Different ideas about marriage and children depending on their culture/nationalityP.Paykarestan,London Metropolitan UniversityIntroduction
Marriage grew in popularity between 2002 and 2004, but fell by 9% in 2005 in England and Wales because people`s attitude had changed about cohabitation and they prefered to live out of wedlock instead of long-term living (Claire Truscott, guardian March 2008). Although these days living together is acceptable and the majority of people believe that marriage is a great gift, 60 per cent or probably more of cohabiting couples still get married after a few years. (BBC website,July 2008).
However, even though many researchers have considered, there has been very little research reported on the living couples out of wedlock,so in this research is tried to publicize more ideas about this subject as many as possible.
Aims
The purpose of the present research is to investigate what different ideas international student have about marriage and living with someone out of wedlock depending on their nationality and culture, moreover their beliefs about choosing their partner
Method
The SampleThe research sampled 31 students who all of them have been studying pre-sessional English academic at London metropolitan university.They were chosen in different range of ages, Genders and countries.
Data collection
The data was collected with a questionnaire which comprised 9 questions .the questionnaire asked a variety of questions, including attitudes toward marriage and living out of wedlock,having child out of wed lock and last question was about the most important thing which some people think make for successful marriage.
FindingsLiving together before the marriage:
In our questionnaire respondents were asked to specify the effect of living together before the marriage for long-term on society, just over a quarter(28%) expressed it is acceptable thing and has positive effects on society, less than a quarter (23%)expressed,this is not satisfactory and has negative effect on society and nearly half (49%) expressed it makes no difference. as it is apparent, in this subject with a little bit difference of opinion students agree with living together before marriage which is interesting because the majority of respondents have lived freely in their countries without limitations religious which exist in some religions such as Islam despite this, they didn’t agree with living together before marriage.
Marrying people at older ages for the first time (e.g .more than 45)More than 42% of respondents agree with marrying people at older ages, and nearly a third disagree
Having child
One of the most surprising finding which was found out is that the majority of students (80%) want to have more than 2 children after getting married,whilst, just less than 10% prefer to have no child or at least have one child. On one hand, this is interesting for someone’s who delight in after having children. On the other hand, this amount in wide range would cause a lot of trouble for governments or perhaps for families.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING FOR CHOOSING A PARTNERthe research was demonstrated that more than (70%) of respondents believe that having a good personality and faithfulness is the most important thing to choose a partner .this amount shows personality is the main purpose among students to choose a partner in addition, this attitude is same in all cultures.
Having higher education with nearly(20%) is ranked in second in importance,While, less than (10% )of respondents say appearance and adequate income are important things.
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