Parent-offspring Divergence In Mate Preferences And Its Psychology Significance

Marriage is an important aspect of family life that affects personal well-being and health(Robles,Slatcher,Trombello,& Mcginn,2014;Chung & Kim,2014).People from varying cultural backgrounds have different assumptions about marriage and family relationships(Bejanyan,Marshall,& Ferenczi,2014;Higgins,Zheng,Liu,& Sun,2002;Lam et al.,2016;Apostolou,2010).Marriage in East Asian contexts tends to be thought of as a family-to-family contract and the marital relationship is embedded within an extensive network of family relationships(Lam et al.,2016).In China,although young people are increasingly free to independently find a spouse,parents and relatives are still involved in mate selection process through introducing potential partners to one another or other way.Moreover,the ties between parents and their children remains strong even after one marries(Pimentel,2000;Qi,2015;Riley,1994).As the two generations share more same space,time,resources,and investment,these factors will create unique arenas for both support and conflict in mate selection and marriage.Using 300 parent-child dyads as participants,this study directly examined in-law and mate preferences in a typical collectivist culture.The results showed:(1)Traits indicating social status and parental investment were more highly valued by the parents,while traits indicating genetic quality and traits related to romantic love were more highly valued by the children;(2)With respect to their son-in-law,fathers and mothers were in agreement between them,but when moved to their daughter-in-law,mothers valued “good cook and housekeeper” and “ambiguous and intelligence” more than fathers.(3)Parental preferences were moderated by gender of the in-laws.Traits connoting social status were more preferred by parents in a son-in-law,“family-oriented” traits were more preferred by parents in a daughter-in-law than in a son-in-law;(4)The correlational analysis indicated that traditional cultural values(filial piety)can be used as a predictor of less parent-child divergences.