Abstract
Set in Southeast Asia in a context where marriage postponement and avoidance have made headlines in both academic and popular press outlets, this research was designed to elicit attitudes about the value of marriage and marriage alternatives among rural and urban Vietnamese men and women. The data come from 16 focus group interviews, eight of which were conducted in Hanoi and eight of which took place in rural communities in surrounding districts. The research identifies themes from each set of interviews and draws comparisons according to gender, generation, and rural or urban residence. There is widespread agreement across groups that marriage remains extremely important in Vietnam. Attitudes regarding the acceptability of non-marital cohabitation are much more mixed.
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Acknowledgments
Support for this research was provided by the Polson Institute for Global Development and the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center at Cornell University. Significant contributions to the research were made by colleagues in Vietnam who organized the fieldwork and conducted the interviews. I am particularly indebted to Dang Nguyen Anh, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences (VASS) in Hanoi. I am also very grateful to Philip Guest, then of the Population Council in Bangkok and Mahidol University in Salaya, Thailand, and now at the United Nations, for his excellent collaboration on earlier work on this project.
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Williams, L. Attitudes toward marriage in northern Vietnam: what qualitative data reveal about variations across gender, generation, and geography. J Pop Research 26, 285–304 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12546-010-9024-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12546-010-9024-3