[June 28, 2009] COUPLES AT A CROSSROADS: When cultural backgrounds are wildly disparate ? or even shaded with subtle differences ? it complicates relationships Tweet Jun 28, 2009 (Albuquerque Journal - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- For Albuquerque newlyweds Sophia Nguyen Eng and Timothy Eng, both 25, cultural differences between her Vietnamese family and his Chinese family emerged when he asked her parents for her hand in marriage. They agreed, as long as he proposed in front of the entire family. Santos Salinas-Contreras of Albuquerque and his wife, Catalina Salinas of Bolivia, say they found cultural differences in a surprising place -- their finances. After marrying and divorcing partners with the same cultural backgrounds, Shiyu and James Castillo found that his New Mexican roots and her Chinese heritage were less important than the role of family in their lives. For many couples in our increasingly mobile world, marrying the boy or girl next door seems like less and less of a possibility. That means more couples are negotiating cultural differences every day. But trying to define what those are by using historical definitions of race and ethnicity becomes more complicated. Even couples who check the same census box may have grown up in different parts of the world, speak distinct languages and practice different religions. In New Mexico, with its long history of cultural diversity, interethnic marriages are significantly higher than the national average of 6 percent. Here, couples of mixed backgrounds add up to about 16 percent of all marriages, according to a study by demographer William Frey of the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution. Yet a recent study out of Ohio State University raises the question of whether a growing immigrant population means more people may be choosing partners of the same ethnic background. In 2007 Ohio State sociologist Zhenchao Qian found that while overall rates of marriage between people of different races or ethnicities increased between 1990 and 2000, the rate declined among Asian and Hispanic populations. Hispanic men married to someone of another ethnicity dropped from 27 percent to 20 percent. Among Asian women, the number fell from 47 percent to 39 percent. Qian says a larger pool of immigrants in the United States means it may be easier to find a partner of the same background. But the question of whether Qian identified a trend becomes more complicated when considering the similarities and differences between, say, New Mexico Hispanic and Bolivian Latina, or Chinese and Vietnamese, as the couples interviewed say they discovered when they came together. Negotiating cultural differences are a challenge for any couple, says Dr. Patricia Covarrubias, a professor of communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico. But they become even more complicated with partners of different cultural backgrounds, she says. That's because culture is much more than ethnicity. Like an onion, multiple layers of culture form our unique sense of self. "We 'do' culture out of habit and practice," says Covarrubias, who teaches intercultural communication. "And where does that habit and practice come from? Culture is transmitted at our caregivers' knee. There's a historical underpinning. Intercultural communication is not exclusively a racial, ethnic, linguistic phenomenon. It's not just, 'She's Mexican and he's Anglo.' " For Covarrubias, who was born in Mexico and married to an Anglo man for 27 years, the cultural differences that emerged from their distinct homelands added a layer of complexity. Rossana Miranda-Johnston, a native of Mexico married to an Anglo man from New Hampshire, is an intercultural consultant based in Colorado who works with couples moving abroad, as well as those facing their own cultural differences. She helps couples identify cultural biases, asking them to draw "culture icebergs" with their differences about food and music at the top, views on gender roles and work ethic in the deeper layer. The exercise helps them understand that many cultural values are buried much deeper. Miranda-Johnston recalls a recent wedding she attended. During the ceremony, the bride bent her head as the groom searched for eye contact. Later she saw the wife in tears. Her husband thought she didn't want to commit because she avoided eye contact. "This bride comes from Mexico," Miranda-Johnston says. "When looking at a moment of commitment, she thought bowing (her head) down was a sign of respect." 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