Southeast Asia: Table of Contents
Organizer and Chair: Daniel Goodkind, University of Michigan
Discussant: Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Harvard University
Families constitute the most basic social unit in any society. The patterns they evince at any point in time reflect both a distant historical past as well as more recent social, economic, and political forces. Family life course transitions offer numerous nodes at which to explore such patterns. Fortunately, over the past half decade, there has been a proliferation of new sources of data on Vietnamese families as well as opportunities for first-hand field research in Vietnam.
Our interdisciplinary panel has taken advantage of these new sources and opportunities to examine various aspects of social change and the family in Vietnam. Each paper focuses on a different phase or aspect of the life course—reproduction and the value of children, childbearing among unwed mothers, marriage and household formation, and the living arrangements and social security of the elderly. One common link running through most papers is gender inequality, as well as its causes and consequences. Each paper also illuminates patterns that speak to broad historical concerns, such as the establishment of regional cultures, post-reunification gender imbalances and their after-effects, and the interplay between free market reforms (Doi Moi) and current family strategies.
Daniel Goodkind, University of Michigan
This paper presents some results from a recent project on the elderly and social security in Vietnam. The first stage of this project consisted of two multi-provincial surveys (centered around Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, respectively) focusing on living arrangements as well as sources of social and economic support. With the exception of urban areas in and around Hanoi, support provided from within the family is far more common than non-familial support (such as pensions, social welfare, and private investments). In all regions, the vast majority of elderly Vietnamese live with, or adjacent to, at least one child. Married sons constitute the most critical source of familial support in both regions, although this patrilineal pattern is far more pronounced in the northern region. We discuss historical reasons for the aforementioned regional differences in both familial and non-familial support. Based on more recent field research in Vietnam, we also discuss how demographic shifts and free market changes present challenges for the future social security system.
Daniele Belanger, University of Western Ontario
This paper examines household structures and their corresponding family formation patterns in Vietnam in the early 1990s. Our analysis of family structure is based on Hammel and Lasletts classification of households as presented in their well-known article, "Comparing Household Structure Over Time and Between Cultures" (1974), and uses data from the 5 percent sample of the 1989 census as well as from the Vietnam Living Standards Survey of 1992–93, which was completed using a sample of 4,800 households and 23,839 individuals. The results of our analyses based on nationally representative data indicate that family types become increasingly complex as one moves from north to south. The variety of household patterns in which young married people live point to even larger regional differences in family formation patterns. The results show that whereas the young couples of the north form an independent household shortly after marriage, couples in the south tend to live with their parents much longer. The discussion explores differences in marriage patterns, regional culture and regional history for explaining the results.
Harriet Phinney, University of Washington
This paper seeks to expand existing understandings of the culture of reproduction in contemporary Vietnamese society. Starting from the premise that reproduction needs to be examined from a different angle, that of the right and desire to reproduce, the author uses her ethnographic data on unmarried women as an entry point into examining shifting notions of marriage, woman, and family in northern Vietnamese society. Since the reunification of North and South Vietnam, single women considered to be past marriageable age have been "asking for a child"—arranging to get pregnant so that they too may raise and nurture a child and create families of their own. To a large extent these women’s positions and decisions stem from high mortality among men during the wars with the United States and China. Yet, they are also the product of Vietnamese notions of love, fidelity, marital law, and ideas about what it is to be a woman. This paper will discuss the discourse of reproduction in order to elucidate the manner in which unmarried women develop and seek to fulfill their own sense of female identity and desire. In addition, I hope to touch upon the implications of these women’s agency: as women not bound by marital tradition, they have the potential for stretching existing cultural definitions of reproductive time and the purpose of reproducing in a patriarchal Confucian society.
John Luke Gallup, Harvard University
Vietnam has one of the highest population densities in the world, and its population is still growing. This paper studies the motives for having children with a focus on the economic value of children. I develop a model of household demand for children that emphasizes the allocation of children’s time across productive activities: work on the farm, in the labor market, and going to school. Whether children are needed to work on the farm is shown to depend on labor market imperfections.
Demand for child labor on the farm and in the family enterprise, school attendance, and mother’s schooling are estimated to have a large effect on family size. Access to contraceptives also affects family size but the magnitude of the effect is small. Son preference is important; it is not clear how much this is an economic motive (old age security) or a cultural preference. The effect of rural decollectivization under Doi Moi on the demand for children is considered. The results suggest that the government’s focus on contraceptive delivery to reduce Vietnam’s population growth should be complemented by policies that affect the economic motives for having children.