Vietnamese family values and selective policy learning from Russian and soviet experience

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Vietnamese family values and selective policy learning from Russian and soviet experience¹

Introduction

Vietnamese family life is increasingly shaped by the pressures of rapid socio-economic transformation, including industrialization, urbanization, and global integration. While traditional values rooted in Confucian principles—such as filial piety (hiếu thảo), collective responsibility (trách nhiệm), and affective bonds (yêu thương)—remain influential, these changes are placing a growing strain on how care is organized and sustained within families. As a result, the key challenge is not simply the transformation of family values in the abstract, but how to support intergenerational care, balance gendered responsibilities, and maintain social cohesion in a changing institutional environment. Preserving these values while ensuring social adaptability has therefore become a central concern for policymakers and scholars alike.

Russia presents a meaningful comparative case due to its longstanding historical and ideological connections with Vietnam, as well as its transition from a Soviet state-centric welfare model to a post-Soviet hybrid system. Initiatives such as the Maternity Capital program were introduced with the expectation of stabilizing families and mitigating demographic decline. However, as it has been observed, the program "loses the function of stimulating fertility and becomes the only way for low-income families with children to improve their financial situation" [Kormishkina, Koroleva 2019: 34]. In this regard, Russia's experience provides valuable insights into how family support mechanisms can be institutionalised, while also revealing the limitations of state-centred approaches in contexts where informal care remains significant.

To address this issue, the study applies policy transfer theory [Dolowitz, Marsh 2000] to evaluate the adaptability of Russian family policy concepts rather than their direct imitation in the Vietnamese context. Rather than examining the broad transformation of marital or family values in contemporary Vietnam, the article focuses on three policy-relevant dimensions of family life: eldercare, gendered care responsibilities, and intergenerational solidarity. By identifying key institutional, cultural, and economic enablers and constraints, it aims to propose a hybrid, culturally resonant policy framework for strengthening family support systems in Vietnam amid modernisation.

Theoretical and methodological framework

This study employs a comparative-historical approach, combining within-case analysis with cross-case comparison to examine family welfare regimes in Vietnam and Russia. A purposive selection of primary and secondary documents from the Soviet, post-Soviet, and contemporary Vietnamese contexts is used to trace major shifts in state-family relations. The analysis focuses on critical junctures, such as Vietnam's Doi Moi and the dissolution of the USSR, and applies a structured coding frame centred on filial piety, gendered roles, and state-family relations.

The study is informed by scholarship on Vietnamese family values and Russian family policy. Still, it does not seek to provide a broad review of changing marital or family values in either country. In the Vietnamese context, the Dual Filial Piety Model [Yeh, Bedford 2003: 216], validated in Vietnam [Ha et al. 2020: 263], remains a useful point of departure because it highlights reciprocal filial piety as a form of respect and care grounded in affection and gratitude rather than mere hierarchical submission. Subsequent work has further clarified filial piety as a contextualized and dynamic construct, distinguishing between reciprocal and authoritarian dimensions of intergenerational obligation [Bedford, Yeh 2019]. Despite rapid socio-economic transformation, filial piety continues to function as an enduring moral value, since "the different expression in traditional and modern time can hardly change the nature of Piety in Vietnam" [Nguyen, Hoang 2016: 103]. These studies suggest that intergenerational obligations remain central to family life, even as modernisation places pressure on traditional care arrangements.

In the Russian case, the Soviet state institutionalised a distinctive gender order that incorporated women into paid employment while leaving domestic work and childcare largely feminised [Ashwin 2012: 329–330]. At the same time, universal pensions and subsidized healthcare shifted part of the caregiving burden from households to the state, while leaving women with a persistent "double burden" of paid work and care [Teplova 2007]. After the Soviet collapse, welfare retrenchment and decentralization generated a partial "re-familialization" of care. At the same time, policy instruments such as the Maternity Capital program were introduced to mitigate demographic decline [Kormishkina, Koroleva 2019]. As a result, contemporary Russia reflects a hybrid welfare regime in which state assistance coexists with renewed family responsibility [Dugarova 2016: 35].

Existing research on Vietnam and Russia has generated important insights, yet a significant gap remains in comparative studies that examine the contextual feasibility of policy transfer between the two cases. To address this gap, the article applies policy transfer theory and adopts the view that policy learning involves degrees of transfer—from emulation and adaptation to inspiration—rather than simple copying [Dolowitz, Marsh 2000]. This framework allows the analysis to move beyond policy instruments alone and to assess the institutional, cultural, and economic conditions under which selected Russian experiences may, or may not, be adapted to Vietnam. Accordingly, the article focuses on three policy-relevant dimensions of family life: eldercare, gendered care responsibilities, and intergenerational solidarity.

Russian and Soviet experience of family governance

The evolution of Russian family policy from collectivist Soviet arrangements to a post-Soviet hybrid welfare regime illustrates the state's enduring role in shaping care provision, gender norms, and household stability. For comparison with Vietnam, the Russian case is useful not because it offers a ready-made institutional model, but because it reveals how state intervention can both support and reconfigure family life under changing political and economic conditions.

In the Soviet period, eldercare represented a marked departure from traditional familial caregiving. Seeking to collectivize social obligations, the state institutionalised care through nursing homes and welfare facilities [Parfenova 2021]. While these arrangements offered material guarantees, including home-based services, they also introduced a stronger institutional mediation of care and could leave some older adults socially isolated. Following the collapse of the USSR and the retrenchment of public welfare, care responsibilities were increasingly re-familialized, especially in ways that intensified women's unpaid care work [Teplova 2007]. In contemporary Russia, despite basic pensions and formal assistance, many older women continue to care for their families while emphasising, in Shadrina's words, that "they do everything possible to avoid becoming a burden to their significant others" [Shadrina 2024: 459]. The result is a hybrid and fragmented care regime shaped by both welfare legacies and informal family practices.

