventh-straight-year

Trice, D. T. (2012, February 20). Trice: Interracial marriage is not just a black and white issue. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from Chicago Turbine: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-02-20/news/ct-met-trice-interracial-marriage-0220-20120220_1_interracial-black-women-white-issue

Zong, J., & Batalova, J. (2015, February 26). Frequently requested statistics on immigrants and immigration in the United States. Retrieved March 3, 2016, from Migration information source: http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states

 Appendix 

Survey questionnaire

ESL 5315 Survey Experience

Survey

My experience of gathering the data for the survey included the students present in the Sub during lunchtime. Some of them were in the groups doing gossip and some of them were doing homework alone. In my experience, I had no difficulty at all carrying out the survey. I went to the students and told why I wanted them to fill out the questionnaire for me and how that was going to help in my course. Most of them were willing and few of them said that they were rather busy in their homework. One or two students hesitated in the start but when they saw their friends filling the forms, they ultimately gave in. In addition, a student said that she had already answered the questionnaire two days ago so she would not do that again. I found that students were helpful and friendly and they did not mark the answers just because they had to. They took the survey seriously and all of them even took long to complete the questionnaire as they were thinking deeply about the questions. (Fahad)

Experience when doing the survey

I did this survey in classroom at the end of my TA task. I had to explain to them that this survey had no relation with their performances in the class, because some of them were afraid if they told the truth, that they do play cell phone in the classes, they would lose credit from their final score. After that, most of them were friendly and willing to do me the favor. By the way, most of the students in my class are freshmen, so I think they should in the 18-25 age group. In addition, I asked one of my professor who is older than 50, to help me on this questionnaire; he was glad to do that as well. I am so pleased that it took only a little time to finish all the questionnaires. (Yuan)

Survey

I did the survey on the TTU campus. It was almost dinner time and there were not many students on campus. At first, I went to the Chemical Engineering Department building and gave the survey to some students who were sitting in the hall. They were friendly and willing to fill out the survey. One interesting thing is that when I introduced myself to a student and asked if he was willing to help, he said that he already filled out one earlier that day. In the Chemical Engineering Department building, I didn’t find any girls in the hall. Therefore, I decided to go to the library to finish this task. People were also nice and willing to help in the library hall. Many students were concentrating on their study and I didn’t want to disturb them, so I turned to the Student Union Building (SUB) at last. The only problem was that I found there were much more male students than female ones. Luckily, I got all the questionnaire filled out in the SUB. (Songjing)

My Survey Experience

For the first time at Texas Tech I conducted a survey, and that was on cell phone and intercultural relationships. I did my survey from six American males and six American females who are either studying or working in Texas Tech. As there were some questions which were related to classes and grades, I couldn’t do my survey from any office staff. I tried to choose people from different ages, different majors and who grew up in different environments. I chose one research associate, three graduate students and the rest of them were undergraduates. They willingly participated in the survey. The research associate and the graduate students were from my same department. Some of the undergraduates were my students, some were from my Toastmasters club and the remaining two were random students whom I had never met before. Though in the beginning I was confused about how people would react, I found that everyone in my survey willingly answered all the 32 questions. Two of participant undergraduates were confused about what to say about their major. The research associate was also confused about questions on classes as she is involved only in research. I clarified those questions and they all seemed convinced. Other than that, the survey was really a good experience. (Sheik Tanveer)

Surveys

I had 12 surveys to be done on the topic based on intercultural relationship and cell phones and its impacts. The targets were Americans students or residents of the local community here in Lubbock. I decided to make them easy to do, for survey participants, and entered everything on google forms and created an online survey and a sent a shortened link to my American friends and colleagues. I also went to our university library and handed the surveys to few students in the lobby. Everyone I asked was very polite and accepted my request to share their opinion and time for the survey. I know many American girls who are also my friends, so it was easy to get the female part of the equal distribution of 12 surveys. To get the male part I sent it to over to my married friends and asked them both to do it and went to library for the same. No one said anything unusual apart from the fact that they liked the intercultural questions and thought cellphone questions made it lengthy. Overall it was a pretty interesting experience and I got to get in touch with people I didn’t get to talk to, much, after getting acquainted for the first time. (Snigdha)

Survey

I did take a survey with my department students. My department is a small group; there are about 20 graduate students. With even the small groups I haven't had much time, because I am the only one who is an international student. When I asked them to take the survey, every student was really welcome to visit their office. Some of students I had never talked with, so I brought Korean souvenirs and gave it to them after survey. Those were small dolls made with clay. From this survey they perfectly knew where I was from. At first they were curious why I visited their office by myself. And then they were interested in my survey. I felt that female students were more friendly and had a more active reaction about the survey. And I felt that male students took less time than females. Through this survey I got a good chance to get closer to my department’s students. After getting results I will tell them about it. (Jimin)

Survey

The survey experience was very interesting and new. To be honest, I was wondering about how I would approach people. I decided to go to hand out my survey in Starbucks because I usually go there to study and meet my friends. I went there during the evening after 5:00 PM. I found many students from Texas Tech there. I stayed in Starbucks for more than three hours. I met people who were in a hurry and refused to do the survey, whereas there were people who had the time and were willing to help. I am normally a shy person and approaching people that I do not know was very difficult for me. In addition, the fact that I had to give the survey to six males and six females was somewhat time consuming because I had to wait for either another male or female who is willing to help me with the survey. In general, the people I met were kind and helpful. While filling out the survey, I did have a few people ask me for clarification regarding what is meant by religious purposes and I clarified it for them. I also had people ask me if they could choose more than one option, because all of them applied to them. (Abdullah)

Survey experiences

We, students of ESL 5315, are studying people’s perceptions on two different topics: cell phone usage, and intercultural marriages. We made a questionnaire form to get data from students, faculty, or any professional personnel. Initially, our target was to collect data from six American males and six American females. As a group member, I had to go around the campus and to explain our goal of the study to get the data. I am a member of “Toastmaster Club,” which is a non-profit organization where people can get help to improve their public speaking skill. There are some American male and female members who were happy to do the survey after I told them about our study. Then I managed time to go to the University Recreational Center for the rest of the responders. In both cases, responders were very supportive and cordial to fill out the form. There were two American female students who did not participate in the study because they were so busy. One thing I saw was that responders filled out the first page and gave it to me, because there was no indication to turn it over for the rest of the questions. I had to tell them about the other side of the page. Overall, it was a very nice experience for me to tell a stranger to fill out the questionnaire, after explaining the purpose of our study. (Nazir Hossein)

Social Experience

This is a report about the social experience I had when distributing a survey for my Academic Writing class at Texas Tech University (TTU). As a member of the cellphone group, I decided with another classmate to make an online version for our cellphone surveys. I made one on Monkey Survey website and after writing the whole survey for cellphones and intercultural marriage the website did not provide a link to the survey. It appeared that the website has a limit for the number of the questions that you can send for free. Because the questions were over 10 questions, I have to upgrade my account to be able to get a link. I was annoyed that my time was wasted for nothing, but my classmate found another survey engine and shared the link with me. Our survey was basically a short survey over self-reported cell phone use and intercultural marriage attitudes among TTU students. I got all my surveys in five days, and the number of people was more than I expected. I asked five of my international friends to do it online, and they were polite and helpful. I also asked two classmates from the Applied Linguistics department, who were teachers, to give me a permission to come to their classes and ask their students to take the survey. I was lucky with this step, so I got six international students including myself, eight American males, and eleven American females, a total of twenty-five students. Most of the students had the same comment for question eight, which is a question asking about the purpose of using cellphones in class. They said that they use it as a clock to check time. Some added cultural differences for question twenty-six, which is asking about the difficult aspect for intercultural marriage. All in all, it was easy to get more than an even number of the students and I’m still waiting for 4 other Americans friends to take the survey, too. (Eve)

Survey

I did this survey among my students in chemistry lab, since I forgot to do the survey last week. I was a little bit shy to ask them to do this favor for me, so I didn’t talk a lot about this survey. In addition, those students who took the survey were not very active to this survey. I guess that they had gotten used to taking the survey, so they didn’t show much interest to this survey; or maybe because the survey was performed in class, they didn’t get opportunities to talk with their classmates or with me. (Yu)

Experience on carrying out the survey

It was a great experience for me to conduct the survey on cellphone and inter-cultural marriage. This is the first time in my life to conduct a survey. Since our main target is to study the thinking and visions of American people, I thought it would be easier for me if I would conduct the survey on undergraduate students in my department. I requested several students after a class. The students were very happy to fill out the survey. In a few questions, they were confused and they asked me questions. I suggested they write down their thoughts if they did not agree with the choices and they did so. I was able to conduct the survey on 12 Americans (6 males and 6 females) and 1 international student. Almost everyone answered all the questions of the survey. During the survey, I did not get any negative comments from the people. I think it was a wonderful experience for me. (Hla)

Data collection

In agreement with the sample population that we have chosen for the survey of our writing class, which is 240 domestic Texas Tech students in both genders, each of us needed to collect the responses of 6 males and 6 females to establish our statistical data. Although we had already printed our questionnaire nicely on sheets of paper, we decided to make an online version of these questions, because there were many open-source engines on the internet, such as Survey planet and Survey monkey, that could help us calculate and categorize the answers after they were gathered. In order to get results from a diverse data resource, I came to the Student Union Building, because that is the place where T.T.U. students from different majors and age groups come to study, to take a break between classes or even to have their meals. At first, I wanted to use my tablet to show my targeted subjects the questionnaire, but I changed my mind and gave them the paper version instead. That is because with the question sheets, I could have many people do the survey at the same time, while with the tablet, I could only have people do the survey one by one. During the data collecting process, I found that female students were supportive of the survey while male students were lacking interest in taking time on the questions. However, neither gender showed specific reactions to the survey itself or to any particular question. After one hour and a half, I got more than 12 questionnaire answered, and then I spent one more hour to put all the data in the online version to get the results, which are calculated automatically and categorized nicely in pie charts and briefly written descriptions. (Hoa Vo)

Survey Experience

I tried to gather the data in two ways,: sending email to my American classmates to fill out the survey online, and also asking in person to fill out the paper-based survey. Surprisingly, almost nobody responded online. The probable reason is that asking in person gave me the opportunity to interact through body language in order to persuade them indirectly to fill out the survey. However, there were some people who rejected doing the survey even when asked in person. Most of them gave as an excuse the lack of time when they saw the number of questions. In one case, the guy cursed when I said the survey was about intercultural marriage. Therefore, I decided to go to International Student Fellowship-TTU and ask the American students I know there to do the survey for me. ISF is a place located on Broadway, where both international and American students meet every Friday and socialize while having free food. I could do most of my surveys in this place as people had free time and all were Americans who tended to interact with internationals. There were two people who were surprised with question number 15, and asked me to clarify it for them. 4 people asked me in the middle of the survey, “Then where are intercultural marriage questions?!” and I explained that they will come at the end of the survey. They actually thought that there should be a relationship between cellphone and intercultural marriage in this survey and they were somehow confused. There was one person who was wondering about question 7 as she said, “I don’t know how many hours I spend on the cell phone…” . All in all, Americans in ISF were very friendly and responded to my survey eagerly. (Mahshad)

Summaries #3 - Intercultural Marriage

1. Summary

This article describes the intercultural marriage between a Texan girl and Japanese girl who are entirely different from each other in terms of nature and interests. During studies at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, they become best friends followed by true lovers. They went to Japan for fifteen months where they would see each other on every weekend and it made their bond even stronger. After returning from Japan, they had two wedding ceremonies in the US celebrated in American style and one is planned in Japan, which will be a traditional Japanese wedding. Moreover the writer says that the girl is bossy and argumentative in nature while he is optimistic and always avoids conflicts. In addition, the writer highlights that the girl is of the view that by respecting and appreciating your partner’s culture you can make intercultural marriages successful. She also mentions that by accepting that the way one uses to look at the problem is not always correct is one of the biggest compromises you have to make in these kinds of relationships. In the end, the article tells that they spend quality time with each other as friends. They consider conflict as an opportunity for learning and none of them takes arguments personally (Glee, 2016). (Fahad)

References

Adams, E. (2010, October 20). Cross culture marriage. Retrieved February 16, 2016, from Boundless: http://www.boundless.org/relationships/2010/cross-culture-marriage

Glee. (2016). Texan-Japanese Intercultural Marriage – Finding Your Best Friend Beyond Race. Retrieved from http://offbeatmarriage.com/texan-japanese-intercultural-marriage/

