Why Families Interfere in the Choice of a Partner

No one can be as much of a stranger as a relative.

— An ironic aphorism

In 1753 the British Parliament passed Lord Hardwicke’s Act for England and Wales; Scotland was not covered. The act sharply restricted clandestine marriages and introduced compulsory formalities. Minors marrying by licence needed the consent of a parent or guardian; where banns were published, a parent or guardian could enter an objection. So the act did not create the same absolute veto for every procedure, but it markedly strengthened families’ control over the marriages of the young. It is associated with the campaign against illegal and hasty weddings, fortune hunters and the clergy who served London’s market in secret marriages. Behind the legal form an older mechanism is visible: marriage had for too long been a matter for several families rather than two people for a family to hand it over calmly to the heart, the hormones and the musical taste of the young.

To someone used to treating the choice of a partner as a private matter, this logic looks almost insulting: the love of two people would seem to leave relatives nothing to do. But a family may treat an adult child’s new partner as an application for a long-term loan and ask about work, health, debts and plans, though nobody formally appointed it an admissions board. The romantic version of the world sees outsiders meddling in an intimate decision. The older version saw an ordinary check on who is joining the system and what risks they bring with them.

That system has not disappeared, though the formal power of parents has weakened in most modern societies. In some cultures families still arrange introductions directly, discussing background and property prospects; in others the same mechanism works more softly: “bring them round,” “what sort of person is this?”, “what sort of family?” Even in an individualistic urban setting a new partner rarely enters life as a wholly private accessory to personal happiness. They get discussed, compared with the previous ones, and sometimes vetted so thoroughly that a historical marriage broker would have called it excessive paperwork.

The external effects of a personal choice

The simplest explanation says parents like to control their children. Sometimes that is exactly it, but as a general model it is too thin. Parental interference also appears in families that grant the adult child the right to choose. The reason is that the choice of a partner rarely affects only the chooser. It changes the distribution of time, money, care, holidays, looking after the elderly, access to grandchildren and sometimes housing. A future spouse can become a source of support for the whole family, or a new permanent obligation. Parents view their child’s romantic decision from a different position, because part of the consequences really will land on their table.

Two levels of analysis collide. For the adult child the partner may be first of all a source of attraction, closeness and a shared future. For the parents the same person becomes a piece of family infrastructure. They more often notice the occupation, the debts, the health, the attitude to children, the ability to keep a promise and the manner of dealing with elders. This does not mean their criteria are better. They are simply assessing a different set of risks, and they often underrate what can’t be entered in the family minutes: mutual desire, a sense of safety, a lively conversation, and that private quality of a couple which is poorly predicted from the separate characteristics of its members. Experiments in which people chose a potential partner for themselves and a partner for their adult child do find a divergence of preferences: parents weigh traits linked to family suitability and the external consequences of the union more heavily, while adult children distribute the weight of attractiveness and personal fit differently. The size and direction of the difference depend on the culture and on the candidate’s sex, so this is not two eternal checklists but a predictable conflict of viewpoints.

In economic terms the conflict looks like a divergence of interests between principal and agent. Parents may believe they are protecting the child’s interests while protecting their own peace of mind, status, cultural familiarity and future access to the child’s time. The child is no pure carrier of their own interests either: they may idealise the partner, underrate the long-term consequences, or, on the contrary, reject a suitable person simply because the parents approved too openly. Each side sees part of the picture and can mistake that part for all of it.

Historically parents had more grounds for insisting, because the family was the main insurer. With no pensions, no social services, no affordable housing and no independent income, one person’s bad marriage could become an expense for the whole clan. Divorce was hard, women’s economic independence was limited, and children almost inevitably drew in grandparents and siblings. In societies with pensions, social services and wide access to paid work, the state and the market have taken over part of these functions, but the psychological institution of vetting has outlived the material conditions that created it. The norm remained after part of its original job disappeared.

Information without a veto

In a three-wave longitudinal study, the assessments of friends and relatives predicted how relationships would turn out, and were usually less optimistic than the assessments of the people involved. The social network saw what a person in love easily explained away as an exception. But the benefit came only from independent information. Advice that repeats family taste, social fear or a struggle for control does not get more accurate through kinship.

Information should be separated from the right to decide. A family can be a good source of data and a bad owner of the final choice. A specific objection is worth more: “the partner lied about money three times” says more than “I don’t like this person.” Arguments based on family status, habit or fear of the outsider call for more caution. An adult is not obliged to carry out the family verdict, but it is sensible to check whether those close to you have noticed something you can’t see yet.

Parents interfere not because love is family property. They interfere because relationships create external effects: part of the benefits and costs falls on people who never formally signed the contract. In many historical societies the answer was the family’s right to choose. In many modern legal systems it is the freedom of the adult, with the family keeping the right to an opinion. The balance is imperfect, but the direction is clear: someone else’s information can be useful; someone else’s veto is not.

Key sources

Bovet, J., Raiber, E., Ren, W., Wang, C., & Seabright, P. (2018). Parent–offspring conflict over mate choice: An experimental study in China. British Journal of Psychology, 109(4), 674–693; Apostolou, M., & Wang, Y. (2018). Parent–offspring conflict over mating in Chinese families: Comparisons with Greek Cypriot families. Evolutionary Psychology, 16(1), 1474704918764162.

Agnew, C. R., Loving, T. J., & Drigotas, S. M. (2001). Substituting the forest for the trees: Social networks and the prediction of romantic relationship state and fate. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(6), 1042–1057; Felmlee, D. H. (2001). No couple is an island: A social network perspective on dyadic stability. Social Forces, 79(4), 1259–1287; Lehmiller, J. J., & Agnew, C. R. (2007). Perceived marginalization and the prediction of romantic relationship stability. Journal of Marriage and Family, 69(4), 1036–1049.

Lemmings, D. (1996). Marriage and the law in the eighteenth century: Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753. The Historical Journal, 39(2), 339–360; Probert, R. (2009). Marriage Law and Practice in the Long Eighteenth Century: A Reassessment. Cambridge University Press.