Readings: **Pham Van Bich, The Vietnamese Family in Change, 44-253
Marr, "Vietnamese Youth in the 90s"

1. What specific problems did Marxists have with the traditional family? What did they see as the root cause of these problems? What role did ideas about tradition, modernity, gender, and class play in their assessment?

2. What changes have taken place in marital decisions and marital relationships from 1945-1995? According to Pham Van Bich, how have these transformations affected the status of men and women? How have marriage reforms both promoted equality and maintained family hierarchy?

3. What has been the impact of state-sponsored birth control policies? What kinds of social and cultural pressures do these policies place on families? How do these pressures vary for men and women?

4. What kind of evidence does Pham Van Bich use in constructing his argument? What are the strengths and weaknesses of his approach?

5. Based on the survey questions and statistics in David Marr's article, how do the concerns of Vietnamese youth in the 1990s compare to those of youth in the 1920s, as seen in previous weeks of this course? What are the dominant issues at stake, and how do opinions differ between these two periods? What factors do you think might account for these differences?

 

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