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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1  Background of the Study

Marriage is a choice. That may not be a definition of marriage, but that is nevertheless a fact of marriage (Warren, 1990). “You don’t marry a person; you marry a family”. So goes the conventional folk wisdom neatly summing up a fact of life. The institutions of marriage and family are inevitably intertwined. When two people choose to get married, they are also choosing the integration of two families (Lau, 2005). Sociologically, that is what a marriage is about: the integration of twp families. After marriage, her family and his family will likely come to be considered jointly as “our folks”. That is the intended meaning of marriage. In practical terms, a brother-in-law is treated as a brother, a sister-in-law is treated as a sister, and a mother-in-law is treated as one’s own mother (Byng-Hall, 1980).

 The US Bureau of the Census (1986:116) defines the term family as “a group of two persons or more (one of whom is the householder) related by birth, marriage, or adoption, and residing together. Most of us live out a large share of our lives in some form of family or another. We can easily see that family cannot be ignored if we want to understand the societal patterns and processes all around us. This is because the social relationships called family is such an important part of the society. In fact, no society has existed without some sort of social arrangements that may be labelled kinship or family.

Family relationships are never fixed; they change as the self and the significance of other family members grow older, and as the changing society influences their respective lives (Riley, 1983). Family experts report that in reality the most difficult relationship is the one between the mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law. Conflicts between wives and their mothers-in-law do not just happen. They need an arena, just as germs and viruses need an environment to breed (Lau, 2005). There must first be a common area in which both the wife and her mother-in-law are in constant contact. If the wife and her mother-in-law do not meet each other at all and each of them just lives her own life, there would, in theory, be no problem at all between them, because there is no contact. No contact, no conflict. It’s as simple as that. It is like saying if there were no marriages, there would be no divorces (Philips, 1995). When you play badminton or tennis, there is hardly any chance of you crashing into your opponent unless you are playing like a chimpanzee. This is because each of you has your own court. When you play a game like squash, however, you have to be very careful not to crash into your opponent, or smash his head with your racquet (Lau, 2005). The interaction between the wife and her mother-in-law is like the game of squash, where there are lots of opportunities for both players to be in contact with and crash into each other (Silverstein, 1992). Interpersonal communication is an integral part of human experience. Moreover, our interpersonal skills are highly relevant to adjustment, because they can be critical to our happiness and success in life. There is a need to be aware that communication can be effective or ineffective depending on what transpires between the speaker and the hearer and care should be taken not be an ineffective communication (Byng-Hall, 1980).

Communication can be defined as the process of sending and receiving messages that have meaning. Berlo (1960) has divided the interpersonal communication process into four basic components: the source of the message, the message itself, the channel in which the message is sent and the receiver of the message. The source is the person who initiates, or sends the message. The message is the information or meaning that is transmitted from one person to another. The channel refers to the medium through which the message reaches the receiver and the receiver is the person to whom the message is targeted.

Communication is more effective and less problematic when people have similar frames of reference (Clark, 1985). Communication with others- friends, lovers, parents, spouses, children, employers, in-laws- is such an essential and common place aspect of our lives that it’s hard to overstate the importance of being able to communicate effectively. Moreover, many of life’s satisfactions and frustrations and heartaches as well hinge on our ability to communicate effectively with others. For examples, research has shown that married couples who perceive themselves as effective communicators are more likely to be happily, rather than unhappily married (Yelsma, 1984). Conversely, poor communication is reported to be the most common problem among couples who seek marriage counselling (Beck & Jones, 1973). Communication is effective when the message we intend to convey is the message that is actually received. Therefore, it entails both the accurate transmission of a message and the accurate reception of a message (Hahn, 2000). A communication barrier is anything in the communication process that inhibits or blocks the accurate transmission and reception of messages. Barriers to effective communication can reside in the source, the receiver or sometimes in both. Common barriers to effective communication include defensiveness, carelessness, self-preoccupation, collusion and instigation of unnecessary conflict. The most basic barrier to effective communication is defensiveness-an excessive concern with protecting oneself from being hurt. We are prone to react defensively when we feel threatened (Gibb, 1961). When a person consistently instigates unnecessary conflict with others, this contentiousness sets up barriers to effective communication. Such behaviours come in a variety of forms (Nye, 1973). Some people tend to deliberately annoy and provoke others to get a “rise” out of them. When intergenerational conflicts occur, it typically involves the wife and her mother-in-law. In fact, in-law trouble has been characterized as a “female problem”, perhaps because women have traditionally shouldered the responsibility for maintaining kinship ties (Marotz-Baden & Cowan, 1987). Fischer (1983) found that wives tend to turn to their own mothers for help after giving birth. Yet they may regard their mother-in-law’s concern over her new grandchild as “interference”. The mother-in-law/daughter-in-law impasse is a tragedy, dividing women who have much in common, and who could benefit from one another’s friendship. It causes great unhappiness to mother-in-law, who feels her overtures of friendship are rebuffed, and who fear their connection with their son and grandchildren may be threatened by the daughter’s-in-law hostility. It causes distress to the daughter-in-law, who feels judged and pressured, particularly on matters involving her role as a woman in the family (Apter, 1991).

Simmel (1955) made another important point by stressing that both conflict and cooperation are ways human beings relate to each other. When there is conflict between the wife and the mother-in-law, this should not create a rift if there is effective communication between the two. If information is shared between the two women at all times as necessary, there will be an understanding of self which will create a positive attitude by the wife towards the mother-in-law. Communication is the key to any friendship especially with the one woman in the world who loves your husband as much as you do. After investing 18 years or more of her life in this man, she’s unprepared for him to “disappear” into the world you two create. Beginning the habit of communication with your mother-in-law can be as easy as responding to her efforts hence the study.

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