Cross Culture

Posted on by hollyfrostgoldportpress

By Holly the Assistant

(This is still not the intended post for today, it is, however, the one you are getting. Perhaps next week, requires more research.)

Some friends have been encouraging me to write about how to manage cross culture marriage, since I was just giving advice to one’s granddaughter and the other’s duct tape grandson, on the occasion of their marriage, on how to not commit spousal homicide. Years ago, you see, two college music students who were perhaps a touch idealistic in spite of my having been accused since early teens of being a cynic and him having survived a civil war in his teens, decided we would get married.

Both sets of parents, his from across an ocean, mine from across the state, were against this.

Both sets of parents lived to regret being against this. But a lot of our friends and family failed to sustain cross culture marriages, and we learned a few things along the way.

Herewith, the one thing to consider when taking on a spouse from another culture.

It isn’t you: it’s custom.

It almost never is you. Whatever it was, it wasn’t personal TO you. He’s appalled that you expected him to garden because that’s women’s work, and he knows nothing about it, and it’s emasculating. He’s appalled that you went alone to work in the garden because that’s dangerous and women get killed doing that. Neither is about you and what you did. (Not our examples, but actual real world examples.)

Americans are very much “If work needs done, get it done, if you are remotely physically and mentally capable of it, and if you are not, figure out how to do it anyway.” Most of us have very few fears of physical danger (or are prepared to protect ourselves against it) from wild beasts or other humans. We might have psychological hangups about some tasks, but other than bearing and nursing children, there is very little that either sex won’t do if needs must. We generally expect that a man who lives alone figures out how to do laundry or hires it done, and that a woman who lives alone figures out how to change her car tire or hires it done, and if you can do it alone you can do it with a spouse as needed.

One early point of contention in our marriage was the kitchen garbage. This wasn’t even wider culture: it was just how our parents did it. His mother ruled the kitchen, and anyone else entered it only under her watchful eye. I don’t think my mother-in-law would have permitted my father-in-law to take out the garbage: he knew nothing about garbage, would have done it wrong, and anyway, he was the vice-principal of the boarding mission school they lived at and in the main school building, and he walked out the internal door from their apartment living room into the school hall without ever stepping outside.

On my side, my father walked out the door to work every morning at 8:30 am and took the garbage with him, as the kitchen garbage was two steps from the mudroom, and the outdoor bin was next to the garage door. So early in our marriage, I had lifting restrictions from pregnancy, and was rather pissed off that my husband was walking by a full garbage can on his way to work and not emptying it. He was rather shocked that I expected him to notice it was full and empty it. Now, as a bachelor, he had figured out cooking, and he certainly emptied his own garbage can then, so . . . he’d reverted to the assumption of childhood role model behavior.

Neither is morally wrong, neither is culturally wrong (unless you’re my mother-in-law or my mother) in and of itself, and more importantly, neither of us had the bad sense to think it was personally targeted. Once it clicked, he noticed sometimes that the garbage needed to go out, and I pointed it out to him when he didn’t, with no rancor. It was just a thing. A rather ridiculous thing, but the garbage got taken out.

You cannot of course tolerate abuse in a cross cultural marriage, any more than any other marriage, but you DO need to specify what abuse means, because different cultures have different definitions. This needs to be done in advance, with cool heads, not in a moment of passion, and preferably with a trustworthy counselor (I’d advise a preacher who has worked abroad or in our internal other-culture pockets) present. That’s an awkward one to negotiate. Fortunately, the USA has pretty solid laws on “This is assault” and doesn’t put in exceptions for “Unless applied to your spouse,” that you can reference, and not make it personal. You obviously don’t think this person would do that, or you wouldn’t be marrying him or her, but customs are different, laws are different, so lets go over exactly what these are, because they aren’t inherently grafted into the brain when crossing the national border.

