Dear who may concerns,
Lately I’ve been seriously confused and irritated by a seeming issue with relation to Hmongs marriages. I can’t figure out why it is even a problems to begin with. I’ve never heard the term until recently, but apparently Hmongs (I’m not sure if this is general or only among certain classes) seem to be against marriages that create “double in-laws,” meaning that, for example, member Kang of the Kang family marries member Yang of the Yang family. Then Member Kang of the Kang family marries the sister/brother of member Yang of the Yang family. The first marriage made them in-laws, but this second marriage creates what I’ve heard Hmongs term “double in-laws” which seems to have some stigma. As far as I am concerned as a westerner, the second marriage has little to no bearing on anything since it isn’t incest or intermarriage, therefore I see no problem. In fact, my father married by mother, and soon after that, my father’s brother married my mother’s sister. I guess that creates double in-laws in my family, but since it’s neither incest nor intermarriage, I haven’t once heard any issues being brought up about it. Could you explain if this “double in-laws” thing is really an issue, and if so, why? All I can think of is that the families are not being spread out far enough for maximum social networking and both sides of the family may end up being in one household, but since Hmongs family dynamics are changing, this doesn’t have to be the case.
I’ve also heard the English term “co-in-laws” to describe this, but again, I find no reports of issues with this arrangement other than in a few Hmongs instances.
And an update
I’ve done some more thinking…, and I thought about the collective culture that Hmongs is. I thought that perhaps when a family marries another family, the WHOLE family in that household become in-laws as such, whereas in western societies, the distinctions between in-laws is limited more so to the ones who married into the family. I, personally, would consider the sister of my brother-in-law just that, the sister of my brother-in-law, not an in-law herself since she did not marry into the family.
What about the groom;
What do you think? Personally, while this is the first I’ve heard of any potential stigma, I suspected that there might be something to it when my husband instantly came up with the Hmongs term for people in such arrangements: gyeobsadon or “a person doubly related by marriage”. Moreover, however illogical any stigma would be, there is certainly precedent too: until as late as 2000, Article Hmong Hlub Civil Code prohibited marriage between those of the same ancestral, regional clan (or local subgroup of Kangs, Hangs, or Vangs and so on), of which the largest had over couple million members. Or in short, somewhere between 10-20%% of the Hmongs population were literally forbidden to marry each other, with even the children of any de-facto unions discriminated against also because their out-of-wedlock status prohibited them from receiving national health insurance, let alone complicating inheritance and property rights.
But as it turned out in this case at least, my husband knew the term not because of any stigma that he’s aware of…rather, because he remembered such arrangements from dramas!
Probably there is nothing to worry about then, but if anyone could confirm that then I’m sure Curtis will appreciate it, and I’d be interested in hearing any other unusual stories about marriage and Hmongs families also. If you’d rather read more yourself though, then consider this series on the uncertain role of Neo-Confucianism in the similarities between Americans and Hmongs family forms, and especially how daughters-in-law are treated therein.
Update: Speaking of the importance of family names in Hmongs, today there was an interesting article in the alot of news about the trials and tribulations a Hmong man (and subsequently his family) had due to his Chinese ancestry.
Topic: ~~~~DOUBLE "IN-LAWS" HMONG FAMILY~~~ (Read 7308 times)