The loving and harmonious family in Vietnam is central to identity, belonging and a sense of stability (Marr 2000: 795). An influential discursive layer in the Vietnamese cultural landscape involves the remnants of neo-Confucian patriarchy. As William Duiker (1995: 165) explains, for nearly ten centuries Vietnamese society was profoundly influenced by Chinese cultural models, particularly in literature, art and architecture, and these influences remain. Nguyen Khac Vien (1974: 34) contends that Confucian humanist ideology was widely promoted in the fifteenth century as it offered the Le dynasty (1428—1788) an opportunity to eliminate feudal society. The Le Code, as Ta Van Tai (1981: 136) establishes, provided women some personal rights, extensive property rights and modified the patriarchal family to protect the interests ofwives and daughters. Despite Chinese patriarchal ideals becoming thoroughly diffused in Vietnamese society, the influence was uneven and there remained a respect for women’s rights and powers that was ‘unique’ in an East Asian context (Woodside 1971: 44—46). Nevertheless, traditional family forms in Vietnam involved extended, multi-generational families and the acceptance of polygamy, arranged marriage and bride price.
Families and gender relations were thus crucial for the maintenance of stability and social order. Scholarly families represented the ideal and they achieved social prestige through the behaviour and activities of capable but subordinate wives who were responsible for nurturing the family and earning household income while their husbands undertook study as a means to self-improvement. Social order, unity, stability and harmony in idealised family relationships were maintained by women through hierarchical, complementary roles in a clearly delineated ranking order (Tran Dinh Hu’ou 1991: 35—37, 43). Women’s roles were defined in terms of relationships with fathers, husbands and sons. Women also, however, needed to forge successful relationships with senior women, especially the mother-in-law. The mother-in-law’s role as enforcer of obedience after marriage is reflected in a rich folklore tradition in Vietnam centring on the tension between a bride and her mother-in-law (O’Harrow 1995: 163; 167—68).
In the twentieth century, family forms began to shift from extended, multi-generational families to nuclear families. Free choice marriage became more widespread among the educated and urban middle classes. A contrasting discursive layer centring on women’s equality emerged across Vietnam. Gender equality and women’s contribution to society had become a powerful tool in the anti-colonial conflict of the mid-twentieth century (Marr 1981: 192). In the (Communist) Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Article 3 of the 1959 Law on Marriage and the Family expressly forbade forced or early marriage, the mistreatment of women, concubinage and wife-beating (Rydstrom 2010: 172). Vietnamese women’s status was also recognised in the US-allied Republic of Vietnam in Article 5 of its 1956 Constitution (General Civil Service Commission 1967: 3). By the latter half of the twentieth century, the nuclear family had become the main discursive model. In the post-reform era, the ideal family is a progressive, happy, harmonious family comprising a heterosexual monogamous couple voluntarily married with two children, ideally one boy and one girl (Rydstrom 2010: 173—74). Within this discourse, concepts of gender equality were refocused to centre not on public gains for women but on family equality (Werner 2009: 4).
Discourses of romantic love also rose with the emergence of a nuclear family. In the post-reform family a woman’s love was divided between conjugal love and maternal love, which encouraged a woman not only to maintain her husband’s sexual interest but also to produce children who are modern self-governing subjects (Phinney 2008: 330). A modern individualist concept of romantic love — evident in urban Vietnam since the colonial era, introduced via translations of literature, poetry and fiction, and debated in the women’s mass media of the time (Marr 2000: 774—75) — was responsible for both the reproduction of gender inequality and for the liberation of women. On the one hand, free choice marriage based on romantic love reproduced gender inequality, as women were expected to serve their man, not through patriarchal obligations, but as an expression of love (Soucy 2001: 41). On the other hand, romantic love has played a part in liberating women. In cities, love matches were believed to be responsible for the increased independence of women from the household and for the breakdown of family stability (Pha. m Van Bich 1999: 8-9).
Love matches also disrupted conventions of family life in non-urban populations. Like Vietnam’s Kinh majority, who make up 87 per cent of the population, Vietnam’s ethnic minorities experienced change with respect to gendered relations in family life. Vietnam’s population is ethnically diverse, incorporating 54 officially recognised ethnic minorities including large populations of more than one million each of Tay, Thai, Mu’ o’ ng, Hoa (Chinese) and Khmer people (Dang, Chu and Lu’u 2000: 1-3). Inter-class, inter-clan or inter-group marriage on the basis of love matches is a measure of greater social flexibility and family instability among Vietnam’s uplanders (Dang Nghiem Van 1991: 111—12).
