HANOI (AFP) — Modern pressures are changing the Vietnamese family structure, with divorce on the rise and the very young and old spending more time alone, said a joint UN-government survey released Thursday.
Gender equality is improving, but men still dominate households, and domestic violence occurs in 20 percent of marriages, said the first nationwide survey of the family unit, a joint project with UN children's agency UNICEF.
"After 20 years of doi moi, or renovation (market reforms), Vietnam has changed in nearly all aspects of life, including in family relationships," found the survey of 9,400 households across all 64 cities and provinces.
Vietnam has for millennia been a traditionally rural and patriarchal society, where Confucian values stressed the family unit and dictated that the young respect their elders, and that women are obedient to their husbands.
However, the survey found social mores are changing fast in communist Vietnam, which emerged from decades of war in 1975 and started to re-open its doors to the outside world in the 1990s, ushering in rapid economic growth.
Divorce, once almost unheard of, has "increased rapidly in recent years," to 2.6 percent of respondents aged 18 to 60, with most divorcees citing "differences in opinion about lifestyle, adultery and economic difficulties."
The survey also found that many parents now feel they are no longer able to spend enough time with their children and, with a lack of affordable child care, worry for their offspring's mental and emotional development.
"It's not a matter of not wanting to, or ignorance," said UNICEF country chief Jesper Morch. "Parents need to work in order for their families to survive ... and therefore don't have time to spend with their children."
Only one third of households have elderly family members, the survey found.
"Three-generation households were less common and are decreasing, possibly due to industrialisation," said the report, co-produced by Vietnam's Institute of Family and Gender Studies.
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