نوع المستند : المقالة الأصلية
المؤلف
colleg-new york u.s.a
المستخلص
he question that arose was concerned with
attitudes toward the mother-in-law. It asked whether
these negative images of the mother-in-law were the same
across cultures? In order to arrive at an answer, it was
decided to use a figure-placement task. (Adler, 1978;
Craubert & Adler, 1982) to measure projeced social
distances as an indicator of the respondents’ attitudes. It
had long been established that interpersonal space could
serve as a protection against threat, either to the subjects’
physical integrity or to the self-esteem (Dosey & Meisels,
1969). On the other hand, Little (1965) and Merhabian
(1968) found that distance was a significant index of the
subject’s positive or negative attitudes toward a specific
object. In addition, in a study by Adler and Iverson (1975)
it was verified that there was a clear parallel between the
physical interpersonal spacing in the laboratory situation
and the projected social distances in response to
ascriptions of the stimulus persons.
The present study examines the schemata relating
to several members of a family, such as ”Mother,”
”Father,” ”Mother-in-Law” and ”Father-in-Law.” Data
by subjects from different parts of the world are compared
to those by US subjects. The present paper reports the
comparisons of the responses by Kuwaiti, Sudanese and
US-participants. In, these countries different patterns of
mate selection exist. For example, it is frequently the
custom in Arab countries for parents to select the spouses
for their children, while in the US men and women choose
spouses for themselves. Would these behavior patterns
influence attitudes toward family members? In the
present paper the comparisons not only involve an overall
anlysis, but focus on comparing the data from only two
countries atone time for a more precise evaluation.
Following the pattern of previous studies (Sechrest,
Fay, Zaidi & Flores, 1973) the subjects were students who
attended psychology and science classes at various
38
In a recent paper Usha Kumar (1984) discussed the
relationship between mother- in law, son and daughter-inlaw
and described’ the triadic relationship in an Indian
Hindu joint family. While in North America, Great
Britain, and other Western societies jokes about the
mother-in-law are common, Kumar (1984) noted that such
jokes are extremely rare in Hindu society, where such
relationships are considered as serious business. On the
other hand, Radcliffe-Brown (1950) had observed that
research on the relationships of mother-in-Iaw/daughterin-
law interactions had been neglected across cultures. Yet
surveys in Western societies reported that the mother-inlaw
was the most disliked of all relatives (Duvall, 1984). In
more recent years, Fischer (1983) compared the
interpersonal relationships of muther-in-Iaw/daughter-inlaw
with to those of mother/daughter with regard to the
orientation around the child (i, e. how the birth of a baby
affected these relationships). However, even before the
birth of the grandchild strained relationships with in-laws
were apparent.
In the Hindu family there existed, in the present
setting, a coalition of the mother with her son aginst the
daughter-in-law Kumar (1984) wrote that ” the basic
assumption of the triad theory is that the relationship < /span>
between any pair of actors can best be understood by
examining their conjoint relationship with a significant
third party. In the relationship between affinal relatives,
the connecting spouse is likely to be the significant third
party. Thus we may unde: ~tand the relationship between
a daughter-in-law and a mother-in-law by examining the
relationship of each to the man between them.” (p.Ll)
These reports are examples, which illustrate some sources
of the negative reputation of the image of the mother-inlaw
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