Idealised models of the family foreground discourses of gender equality and women’s liberation. It is here that a gap between commentary and practice becomes evident in concealing the flexibility of actual gender practices, so that life as lived contrasts with life as talked about. Despite efforts made throughout the colonial and postcolonial eras, Vietnamese women had achieved equality legally but not in actuality (Marr 1981: 248). In contemporary Vietnam, discursive value is placed on both gender equality and gender inequality. Post-reform state narratives claimed that neo-Confucian virtues (tA dAc) governing femininity had been abandoned and that hierarchical family relationships had been displaced by equality between spouses (Tran and Le 2000: 200). At the beginning of the new millennium, however, constructions of post-reform womanhood resembled the hierarchical family relationships of the earlier Confucian heritage (Ngo 2004). Even feminist scholarship on sexualities continued to emphasise the salience of neo-Confucian patriarchal ideals (Martin 2010: S6).
Feminist scholarship also emphasised increasing social and economic inequalities after reform (Fahey 1998: 223). The post-reform state advised that ‘more consistent gender equality policies’ would enable non-Kinh, rural and poor women to improve their standards of living, levels of education, options for employment and access to services (General Statistics Office [hereafter GSO] 2011b: 56). Moreover, state policies continued to use social and economic circumstances to differentiate women’s access to services, such as public in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment which is determined by medical condition, age, personal wealth and social connections (Pashigian 2012: 545; see also Gammeltoft and Nguyen in this volume).
The different discursive values placed on men and women in Vietnam drive the unequal upbringing of boys and girls. Vietnamese gender discourses are strongly normative: gender in Vietnam is complementary and gendered characteristics differentiate men’s and women’s characters, abilities and expected behaviours. Characteristics associated with the feminine character (tinh nit) include gentleness, obedience, sweetness and being easy to control; these qualities contrast with the masculine character (tinh nam) which includes aggressive and predatory behaviour, being naughty, mischievous, active and difficult to control (Rydstrom 2004: 74).
Son preference and patrilocality thus remain strong in Vietnam and parents regard investments in sons to have long-term returns in security in old age and an heir who will carry out rituals after death (Belanger and Pendakis 2009: 267; Haughton and Haughton 1995: 334). The desire for a son persisted in Vietnam even after the introduction of a nationwide two-child family planning policy in 1989. Extending families to three or more children is most common among couples with daughters who still hope to achieve a son. Ridicule and social exclusion directed at some men and women without sons attests to the enduring value of sons, especially in Vietnam’s rural north (Belanger 2006: 254; 259). While sons were desired to carry on the family line, daughters were judged by the degree to which their actions enhanced the family name through embodying virtue, marrying well and producing children (Hoskins 1976: 131—32).
Actual family arrangements in post-reform Vietnam contrast with normative models when, for example, a family comprises too many, or too few, members. Infertility, labour migration and transnational migration challenge the ideal family model and normative female heterosexuality centred on the family. The experiences of infertile women generate less-than-model families that may lack children or include additional members (Pashigian 2012: 552). There are anecdotes that a woman who is unable to bear sons may look for a second wife for her husband even though polygamy is officially illegal in Vietnam (Belanger 2006: 257).
Urban labour migration separates family members and in Vietnam has escalated through an increasing feminisation of migration since the 1980s (GSO 2011c: 24). The majority of migrant labourers in Vietnam work in its major cities Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Danang, Hai Phong and Can Tho. Urban migrant women often live with peers in factory dormitories or rented rooms shared with workmates, while migrant men working in construction might live on site (Jerneck 2010: 108—9). Their absences from home not only alter family structure and communication within the family but also impact on the organisation of labour and income in the household. When a mother is working in the city, a left-behind husband, grandfather or even child may become carer for dependent family members (Hoang and Yeoh 2011: 730; Truong 2009).
Similarly, transnational mobility separates families and generates a negotiation of idealised gender roles. When professional women leave their husbands and children behind to study abroad, other kin may take on caregiver and educator roles. Such a reorganisation alters the power structure within the family, particularly when the husband takes on housework and childcare on top of employment, and requires the use of new communication technologies to enable mothers to be present in the family despite physical distance (Tran 2008: 126—29).