Asian-American Families

Mate Selection

For many Asian Americans, marriage has been considered not just as a union between two individuals but also, and perhaps more important, as a union between two families. Therefore, Asian-American parents were often involved in mate selection for their offspring. This form of arranged marriage was particularly common among early Asian immigrants in the United States. For example, in the early 1900s, many Japanese male immigrants resorted to “picture-bride marriages” in which the partners knew each other only through the exchange of photographs before marriage. These prospective wives of Japanese men were frequently chosen by their parents and relatives back in Japan. Later generations of Asian Americans, however, have been more likely to select their future spouses based on individual factors. An increase in Asian-American interracial marriage (marriage between two people of different races) since the 1970s indicates that Asian-American marriage has become a matter of individual preference.

Relationships between Spouses

Traditional Asian-American husbands often maintain an authoritative and dignified relationship to their wives. However, as succeeding generations of Asian Americans become more exposed to the mainstream culture, their marital relations become more like those of most White middle-class American families in which egalitarian couple relations are expected. For example, most Japanese and Chinese Americans who immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s tended to have more egalitarian marital relationships compared with Korean and Vietnamese Americans, many of whom immigrated to the United States after the 1965 immigration reform. This tendency suggests that Japanese and Chinese Americans, through longer contact and participation in the larger culture, are more likely to have absorbed the dominant cultural and familial values in the United States compared with recent immigrants from Korea and Vietnam. This assimilation perspective also partly explains a relatively large number of interracial marriages among well-educated and professional Japanese and Chinese Americans compared with their Korean and Vietnamese counterparts.

...