Lao Isan - Marriage and Family

Marriage. Marriage in the northeast begins with a period of courtship initiated by the young couple. This may involve intervention by the parents at any point. Before the marriage takes place, the couple seeks approval from both sets of parents. Thus marriage can be interpreted as a matter of choice given the courtship pattern, but seen as arranged given the desire to have parental approval. Typically, the parents with fewer resources have less control over their children's marriage choices. Since villages are made up of kin, marriages are often exogamous with regard to the village. Ordinarily a newly married couple moves in with the wife's family and lives there until the next daughter gets married, in which case the first couple sets up its own household. Marriage is not a religious event in Buddhism, but Buddhist monks may be invited so that the couple and their relatives acquire religious merit. The event is sanctioned by the community of kin in a ritual that reinforces the importance of respect for age and the parental generation.

Domestic Unit. The family or household consists of those people who share meals and farm cooperatively; normally, they occupy a single house. The domestic cycle of matrilocal residence followed by separate residence means a family will be nuclear or extended at different points in time. Characteristically, a village will have around 65 percent nuclear households and the rest extended at any one time. But a majority of the households are participating in a cycle where married daughters bring their husbands into the family for a length of time. Eventually the last daughter, with her husband and children, lives with her parents in the natal home without setting up a separate household. In some cases, wealth (usually in land) permitting, sisters with their husbands and children live in compounds of three or four households surrounded by a wooden or bamboo pallisade. The sisters' parents remain in the natal household until their death, supplying parental leadership for the group of domestic units. Each household in the compound is a separate domestic unit.

Inheritance. Because of the pattern of setting up domestic units, in which a man moves in with his wife and her family, the parental generation tends to pass land through daughters. A son is expected to marry a woman with rights in land from her parents. Although sons may receive some land from their parents, most land is passed to women. However, as land gets scarce and the opening of new plots in uncultivated areas is virtually impossible, more land is being passed to sons because of the concern of parents about the viability of farming for the new family.