Cross cultural marriages: a case study of the Kenyan communities

Abstract

Cultural diversity exists in many communities of the world. Cross cultural marriage becomes more painful when everyone who is important to you in your family or your partner’s family rejects you or your partner. The purpose of this study was to explore and compare marriage relationship in terms of the racial origin of respondents, parental acceptance of matrimony, religion, HIV status and other factors that are likely to increase marriage instability. For the purpose of the research, 131 married respondents (male and female) out of 1,084 were sampled. The sampled population was specifically selected from clients who had sought HIV testing services at the Mary Immaculate Center, Nairobi. A case study method with semi-structural questionnaire: Open and closed ended questions was used to gather the data. The collated data was analyzed and presented in graphs and tables. The findings from the study showed that majority of marriages within the same ethnic community tend to live up to their expectation due to shared cultural value and beliefs though there could be a few case of misunderstanding among the couples unlike the marriages from different ethnic communities or race which in most cases easily end up in separation or divorce. The findings further indicate that many people hide in religion as ceremonial believers but do not subscribe to religious values to uphold the institution of marriage. Therefore, I believe that retrospective cultural beliefs and individual values should not be dragged into marriage thereby destroying it, later leading to moral decline of the institution of marriage. It is upon courting couples to share their cultural values in advance in order to make marital adjustments before committing into marriage.