Family Health History and Mate Selection: A Qualitative Study of Chinese Americans’ Views

Abstract

Frequent and better use of family health history (FHH) may affect individuals’ reproductive decision-making. Yet, its impacts on mate selection are unclear, given that selecting partners for dating or marriage often comes before pregnancy, and the attitudes and decisions for having children and selecting mates are somewhat different. As Chinese Americans are understudied in FHH-related research, we carried out the first qualitative study (to the best of our knowledge) to examine whether or not knowing someone’s FHH influences dating or marriage decisions among this fast-growing ethnic minority group in the United States. In a community-based setting, we conducted in-depth interviews with 49 Chinese Americans. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using a content-analysis approach. Our findings revealed that about one-third of participants believed that FHH does not matter in their choice of mate, love is more imperative than FHH, and using FHH for mate selection is against God’s will. Nevertheless, nearly half of participants perceived a number of negative impacts that FHH might have on dating or marriage. These negative thoughts were attributed to fears of (1) certain unacceptable, FHH-related, severe, chronic, or infectious diseases; (2) the potential of passing diseases to the next generation; and (3) the burden of taking care of the sick partners and the inability of the sick partners to care for participants’ offspring. This study contributes to existing literature in FHH-related studies. Health education efforts are needed to educate Chinese Americans in order to improve their FHH knowledge, reduce unnecessary fears, and promote informed decision-making in mate selection.