Dr. Linda Castillo, Associate Professor of Counseling at Texas A&M, recalls a couple that came into her office. The man was Latino, and thought it was his “duty” to visit or call his mother almost daily. The non-Latino wife thought he was a “mama’s boy.”
In another case, a Hispanic woman was so close to her family she gave her parents a key to her apartment so they could “drop by.” Her non-Latino partner was less than happy with the arrangement, and did not like her family stopping by unannounced.

So not every bicultural couple wrestles with such stark disagreements, but are marriages between two cultures really that different from those within the same group?

“Yes,” says Dr. Elizabeth Fraga, a New York-based psychologist and lecturer at Columbia University Teachers College, adding “bicultural marriages often require more care and communication.”

The question is worth asking, since more than a quarter of Latinos marry outside their ethnicity – the second highest rate of interethnic or interracial marriage (Asians are the highest). In fact, since 2008, more than 1 in 7 US marriages are between people of different cultures or races.

Read the full story at NBC Latino