Intercultural marriages and consideration of divorce in Finland

Do value differences matter?

Divorce is well known to be more common among intercultural couples compared to couples in which both spouses come from the same cultural background. In this working paper, we examine considerations of divorce among Finnish spouses in intercultural marriages in Finland, particularly from the perspective of value dissimilarity.

We employ descriptive and multivariate analyses of a representative postal survey among women and men in an intercultural marriage in Finland in 2012. Respondents were Finnish, Swedish and Sami speaking men and women who are married to a foreign language speaking spouse, and foreign language speaking men and women who are married to a spouse who is Finnish, Swedish or Sami speaker. Results are compared to similar data of monoculturally married women and men in Finland in 2008.

About 20 percent of interculturally married Finnish men and women have considered divorce during the previous year. Interculturally married men more frequently considered divorce than did men with a Finnish wife. Interculturally married Finnish women in turn have similar proportions of divorce considerations as monoculturally married women.