2. Summary

In this article, the author initially discusses the way we perceive race. She says race is a biological element and has a prominent impact over marriage decisions. He says statistics from the 2010 census about marriages present a situation where the divorce rate is higher in interracial couples than in single (white) raced people. She says many studies on inter-racial or interethnic relationships support the above finding but there are also some studies which say education and age of marriage are important aspects in marriage. The higher the education or age at the time of marriage the lesser chance of a divorce. The author then discusses various combinatory statistics of men of African American race, white race, Asian race and women of one of those races. She states that the overall duration of a marriage is an important criteria towards divorce. Thus once a forbidden relationship is now being welcomed and is on rise due to the increased interactions and bonding across cultures and races. (Snigdha)

Newport, J. (2015, March 18). Is Interracial Marriage More Likely to End in Divorce? Retrieved on 16 Feb. 2016 from http://www.blogher.com/latest-statistics-divorce-rates-among-interracial-marriages

3. Summary

In this article, the author says that marriage is defined by the time and place and by the individuals who are involved in a relationship. When it comes to marriage between two cultures, there is no right or wrong; every culture has its own identity and value, where one thing could be right to one culture, but might be wrong, silly, or a stupid act to another. Issues like arranged marriages, marrying someone from a different culture, and cultural traditions might mean totally different things to different people. Moreover, couples who are from different cultures tend to be highly intellectual and more exposed to other cultures. (Mahshad)

Crabtree, V. (2015, October 26). Marriage: Its Diversity and Character. Retrieved on February 17, 2016, from http://www.humantruth.info/marriage.html#Intro

4. Summary

In this article, the author tells a beautiful love story about a cross-cultural couple. Bob, the husband, is an American, while his wife, Katja, comes from Holland. More than forty years ago, Bob was travelling in Europe without a specific route. When he was in Holland one day, he fell in love at first sight with Katja and got her contact information successfully. By writing letters to each other, their relationship developed well. Finally in 1971, Katja came to America and married Bob. Even though sometimes they may meet some problems in their marriage, they always come over them and are magnanimous to each other. Their love never fades and helps them to be better persons. At last, the author also shares some tips from Katja and Bob on how to keep a happy marriage. (Songjing)

Reference:

Anderson, C. (2015, August 5). Marriage Interview 10: A Cross-Cultural Love Story. Palo Alto. Retrieved on Feb 15, 2016, from http://www.paloaltoonline.com/blogs/p/2015/08/05/marriage-interview-10-a-cross-cultural-love-story.

5. Summary

The present article shares a story of cross-cultural relationship between a Taiwanese boy, Lawrence, and a Texan girl, Amanda. Amanda was getting serious about her relationship with Lawrence and was getting used to Taiwanese culture. Eventually they got married. In their post marriage life, the first challenge was communication. They found sharing emotions and decisions with a partner who is a non-native speaker is a disadvantage. The second challenge was choosing the same food, which they overcame by selecting their own version of American-Taiwanese food. They faced and solved all their problems together and become a happily married couple. (Sheik)

Adams, E. (2010, October 20). Cross culture marriage. Retrieved February 16, 2016, from Boundless: http://www.boundless.org/relationships/2010/cross-culture-marriage

Glee. (2016). Texan-Japanese Intercultural Marriage – Finding Your Best Friend Beyond Race. Retrieved from http://offbeatmarriage.com/texan-japanese-intercultural-marriage/

6. Summary #3

In this article, the author shared her love story, in which she fell in love with an American guy, and their “fighting” against traditional Bengali culture for their love. At the beginning, the author was ready for an arranged marriage to make her parents happy and satisfied. However, after she met with Seth in her workplace, true love made her fight for a happy marriage instead of an arranged marriage. Rejecting this relationship, the author’s parents were afraid that their daughter may lose her cultural roots after this intercultural marriage. Seth and she tried their best to prove that she would not lose her belief. Finally, her parents accepted. Beside the pressure from family, there were also some problems from Bengali culture. However, they beat them and proved that differences between cultures will not block their love. Also, they grew from each other’s culture, i.e. Seth learnt Bengal and Arabic while the author learnt to cook classic American foods. At the end, the author said that your idea wouldn’t change until you meet your love. Keep it and fight for it. (Yuan)

Noor, N. (2015, October 28). My Cross-Cultural Marriage. The Gang Magazine. Retrieved on Feb. 16, 2016. From: http://thegangmagazine.com/2015/10/cross-cultural-marriage-my-story/

7. Summary #2

In this article, the author indicates that the number of Catholics who marry Jews and Muslims has risen recently. In terms of available Pastoral resources, Catholic-Muslim couples are at a loss compared to their Catholic-Jew peers. The reason is that Jews have a longer history and larger population in American society, while Muslims, regardless of the fact that they are now more than Jews in the United States, have no Pastoral resources. Of course, there are a few of these resources but they are either outdated or belong to other societies rather than Americans. The result is that when Catholic-Muslim couples encounter an unusual problem there is almost no Pastoral care for them to get advice from. On the other hand, there are some restricted rules for a Muslim-Christian marriage in Islam. Muslim men are permitted to marry Jews and Christian women but Muslim women do not have the same right. (Mahshad)

Reference:

Tvrtkovic, R.G. (2001, September 10). When Muslims and Christians Marry. America, The National Catholic Review.. Retrieved on February 12, 2016, from http://americamagazine.org/issue/322/article/when-muslims-and-christians-marry

Summary #2 - Intercultural marriage

1. Summary

The present article narrates a true story of a 50 years old American lady, Elizabeth, who was married to a Lebanese man for 22 years. They met in Germany and married at a time when both countries had a hostile relationship. They were even raised in two families which followed totally different cultural environments. Elizabeth’s family was individualistic. On the contrary, her husband’s family was collectivistic. After marriage, she gave up American life and started to follow Lebanese culture. They had two kids who also followed the same. Elizabeth believes that couples from cross-cultural environments have to pass their conjugal life through a series of evens and odds. The lesser their dissimilarity, the better. (Sheik)

Reference

Kim Lawler Creative. (2013, April 8). True story: I had a cross-cultural marriage. Retrieved February 11, 2016, from Yes and Yes: http://www.yesandyes.org/2013/04/true-story-i-had-cross-culture-marriage.html

2. Summary

The article shares a story of an American girl happily married with an Indian guy. It tells that their marriage celebrations involved rituals and people from both countries. They are parents of three kids who are being brought up under the shadow of Indian and American cultures. Indian culture emphasizes strong family bond and taking care of siblings by making out of the way efforts, whereas American culture prefers the individuals’ liberty and independence. Therefore the couple always teaches their kids to take care of themselves and people around. They teach them that they should analyze the situation first and think of a culture whose value is best to solve it (Muddamalle, 2015). (Fahad)

References

Kim Lawler Creative. (2013, April 8). True story: I had a cross-cultural marriage. Retrieved February 11, 2016, from Yes and Yes: http://www.yesandyes.org/2013/04/true-story-i-had-cross-culture-marriage.html

Muddamalle, B. (2015, August 6). mixedrootsstories. Retrieved from http://mixedrootsstories.com/is-it-possible-to-balance-two-cultures-perfectly/#comment
 
3. Summary

In this article, the author presents several reports on people’s biases against interracial relationships. The first research result is from the Daily Beast, which reports a cross-cultural couple undergoing a raw deal. What’s more, Huffpost Live believes that the stigmas have lasted for decades. As evidence, a song of an interracial relationship was forced to be revised in 1980s. What Associated Press finds is that about 1 in 12 marriages in America is interracial and this percentage rises quickly. The research conducted by Pew Research Center shows that young people are more open to cross-cultural marriage than their parents and non-whites are more positive to it. The NBC News tells the story about a Vietnamese woman who marries a white man. Her family didn’t agree with her marriage at first but finally accepted it. According to Daniel Licheter, a scholar in sociology, the biases will vanish as society develops. (Songjing)

Reference:

Clark, K. (2014, September 27). Interracial marriages on the rise, but social stigmas persist. Deseret News. Retrieved on 2016, Feb. 11, from http://national.deseretnews.com/article/2430/interracial-marriages-on-the-rise-but-social-stigmas-persist.html.

