Family and Household Structure in Vietnam: Some Glimpses From a Recent Survey

This analysis of Vietnamese families and households was based on the 1991 Vietnam Life History Survey which was not reliably a nationally representative sample. The sample was small (403 households) and was obtained from a rural village (Tien Tien) and a medium sized city (Hai Duong) in the North and a rural village (Long Hoa) near a city in the center of the Mekong River Delta (Can Tho) in the South. Households were generally modest in size with many nuclear families. Few lived with paternal relatives when growing up. Extended family ties were still reinforced by weekly or daily visits. The East Asian model is based on a patrilineal patrilocal and patriarchal Confucian-type heritage. The Vietnamese family system has been maintained in the Chinese-style among the ruling classes. The status of women and daughters was higher and involved the right to inherit property. The kinship system was described as bilateral. Recent fieldwork has reinforced traditional views about both the importance of patrilineal ties and ideals and the importance of maternal relatives and nuclear family relations. Responses to the 931 interviews revealed that 80% of the rural villages were headed by men and about 50% of heads in the cities were women. 30 out of 50 female heads in Can Tho were older widows. In the northern city 47 of 51 female headed households were married with husbands present. The issue of female headship in Vietnam requires additional study because in this society female headship does not mean absent husbands and disadvantaged status. The range in household size was 4.4 in the northern city to 6.0 in the southern city. Households were larger in the South. 10% of households in villages and 20% of households in cities were extended family units. 50% of the female headed households in the southern village and almost 66% of households in the southern city were extended families. Proximity of resident to the maternal or paternal side was not the common pattern. Regardless of proximity visitation with relatives was high; longer distances increased visits to longer than weekly. Men visited more frequently than women.