by Saori, Airi, and Asami
Introduction
It is said that we
have some turning points thought the life. There is an entrance ceremony, a
coming-of-age ceremony, to get job, and so on in turning points. But marriage
is the most greatly exchange event in the life above all. The history of the
marriage in Japan is very deep. According to Ijuin (2011), there was an opinion
that “love=marriage” existed in Japanese oldest songbook Manyoshu tanka
collection, and both man and woman increased love feeling and chose a marriage
partner with the feeling that to be in together. Also parents chose their
children partner for each other’s profit, so people were not able to marriage
when the partner’s social position was as same as the other in the Edo era. And
at last, a love marriage came to be permitted in the 1880s(Meiji era).
According to Ishizaki (2011), in modern times, the factors which men demanded
for a woman as a marriage partner were to have the housekeeping ability,
knowledge of child care, health and the will-power to a social action. In other
side, the factors which woman demanded for a man as a marriage partner were to
have good educational background, economic power, and to be honest. This idea
of marriage continued until postwar rapid economic growth.However other
research results shows different opinions from this trend. Research by Japanese
research company, Recruit searched and analyzed that both man and woman values
how much people love a partner, but Sunmarie, a dating agency shows that still
people selects a marriage partner by economic status. This time, we expected
that there is a difference opinion between male and female, and we would like
to re-research and decide what is the most important factor for choosing a
marriage partner in modern age.
Procedure
We
surveyed about condition which people need for a marriage partner. First, we
asked 20 university students (10 male and 10 female) who major psychology and
they are from 19 to 23 years old. There are two questions on this survey: (1)
What are important points for choosing a marriage partner (2) Chose the most
important point, and reason for choosing it. In first question, they rated 10
factors on a 5 point scale. Finally, we averaged every question’s point by sex.
Table 1 shows 10 factors(criteria) in question paper.
Tab
1. 10 criteria in research paper
Criteria
name
|
Kindness
|
How much your
partner love you
|
Ability of family
working
|
Consciences
|
Money sense
|
Unanimous
lifestyle
|
Be close in age
|
Appearance –
looking, weight and height
|
Shared interests
|
Academic
background
|
Economic
ability
|
Social
status
|
Results
In
analyze part; we calculated the average of criteria's rate. If many answerers
thought criteria “A” is the most important, then the average of A rate would be
higher so it is easy to see the results. Second question is just for
researching people’s view for those criteria.
Firstly, you can see all results
of the survey to see table 2. And figure 1. Figure 1 is the graph from table 2.
The survey shows that male’s opinions of the criteria for choosing a marriage
partner are; Kindness, How much your partner love you, and Ability of family
working, and Consciences. Oppositely, female’s opinions are; Consciences, How
much your partner love you, Kindness, Money sense. Male’s lowest rate of factor
is Social status or Economic ability. Nevertheless, female’s lowest criterion
is Academic ability. As a result, there is a similarity between male and female’s
answer that love, kindness or consciences are important fact for a marriage. In
particular, love or characteristic bear a determine relationship to choosing a
marriage partner. However, female rates that money sense is important factor
(point was 4.7), yet male didn’t rate like that (point was 3.6). Male cares
about ability of family working such as household tasks. Those results suggests
that male thinks female works as a house-keeping, and female thinks male is a
provider of family.
Secondly, we would like to see
figure 1. It shows how subjects rated on each criteria. First of all, the graph
indicates that female’s average is higher than all male’s average, so we looked
at the criteria which seems to be a striking difference. We took three criteria
which has difference over 1.0 points such as: Money sense, Economic background,
and Social status(“Consciences” has also difference over 1.0 points, but both
are higher so we concluded that is important for both sex). Female rated those
three criteria higher than male which means female thought it is important for
choosing a marriage partner. We think these have one characteristic in common.
It is money-related. So again, female thinks male is an income earner for a
family. Besides those results, there are similar averages on “Be close in age”,
“Appearance”, and “Shared interests”. Those average is between 3.0~4.0, so it
looks there is no difference between both sex.
Tab
2. The average of 10 criteria
Male
average
|
Female
average
|
|
Kindness
|
4.5
|
4.8
|
How much your
partner love you
|
4.2
|
4.9
|
Ability of family
working
|
4.1
|
4.0
|
Consciences
|
4.0
|
5.0
|
Money sense
|
3.6
|
4.7
|
Unanimous
lifestyle
|
3.6
|
4.3
|
Be close in age
|
3.5
|
3.7
|
Appearance –
looking, weight and height
|
3.4
|
3.5
|
Shared interests
|
2.9
|
3.5
|
Academic
background
|
2.4
|
2.9
|
Economic
ability
|
2.3
|
4.2
|
Social
status
|
2.0
|
3.4
|
Fig 1. Graph of results from survey
Conclusion
In this report, our hypothesis that there is a
difference between male’s opinion and female’s in the most important factor
for choosing a marriage partner. Indeed, many reports and researchers
informed the reason Japanese men want woman is for their house-keeping
ability, or appearance. Oppositely, Japanese woman will chose a man who has
an economic status. However, there is a bit difference from this report’s
survey result. The first thing that astonished us was both woman and man
didn’t put weight on appearance. Also, woman didn’t care about an academic
status which will b connect to economic strength. Nevertheless, woman want
man for economic power. Secondly, man commented that they want to have a life
with love just for enjoying their life, but woman noted that economic or love
from husband because luck of them will destroy marriage life.
From those result, we can conclude two things. (1)
There is a “gender” bias that man will be work, and woman will be at home
because man didn’t care about money, and woman didn’t care about their
ability so much. (Gender bias means social difference in sex) (2) Difference
from the general report was answerers – because they were too young to
thinking about marriage, so they didn’t have actual and reasonable thinking
for a marriage – that’s why lots of people selected “love from others” as the
important fact. We hope that people can think about a marriage partner
without the handicaps of gender bias, and answer will be individually.
|
Citations
Y. Ijuin and
S.Isizaki (2011). Rekishi no naka no kazoku to kekkon. (History of marriage in
gender and family). Japan: Chi no mori. pp. 101
References
Sunmarie (2011).
The konkatsu research[What is the reason for decide marriage?]. Available: http://www.sunmarie.com/konkatsu/ank/anq021.html
(2012/12/20)
Zexy net (2011).
Zexy net love news[Why do you want to marriage to your partner?]. Available: http://zexy.net/contents/lovenews/article.php?d=20120426
(2012/12/20)
