Nguyen Manh Thao of the northern province of Hoa Binh is happy that he has two daughters.
This is somewhat surprising in Vietnam with its strong patriarchal
and Confucianist traditions where families desire to have a son to tend
to the family altar, to continue the family lineage and so on.
It is not important whether it is a daughter or a son, Thao said,
adding that to have the right conditions to raise them comfortably and
ensure a happy life for them is far more important.
Thao,
therefore, did not pressurise his wife to give him a son and a third
child for the family, another not-too-uncommon practice in the country
when the first two children are daughters.
Like his elder
brother, Nguyen Manh Hung has no particular preference, and does not say
anything to his wife about needing a son. The couple did not adopt any
method or measure, western or traditional, to try and influence the
baby's gender, another frequently chosen option by many others.
His first child is a girl and the second, a boy. After giving birth to
the second child, his wife chose to use the IUD (intrauterine device)
sterilisation method, Hung said.
"Two children are enough and I can afford to secure their future based on my financial situation," he added.
Thao and Hung's parents worked very hard to raise their five children,
and they often advised their offspring to have only one or two children
in order to raise them well.
Nguyen Thi Nga, a family
planning worker at Cham Mat Ward in Hoa Binh City , said the
number of families having three children in the ward has reduced in
recent years.
"The awareness of residents about the advantages of having a smaller family has improved," Nga added.
Unlike earlier, when many families did not want to meet and listen to
her about sterilisation, a large number of women are now voluntarily
asking for advice on sterilisation methods, she said.
Only 10 of 1,750 households in the ward have a third child.
Nguyen Huy Lam, head of the city's Centre for Population and Family
Planning, said in 2008, the third child accounted for nearly three in
every 100 births. This dropped to two in 2009 and is expected to remain
the same this year, he said.
This is the result of
awareness campaigns as well as the implementation of many activities
like the establishment of a club for families without the third child in
Cham Mat ward, he added.
However, Lam said he is
concerned that in Hoa Binh City , more than 50 percent of the
third-born children were from well-off families.
Nguyen
Thi Nguyet of Cham Mat ward has a son and a daughter, but wants another
one despite the advice of family planning workers.
Her family is doing well, so raising one more child is not difficult, she said.
Tran Phuong Hoa, Cham Mat ward's family planning co-ordinator, said
some families want to have many children because they thought it will
make them happier and will have more people to take care of them when
they are old.
In Vietnam , especially in rural and
mountainous areas, there are no homes for senior people, and many people
are afraid that there will be nobody to take care of them if they have
only one or two children.
In particular, some families
think that daughters cannot take care of them when they are old because
daughters usually live at their husband's house and take care of his
parents.
So families with two daughters often want to have one son, Hoa said.
Cao Phong district in the province has many well-off families with more
than two children and is among districts with the highest gender
imbalance.
The province has a third child rate of 7.7 per
cent, according to Nguyen Thi Minh Phuong, deputy head of the provincial
Statistic Department, with most of them being boys.
The use of methods to choose a baby's gender before conceiving is popular among the provincial population.
It has contributed to the gender imbalance in Hoa Binh province, which
ranks among the top ten provinces in the country in this regard,
according to the provincial Statistics Department.
The
province will change the content and objectives of its awareness
campaigns and also introduce stricter punitive measures as it strives to
reduce its gender imbalance and contribute to stable development of the
nation's population, Lam said./.
