In sum, cross-national marriage is popular through the globe, and the potential conflicts within marriage connect with different cultural backgrounds of the spouses。 From the cultural view of inpidualism and collectivism, people from the United States seem to score higher on emotional investment while Chinese seem to focus more on the pragmatic elements。   论文网

1。2 Aims and Significance 

     In spite of the overall growing number of cross-national couples seeking therapy, there is insufficient cohesive information available that can help us understand such couples (Biever et al。 1998; Fu et al。2001; Volker et al。 2003; Zhang & Van Hook, 2009)。 So first and foremost, this thesis provides more descriptions of cultural factors related to Chinese and American marriage, offering basic material for further research。 

     In addition, it is widely acknowledged that Chinese culture is deeply influenced by Confucianism and is usually regarded as collectivistic culture which thinks highly of strong attachment of family and responsibility while the Unites State is typically considered as an inpidualistic culture, and Anglo American Parents are more likely to raise their children in an independent way。 Thus, the practical importance of marriage may not be the most significant factor in American marriage and the marital roles could be more flexible and negotiable while conditions might be a little different in Chinese marriage。 Hence this thesis explores the possible cultural factors that cause conflicts or lead to different opinions。 

     Since intercultural marital adjustment refers to be culturally aware of the differences that exist in a marriage and making an effort to understand and compromise to one another’s needs (Tseng et al, 1977), this thesis tries to provide some general suggestions for better marital adaption of cross-national marriage after the discussion of conflicts。 

1。3 Organization of the Thesis

     This thesis discusses the marital conflicts from the cultural aspect and consists of 4 parts。 The first part is introduction, including research background, aims and significance and organization of the thesis。 The second part is research methodology, introducing how the researches are being carried out。 This part is made of research questions, description of subjects, and method of research。 The third part is to analyze the data comes from the questionnaire and illustrate some phenomena showed in the research。 The fourth part discusses and concludes the whole thesis, exploring the relatively deep factors that contribute to the phenomena and providing some possible suggestions to the conflicts。 The last part illustrates some limitations and future researches of this study。 After the main body of this thesis, there is reference。文献综述

2。 Research Methodology

2。1 Research Questions

In brief, this thesis studies the following three questions:

(1)。 What factors are more likely to lead to marital conflicts in Chinese marriage and American marriage?

(2)。 How cultural factors contribute to these conflicts?

(3)。 Are there any suggestions for adapting to cross-national marriage more easily?