ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on ethnographic and sociological research conducted by Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese researchers on heterosexual love and marriage in Vietnam. It outlines the competing discursive layers that centre on family structure, gender equality, romantic love and idealised gender roles in twenty-first-century Vietnam in order to point out the distance between discursive and actual family life. The chapter highlights that control of female heterosexuality is central to discourses of gender, marriage and family in Vietnam, although increased attention on female heterosexuality in urban Vietnam is not a new feature of the post-reform era. It points out that, although women are portrayed discursively as passive and dependent, they act as agents of social change to negotiate stigmatised social positions into valued and desired roles in the family. Families and gender relations were thus crucial for the maintenance of stability and social order.