4. Summary

In this article, the author, who is a dating coach, discusses the difficulties of an inter-faith (intercultural) marriage. She states that though the number of such marriages are increasing, the rate of break ups in relationships is also increasing. She thinks love isn’t an antidote for all the differences in the core values. She gives her own parents' example to state how tough it can get. She says that it becomes really challenging even in this modern age to completely give up your beliefs, or suddenly believe something totally different or opposite to what we believed as we grew up. She advises four steps for couples in this fix. She says first we should know what we believe in, focus on the similarities and not on the differences, do not try to force your partner to change, and lastly she advises to keep the world and other family members' impacts out of your personal life. She ultimately concludes saying that if only we let love take over the differences created by man, we can actually start to understand each other. (Snigdha)

Reference:

Hoffman, Damona. 2013, July 02. "Why You Need To Think Twice About Inter-Faith Marriage". The Huffington Post. Retrieved on 12 Feb. 2016 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/damona-hoffman/why-you-need-to-think-twi_b_3530077.html

5. Summary #2

In this article, the author interviewed several people who are interracial couples, scholars in human relation areas, or have experience with cross-cultural relationship. Fortunately, all of them come from Lubbock, Texas. Thus, it is helpful for our future project.

Siu and her husband Lap live in Lubbock and have two children. They are afraid that other kids in school will discriminate against their children. In fact, though, people in Lubbock are very nice. In addition, Lap said that their marriage is stabilized by having same religion as his wife. He thought that the belief in God helps them know each other better.

In this article, scholars hold different opinions on whether the experience being a child of interracial parents will be bright or not, because there are more and more people who get married who are from different cultures. These kinds of situations today are much more acceptable than they were a few years ago. However, the author said that people need more time to adapt to the changing, even though it is common nowadays.

The author said, the most serious problem faced by cross-cultural couples is cultural conflict. They have different history and national culture; even the food is different.

The best way to strengthen the marriage, offered by Lap, is to study from each other; by doing that, they will develop their relationship. (Yuan)

Reference:

Ballinger, C. (2011, February 23). Interracial couples face discrimination from others. Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Retrieved on Feb.11, 2016, from http://lubbockonline.com/stories/022310/loc_566396711.shtml#1

6. Article Summary

In the article, Interracial marriage not a big deal to millennials, the author, Angel Ulloa talked about how common interracial marriage has become throughout the years. She provided results of studies to prove her point. For example, in a single year, 2013, data has proven that “6.3 percent of all marriages were interracial”. Regardless of the different views of generations of interracial marriage, it is actually more favored and, according to one of whom the author quoted, it’s ignorant and even biased to think otherwise. Moreover, the author mentioned how some races favored and were likely to be involved in interracial marriages more than others, such as Asians and American Indians. Still, there were opposing views on how such marriages can be bad for society, which were expressed by some interviewees. Nevertheless, the author showed which point of view she embraced and that was the importance of being connected to one’s personality and character rather than cutting someone off because of their race. (Sarah)

Reference:

Ulloa, A. February 9, 2016. Interracial marriage not a big deal to millennials. The prospector daily. Retrieved February 10, 2016. http://www.theprospectordaily.com/2016/02/09/interracial-marriage-not-a-big-deal-to-millennials/

Summary #1 - Cross-cultural marriage

1. Summary

Jason and Julie settled on U.S. soil from South Korea and Australia respectively and are a happily married couple of more than a decade. They are a great example of a cross cultural couple who suffered a lot to maintain their cross-ethnic marriage. They are the founders of a growing church, The Bridge, devoted to standing for and mentoring couples of cross-cultural origin. From their own experience, Jason and Julie try to mentor these couples to fight for their marriage. The mentorship helps each couple to understand three important factors: good and bad in marriage are sometimes not absolute facts but just cultural considerations; rather than considering cross-cultural marriage a shortcoming, it can be counted as an opportunity to learn best practices from each culture; and, it is important to solve critical marital issues rather than getting frustrated about unachievable matters. (Sheik)

Reference

Arnold, H. L. (2008). Cross-Cultural Marriage Mentoring. Retrieved February 10, 2016, from Focus on The Family: http://www.focusonthefamily.com/marriage/marriage-challenges/marriage-in-the-melting-pot/cross-cultural-marriage-mentoring

Idamakanti, H. (2016, February 09). Huffpost Religion. Retrieved from Huffingtonpost: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hannah-idamakanti-/cultural-and-religious-tolerance_b_9162818.html


