ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the Lao family and shows how family laws, agricultural cooperatives, socialist “family values,” the expansion of rural education, and development projects have affected facets of family life. It discusses the ways in which some of these changes have enabled women to devote less energy to domestic activities and more to other economic enterprises. The chapter summarizes how historical factors shaped family life, changes in social institutions and culture affected these historical family patterns, extralocal influences modified families, and individuals responded to these influences and changes. Flirtations, romances, marriage arrangements, and residence after marriage all reflect the Lao view of young men as more adventurous and women as more domestic. Childbirth and child care obviously affect women’s health and productivity. The child-care centers supervised by young mothers and older grandmothers in cooperative villages had disappeared, and child care had reverted to precooperative forms.
