Life and Family Values Similarity in Inter-Ethnic and Inter-Faith Couples

Abstract

Inter-cultural families are an integral part of modern society, the institution of mutual influence of different cultures, of a person’s identity transformation. The studies of marital adjustment, values, and attitudes consistency in inter-cultural couples provide contradictory results. To resolve contradictions in this area, comparative studies of inter-cultural families of different types are important. The aim of the study is the comparative analysis of life and family values in inter-cultural couples, differing by the ethnic and religious affiliation of spouses. The participants: 69 couples: 20 mono-ethnic Russian, 30—inter-ethnic, inter-faith (Russians/Arabs); 19—inter-ethnic, with a common religion (Russian/Transcaucasian, Christians). The methods: Value Survey (Schwartz), Marital Role Expectations and Aspirations (Volkova), Marital Satisfaction Test (Stolin et al.), Mann–Whitney U-test, paired T-test. In inter-cultural couples, the spouses’ life-values coincidence is significantly less strong than in mono-cultural ones. However, in couples with common religious differences, their life values reflect not so much the contradictions, but the complementarity of traditional gender values. In general, the different cultures of spouses (both ethnic and religious) optimizes the process of comparing values and family attitudes. Despite a number of difficulties, spouses from inter-cultural couples generally have more consistent ideas about their family life.