2. Summary

This article (Idamakanti, 2016) begins with a bi-racial girl raised by a Puerto Rican mother married to a white man. At the age of 17, the girl realized her inclination towards other ethnic men when she met with a Pakistani guy. The bond could not stand longer due to prevailed Islamophobia those days, however he impressed her with his generosity. Her next boyfriend was American when she joined American army but she was never into the relation as it was different from her nature. At last she ended up in a happy marriage with an Indian hindu guy in which they both adopted the traditions and rituals of cross. She credited the Pakistani guy who came across in her teen age for the successful marriage who made her to accept absolutely new things in life. (Fahad)

References

Idamakanti, H. (2016, February 09). Huffpost Religion. Retrieved from Huffingtonpost: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hannah-idamakanti-/cultural-and-religious-tolerance_b_9162818.html


3. Summary

In this article, the author discusses an experience of a young couple in a cross cultural relationship. The girl is from Venezuela and the boy is from India and they met in the USA. They differ in not just religions, language, and upbringing, but also in belief over existence of God. Neither of them thought about getting into a relationship, but fell out of love with their previous partners and in love with each other. They tried to keep the relationship under wraps initially, but their parents understood eventually. They faced family skepticism from each parent’s side. Parents often do not understand how to let the conversation flow with someone younger, from a totally different background, since all the stuff they would ask and talk about just doesn’t exist with this person. Once they are able to figure out topics to talk about that go much deeper than just language and religion, they start bonding. The author says that couples in intercultural relationships often need to work harder to understand and accept each other. To overcome differences they need more patience, maturity and understanding of each other, as critical issues keep rising as they move ahead. With the love, hobbies, and time they share and a persistent attitude the relationship would definitely succeed. (Snigdha)

References:

Bahrampour, Tara. (2010, February 12). She's From Venezuela. He's From India. They're In Love. Washingtonpost.com. Retrieved on 10 Feb. 2016 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/12/AR2010021202762.html


4. Summary

It has been said that lots of stable relationships have been related to interracial marriages. These relationships have reflected many factors like higher education and income and more importantly stabilized life. In contrast are the people with the same racial origin. Racial combination is another factor that can determine the level of marital stability. Moreover, marriage resiliency has turned out to be affected by racial prejudice. People who have an open minded mentality are willing to accept others and cope with life problems that they encounter in their marital life. This mentality helps them to build better relationship with their communities and overcome problems they might face personally and socially. (Mahshad Kazemzadeh)

Interracial Marriage. (2003). International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family. Retrieved February 10, 2016 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3406900238.html


5. Summary

In this article, the author shares some things she learned from her cross-cultural marriage. She is an American and her husband comes from Ireland. The first thing the author learned is to keep culture differences in mind and try to make comprehensive arrangements in domesticity. Difference doesn’t mean awfulness. On the other hand, the different cultural background may help extend the insight for cross-cultural couples. This is the second thing the author learned from her marriage. The third thing is that everyone may experience homesickness sometimes and the spouse can do something to heal it. The last thing the author mentioned is about religion belief. She is a Christian and she learned to follow Jesus’s example. (Songjing)

Reference:

O’Neill, R. (2015, December 6). 4 things I’ve learned from my cross-cultural marriage. A Biblical Marriage. Retrieved on Feb. 8, 2016, from http://abiblicalmarriage.com/4-things-ive-learned-from-my-cross-cultural-marriage/.


6. Summary of “Cross-cultural marriage is no picnic”

In this article, the author says talks about some experiences he lives through, who has a cross-cultural relationship.

The author is a Hindu. He has a marriage with a Christian lady who come from Kenya. He says the most serious trial in their marriage is the difference between religion. He gives examples from his own family and his wife’s family. In his country, the skin problem of his wife makes lots of trouble on her, even though she is not a Hindu. The people judges her skin and their marriage again and again. In the Christianity world, although their engagement was finally supported by his father-in-law, their marriage is also facing questions from the church. However, he insisted that big romance can solve difficulties. He said, people who are in love, but from different cultures, shouldn’t be afraid of the pressure from family prejudices. Believe in love and believe in your partner. Don’t let other’s words damage your own relationship. (Yuan)

Reference

Pathak, P. (2010, January 11). Cross-cultural marriage is no picnic. Theguardian. Retrieved on Feb. 10, 2016, from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/11/cross-cultural-marriage-fetished