【正文】 nt environment, history, culture and develpment. Compared with Chinese nation with more than 5000 years of history, United States just pleted his journey of 200 years。 while in Boston, both men and women would indicate their races, religious beliefs and hobbies, they would say they loved sports, they were smart and had a sense of humor. According to the analysis of the samples of the spouseseeking advertisments, a psychology professor in Nankai University concluded that Chinese marriage seekers paid more attention to the economic condition and responsibility, while Americans were more concerned about the congeniality in life and spirit. How Chinese People Choose a Spouse China has a feudal history of more than 2020 years。 and a process of development” (Elaine Baldwin, Brian Longhurst, Greg Smith, Scott Mccracken, and Miles Ogborn. 2020). Cultures are extremely plex and consist of numerous interrelated cultural orientations, including values, knowledge, experience, attitudes, norms, and material aspects. Cultural patterns are a term that helps us to talk about these orientations collectively. It helps us to understand a society culture on the whole and enables us to make parisions between different cultures. People in different parts of the world, especially those in the East and those in the West do differ profoundly in their cultural patterns because they have different culture, social customs, economy, language, geography, etc. Individualism versus Collectivism Individualism is the most important value orientation in the West. Broadly speaking, individualism refers to the doctrine, spelled out in detail by the seventeenthcentury English philosopher John Locke, that each individual is unique, special, pletely different from all other individuals, and the basic unit of nature. American people advocate individualism, they believe that everyone is unique。 have the professional skill, accounting for 7% and own a house, accounting for 6%. From the survey we can see that no matter men or women, they all cared about their partner?s appearence and besides, men paid more attention to women?s characters and women emphasized the importance of financial status. How the American People Select Spouse Being free to choose a spouse is the most important thing in marriage for American people, who are wellknown throughout the world for their “individualism”. The Americans pay great attentions to the development of personal independence, their children have more freedom and equality. They can disscuss questions with their parents, and choose school and job freely. They will leave home to work or take parttime jobs when they are 18. If they still live with their parents when they are twenties, they will be looked down upon by other people. American people have their own standards to select mates, the most important thing is patibility, and other elements like family background and education level may probably not be taken into consideration (郁龍余 ,1992). So it is not rare to see a girl born with a silver spoon will probably choose a boy whose class background is significantly different from hers in the process of looking for her , and the reason can be simple as she is just attracted by his humor. The Differences in the Relationship between Husband and Wife in Marriage Husbandwife relationship is the most important relationships in all the family relationship as all the others derive from it. It is the key link in the family chain, closely related to the family 桂林電子科技大學(xué)畢業(yè)設(shè)計(jì)（論文）報(bào)告用紙 第 5 頁 共 12 頁 structure and family function. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the husbandwife relationship, discussing the division of family responsibility, the distribution of the household work and the changing of gender roles in both the mordern Chinese families and American families. At the present time, traditonal families are disintegrating, and family structure and family values are changing, too, which, doubtlessly, is the unavoidable result of the scientifictechnical revolution and the social development. Meanwhile, change in family structure and family values? are greatly influencing the economic and social development. What is more, family problems differ due to the different social systems and traditional ideas in different countries. The husbandwife relationship in both Chinese and American marriage and families has their profound cultural roots. Feudal ethics with Confucianism as its core are the main cultural roots of husbandwife relationship in Chinese family, while diversity as a result of foreign influence is the cultural root of husbandwife relationship in modern American family. The husbandwife relationship in the two nations will be more egalitarian in the future along with the social development and the international munication despite their differences. The Chinese HusbandWife Relationship. In Chinese traditonal marriage, the husband is always in a dominant position, while his wife is in a subordinate status. This kind of marriage structure is due to the traditional family division of responsibility, according to which, it is usually the husband who works and the wife stay at home. Husband is the head of family, and undertakes the major economic responsibility for the whole family. And the wife?s main job at home is doing housework, serving her inlaws and teaching her children. In modern Chinese society, the status gap between men and women in mariage does not seem so wide as before. Today, many women go outside to participate in the social work. Even so, most wives still need to or are willing to depend on their husbands. After the implementation of reform and openingup policy, people?s economic condition have improved greatly than before, some wives choose to e back home to be fulltime housewives, and supported entirely by thei