And I mentioned in that last paragraph internal other-culture pockets. Those, those are a big thing no one warns about. We are all as American as apple pie (with cheese or without?), but we are not at all culturally unified in the particulars. In the grand scale, yes, generally, but in the household details? Not at all. Does your spouse-to-be do St. Nicholas gifts, Three Kings gifts, Christmas Eve gifts, or Christmas Day gifts? Or some other holiday gifts entirely? Are they only for children, for adults, for everyone out to first cousin? Are cards to be sent, and by whom, and for what? Thank you notes handwritten or by text message? There are lots of little cultural differences to note in marriage, and best to assume good will at all times when something isn’t done the way you believe it ought to be, and then talk it over with a cool head.

After all these years, we ended up with Thanksgiving being my mother’s traditional family meal, Christmas breakfast and New Year’s Dinner my father’s (yes, my parents were also from two different cultures), and Christmas Day being my husband’s, with nachos, which belong to none of us from culture except by being Americans who appropriate all, for Christmas Eve. (I mentioned musicians at the start, right? Christmas Eve supper has to be flexible: eat early, eat late, eat between, reheat.)

Everyone gets their special holiday foods, even if it’s not on the day it was originally eaten on. And now, I want nachos. I’ll have to settle for chili, since it’s already cooked. Close enough, right? (Actually, I really want Christmas fish rolls, but I am not deep fat frying anything in the summer. There are limits to my crazy.)

13 thoughts on “Cross Culture”

  1. Family culture is interesting.

    First dinner at my parents’ house, my girlfriend was served porkchops. After neatly cutting the meat from the bone, she briefly looked longingly at the remainder.

    My mom piped up ‘Go ahead, dear – we pick up the bones and gnaw them here.’

    Said girlfriend at other times noticed that my dad cooked, and decided there was probably hope for me. My grandmother was very ill and mostly bedridden in the mid 1930s; dad would cook for the family, with Grandma calling out instructions from her bedroom! (She got better.)

    And communications expectations were different between families: my mother in law would call about every week, from her home 300 miles away. -My- mom, who lived about 5 miles away, didn’t remember our phone number.

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    1. I should have mentioned, -her- dad cooked, so there was An Expectation. MIL got a cookbook for her first anniversary …

      So I was just wondering, between my wife and me, who was the better cook? She was a better meal planner, for sure, and did essentially all the grocery shopping. After I retired, I found I didn’t mind cooking, it was mostly fun, but I hated picking meals. So, once a week, before shopping, we’d sit down and pick main dishes for the coming week; we’d modify the list of choices based on what was on sale/available, and she’d shop to the choices.

      She was a second-generation CA girl, and had expectations of her own – like lots of variety in fresh vegetables. When we moved to MI, she waited for a long time for veges to get to a price she would buy, and many times that didn’t happen.

      Anyway, we were about equal in routine stuff, and I was better at trying new things. But she taught me lots of things about cooking – what is ‘smooth and elastic’ for bread dough? – and she occupied the pie crust slot exclusively. Her dad would regularly ask her for a pie when we would visit.

      I used to violate family food expectations; we’d plan something I knew well, and being tired of that version, I’d try some variation. Goodness, kids can be picky! ( I know I should not have been surprised by that, I had already been through 1-13 for both. )

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  2. Re deepfrying in the summer:

    I set up a “summer kitchen” on the porch during hot weather. A countertop toaster oven, a hotplate, a slow-cooker and an electric skillet cover most cooking. A plug-in deep-fryer should work.

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    1. It’s still 100° F here after sunset. The slow cooker, the quick saute on the stove, and the microwave of something cooked earlier in the week after dark reign supreme until fall comes.

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  3. I completely, 1000% percent, turn it up to 11, vouch for “Approach all friction with the assumption it’s culture.” That saved us so much heartache, and prevented so many pointless, stupid fights that we’ve seen happen in marriages who didn’t realize that even native culture is not a monolith, and the house next door, much less a state away, does it differently.

    One of our biggest sticking points was… opening the mail. My Calmer Half, being a good British South African man, was absolutely flabbergasted that I would invade his privacy by opening mail addressed to him. It didn’t matter if it was a bill or junk mail, it was addressed to him! He would never dream of invading my privacy by opening mail addressed to me!

