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Sociocultural Shocks In Cross-Border Marriages: A Comparison Between Chinese and Southeast Asian Wives In Taiwan
Based on the in-depth interviews with marriage immigrants from China and Southeast Asia, the author delineates their daily lives in Taiwanese families after they married. It is clearly that all these marriage immigrants experience sociocultural shocks when they have started their lives in Taiwan.
The author notices that both Chinese and Southeast Asian wives wish to work on the job market and be economically independent but are restrained by the government policy. Both of them feel strange about the common arrangement in Taiwan to live with in-laws. They also experience the unreasonable underestimation of their natal family’s SES by their in-laws.
Only Chinese wives complain that their husbands never helped with household chores, and their mothers-in-law seldom helped either, and so they have to work like a household servant. Moreover, they are often in conflict with their mothers-in-law or husbands on the issue of child rearing. They are also fussy about Taiwan’s limited living space.
Most Southeast Asian wives, on the other hand, emphasize personal privacy and sanitation of living environment, but the real situations often contradict with what they expect. They also frown at the special diet their mothers-in-law prepared for them after they have delivered babies. They are especially angry about their natal mothers being looked down upon by their in-laws.
All the above mentioned sociocultural shocks in turn affect whether or not these foreign wives identify with their families in Taiwan.