The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXXI, Part 1-2, 1983 - Khamkoo

34 Marjorie A. Muecke
Local definitions of marriage are very flexible in the North, but the event of
live childbirth is taken retrospectively as proof of a marriage. In the author's 1973
study of low economic status of families in Chiang Mai city, three-quarters of the
adults had not registered their first marriages (11.4% of 259 females, and 72.1% of 204
males), and about one-fifth reported having had no religious ceremony in observance
of their first marriage (17.7% of 288 females, 24.8%of250 males). However, all of the
informants said they had been married and had had at least one live child. The social
importance of childbearing for women is again demonstrated in the tendency of women
to figure out their ages at first marriage by the age or birth of their first live-bam child.
Men, in contrast, usually first reported the approximate age of their current marriages,
and had difficulty recalling their age at first marriage (Muecke 1976: 109-113).
Fertility surveys in modern Thailand have consistently found comparatively
small proportions of childless couples. For 1960, only five and a half percent of all
married women were estimated to be childless (Ohara 1968). The 1964 Potharam Study
in rural Central Thailand found only one percent of 1,017 couples with wife aged 20 to
45 childless (Chulalongkorn University 1971: 18). A 1969 survey in the rural North
found only four and one-half percent of married women ages 15 to 50 childless (Jones
and Rachapaetayakom 1970 : 17). In comparison, Whelpton et a/. report a much
higher prevalence--twelve percent--of childlessness among married women of the
United States (Whelpton 1966 : 164-165). These percentages again suggest that
marriage is very important to the Thai as a means of childbearing, as well as a goal in
itself.
Most of the women interviewed accepted a husband's "need" to seek out
prostitutes as likely. They generally tolerated his sexual interests in and outside the
home in order to provide an attractive atmosphere for him to come home to. However,
the women were keenly aware and anxious that by tolerating their husbands' sexual
independence outside the home, they were allowing their husbands opportunity to find
other wives. This ever-present possibility posed a great threat to the women, as desertion
would make the economics of their everyday lives more difficult, and lower their
and their children's social status as well.
The Mother : Daughter Relationship and Child Socialization
Hsu excluded the mother : daughter dyad from possible dominance on the basis
that there are no matriarchal societies. Nevertheless, certain lowland Thai behavioral
patterns suggest special importance of the mother : daughter relationship in that society.
Briefly the salient evidence for a strong mot~er : daughter bond is as follows :
1. Daughters are raised to be mother role-substitutes, being kept at mother's
side longer after birth than sons, and closer to home (at least until marriage) in order