    We talked it over, and realized that it wasn’t that I was American – it was that I was a military brat. When the man of the house is deployed, the bills won’t wait for him to get back, nor will any other notice. So I grew up with everything but obviously personal letters or cards being opened, dealt with, and filed – and the obviously personal stuff tossed on the stack in the spot where dad would deal with it when he got home and had time.

    In the first few years, it was almost always culture, and occasionally just plain miscommunication or mistaken non-cultural assumption. By the tenth year in, it was almost always miscommunication, rarely cultural…

    But the habit of sitting down, thinking it through, and then coming back with “What did you expect me to do or say, and why? Here’s what I understood to be happening, and what I expected you to do or say, which is why I got thrown when you did this instead…” has saved us from a lot of pointless friction or fights either way.

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  4. If you do Christmas gifts, is that as soon as the kids drag mom and dad up, after brunch with family, or on Christmas eve after vigil Mass?

    My family had the last one, because cows eat on Christmas– you’d do the big family meal with local-family on Christmas Eve, if it was being done at all, have Mass about 5PM (after sunset, thus licit for the next day’s celebration, and poor Father was driving an hour in the dark both ways to manage that because it’s a satellite parish in the mountains), go home, eat a snack-plate dinner and open gifts.

    Next morning you got your stocking do not wake up mom and dad was already out feeding cows, and the big Christmas at home meal was Christmas day unless hour’s-drive grandma was doing A Thing then we’d eat at her house.

    When we moved so there wasn’t any family near, it was grazing-and-making-tomorrow’s-feast on Christmas Eve day, then vigil Mass (because still a satellite parish, though Father only had to drive half an hour over a literally world-famous twisty road) and gifts, then stockings when you woke up because both mom and dad were out feeding but would be back before ten even if there was a surprise calf, and we’d have brunch to graze on ready when they got in.

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    1. My husband’s family has a visiting list of who you visit first if they’re local, and you do gifts at like four in the afternoon on Christmas!

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    2. We had a family friend who showed up every Christmas morning with his oldest daughter, right around 8:00, to deliver homemade cinnamon roles that the two of them had spent the night making. Not sure how many families they visited but it was a tradition in our family right up until he had to move into a care facility. Got the recipe and tried to make them but it was never the same.

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  5. LOL. Then there are the perturbations. Dad from Appalachia but strongly eschewed anything possibly associated with rural mountain culture and favoring Big City Culture, avoiding religion like the plague. Mom from NW Coast and strong Presbyterian history with genealogy back to 1600’s America. And they both worked military intelligence during and after WWII. Some of best family friends were retired spies. Made for all sorts of interesting conflicts and compromises, in very interesting ways.

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  7. Heh. As someone coming up on their 30th anniversary of cross cultural marriage… I think all the advice is good, but can be simplified to – “don’t assume ill will, ask why”

    Really it’s that simple. 99%* of the time the other person had a good reason why they did (not) do something etc. Just ask, and then explain why you expected something different.

    * the other 1% of the time it was a mistake

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  9. I’m the child of two 1st generation Americans (Polish/Irish). Grew up in Northern New England. Ended up marrying two women from deep in the Appalachian mountains (my late first wife was kin to THE Hatfields). One of my first encounters with the culture differences was with Hot Dog Chili. I was going to grill hot dogs and my new first wife asked me to run out for some hot dog chili. ??? To my way of thinking, a proper hot dog was topped with hot German mustard and sauerkraut, maybe a few diced onions. I had lived in the southwest for a number of years and made a fine, firey chili, even won a couple of cook offs with it. Oh well, ran out to the store and got a can of what I considered chili (Hormel, I think). When I got home she looked at the can, crinkled her nose, and asked me “What is this?” Chili. Not what she was looking for. Eventually I heated it up, strained out the beans, and she made due. I was introduced to real hot dog chili which one of her aunts made from scratch during our first visit to West Virginia. In the next 40 years I have developed a taste for it, but still prefer mustard and sauerkraut or Chicago style relish and hot peppers. At least with my current wife, who grew up 90 miles from where my late wife was born, I have been trained.

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