Christmas is upon us but when your part of an intercultural couple something as simple as presenting Santa to your kids can be a cultural minefield, according to a newly passed PhD thesis.

Carine Cools

Of the 36 half-Finnish intercultural couples which Belgian communication expert Carine Cools interviewed in her research, ‘One couple specifically mentioned Christmas. They argued about how they would celebrate Christmas and how they would present it to the children. One of them was from Finland and the other was from the USA and in Finland Santa comes in person and in the USA he comes down the chimney! They wondered how they could tell this to children. Maybe it’s not a very important point but they brought it up.’

The couples she interviewed included not just spouses from the USA but from ‘all over Europe,’ South Africa and even Japan. For the 52 year old Jyväskylä University researcher, who is herself married to a Finn and has two bilingual children, the Christmas incident neatly reflects what intercultural couples have to go through pretty much every day.

‘They have to communicate and negotiate always to overcome these kinds of hurdles,’ she explains. ‘They engage in continuous negotiation and re-negotiation . . . on what to do, on what to decide on .  . .’

Indeed, the raising of children was one of the main issues which had to be negotiated. ‘For example, choosing the right education . . . how to uphold traditions.’ Many of the couples would engage in both Finnish and foreign celebrations such as a Finnish-USA couple who celebrated Thanksgiving. This was something accepted in their immediate network but something which had be constantly justified to outsiders.

‘All of the couples wanted to raise their kids bilingually but the foreigners often found that Finns were quite liberal when it comes to children,’ explained Cools. ‘They had different ideas about good manners and that was another thing they had to negotiate about.’

Cools also looked into the specific difficulties faced by the foreign spouse, which can leave the Finnish half of the couple feeling relied upon.

‘The non-Finnish spouse is always in a more difficult situation because of the language. This can lead to a very tight relationship. The foreign spouse has a knowledge of Finnish but when it comes to something important – like filling in an important form – they still need to learn to do all that so they have to rely on the Finnish spouse.’

Interestingly, she also found a gender bias in her research. Most of the couples involved a foreign man and a Finnish woman. But her sample did not include Thais or Russians where, often, the gender dynamic is the other way around.

Foreign partners ‘do tend to feel excluded from Finnish networks. And when they returned to their home country, they didn’t feel they belonged there anymore either. This led to confusion and identity problems.’ It also means that both partners end up socialising with other ‘intercultural couples.’

But she didn’t find that intercultural couples were more likely to have stormy relationships. ‘They just have more reconciliation. They talk things through and negotiate with each other and form an agreement. Finnish couples negotiate about which city to settle in by they discuss “Shall we settle in Finland or the USA?” Their situation is an extension of the issues that all couples have to deal with, but instead of city to city it is country to country.’

Carine’s research was partly inspired by her own situation. Originally from Flanders, she left Belgium at 21, as a trained nurse, because her Finnish husband-to-be was studying in Germany. They stayed in Germany for ten years, having a daughter there and then a son in Finland. In Finland, where she has been living for 21 years, she began to study linguistics and intercultural communication. And nine years ago she started work on the PhD thesis.

Cools, who otherwise researchers the employment situation for immigrant women, is not sure yet how she will develop her thesis. But she’s interested by research on older intercultural couples as is done in Australia which indicates that the foreign spouse tend to learn the ‘target language’ and then lose it as they get older. This may later lead to problems when they have to explain medical conditions to doctors.

Dr Cools’ thesis ‘Relational Dialectics in Intercultural Couples’ Relationships’ was passed on Monday and will soon be available online: