Whilst newly-wed wives and young mothers have traditionally been ‘tied to the bamboo
grove’ in Vietnam, today nearly as many young married women are migrating from rural to
urban areas as young married men. This shift implies a radical break with conventional
expectations of young married women as new daughters-in-law and as the mothers of young
children. It is also closely related with changes in the expectations young married men have
of their wives and of their own parenting roles.
This paper uses qualitative life histories from 76 married male and female rural-to-urban
migrants in their peak child-bearing years to explore their reflections on the impact of
migration on their left-behind children and spouses. The migrants subscribe to social norms of
family co-residence and justify their absence in terms of fulfilling their parental or marital
roles and actively manage their parenting and marital roles in ways that are strongly gendered.