Soviet gender policy combined support for women's labour-market participation with maternity and childcare provisions, but it did not fundamentally redistribute domestic responsibilities within the household [Ashwin 2012: 330–331]. This unresolved tension contributed to what Teplova identifies as the "double ideology and double burden of women - at work and at home" [Teplova 2006: 134]. After the Soviet collapse, the "widespread reduction of publicly-provided child care services" and the "movement towards neofamilialism" intensified this imbalance, aiming at the "promotion of the status of temporary homemaker" [Teplova 2006: 18]. In contemporary Russia, despite broader educational and professional opportunities, women continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of family responsibilities, reflecting the intersection of the "ideal of sacrificial maternal love" and the "capitalist norm of self-sufficiency" [Shadrina 2024: 471].        

These developments also reshaped intergenerational solidarity and family-based care arrangements. In post-Soviet Russia, market transformation did not eliminate family support. Rather, it increased many families' reliance on older women's unpaid care. As Shadrina observes, "the social position of the babushka reflects the expectation, shaped during the Soviet era, that once they become grandmothers, women will abandon their professional careers and personal lives to help their daughters combine motherhood with paid work" [Shadrina 2024: 458]. This persistence of family support, despite institutional fragmentation, is particularly relevant for comparison with Vietnam, where intergenerational care remains normatively central but is increasingly strained by modernisation.

Vietnam in comparative perspective: limits of transferability

The comparison between Vietnam and Russia highlights not only differences in family values, but more importantly, differences in how care responsibilities are organized and supported within distinct institutional and cultural contexts. While Vietnam's family system remains strongly shaped by Confucian principles, particularly filial obligation and intergenerational reciprocity, Russia's trajectory reflects the long-term effects of Soviet state intervention and post-Soviet welfare restructuring. For this study, the comparison is not intended to restate general differences in family values, but rather to assess the extent to which specific elements of Russian family policy experience may be transferable to Vietnam.

A first major point of divergence lies in the cultural embeddedness of eldercare. In Vietnam, filial piety remains a fundamental organizing principle of family life, reinforced by cultural norms, legal expectations, and everyday practice. Children are expected to support and often co-reside with their aging parents, and multi-generational households retain both moral and functional significance [Nguyen, Hoang 2016: 99–100]. Even under conditions of rapid urbanization, this obligation continues to shape living arrangements, although it is increasingly expressed through financial support, remittances, and periodic care rather than continuous co-residence. These adaptive forms suggest not a decline, but a transformation of filial practices under structural constraints. This pattern is consistent with broader observations that Vietnamese family life has been reshaped by post-Doi Moi socio-economic change without losing the normative importance of intergenerational obligation [Nguyen 2017]. In practice, however, filial obligation in Vietnam should not be equated with static co-residence. In major urban centres, rising housing costs, labour mobility, and demanding work schedules make continuous intergenerational living increasingly difficult. Under these conditions, family support is often reconfigured through remittances, frequent visits, and the coordination of care across separate households. This suggests that filial piety is not disappearing, but being reorganized in forms more compatible with contemporary socio-economic life.

In contrast, Russia's experience reflects a historically different configuration of care. The Soviet institutionalization of welfare reduced the centrality of family-based eldercare, while the post-Soviet retrenchment of state support led to a partial return of caregiving responsibilities to households. However, this return does not represent a revival of culturally embedded filial norms comparable to those in Vietnam. Instead, it reflects pragmatic responses to institutional gaps. As a result, Russian families often combine limited co-residence with institutional or market-based eldercare solutions, particularly in urban areas [Parfenova 2021: 81–82]. This distinction underscores a key limitation of policy transfer: institutional models that assume weaker moral obligations of family care may not be fully compatible with Vietnam's normative framework. This difference is crucial for policy transfer. In Russia, the boundary between family obligation and public provision has historically been more open to institutional mediation.

In contrast, in Vietnam, eldercare remains strongly tied to moral expectations of filial responsibility. For this reason, policy instruments that presuppose a weaker normative commitment to family-based care may be difficult to adapt directly. The relevant lesson from Russia, therefore, lies less in institutional form than in the broader question of how formal support can relieve family pressure without displacing the family's moral role.

A second dimension concerns the distribution of family responsibilities and the state's role in mediating intergenerational support. In Vietnam, family responsibility is structured by interdependence, with multiple generations contributing to caregiving and financial support, particularly in contexts where formal welfare provision remains limited [Mai et al. 2024]. In Russia, by contrast, the historical expansion of state welfare promoted a form of state-mediated individualism, in which intergenerational dependency was partially displaced by public provision [Dugarova 2016: 9]. Although post-Soviet transformations have reintroduced elements of family-based care, these practices are shaped more by institutional necessity than by enduring cultural norms.

Despite these differences, both cases reveal a persistent gendered imbalance in caregiving. In Vietnam, as in Russia, women continue to bear primary responsibility for unpaid care work, even as their participation in the labour market increases. This pattern reflects a broader structural constraint: formal equality in employment does not automatically translate into equality within the household. The Russian experience of the "double burden" therefore provides a particularly relevant point of comparison, highlighting the need for policies that address not only labour participation but also the redistribution of care responsibilities within families.

Finally, patterns of intergenerational solidarity in both countries are increasingly shaped by modernisation, migration, and changing living arrangements. In Vietnam, co-resident extended families remain an important ideal, but are under pressure from urbanization and labour mobility. In Russia, intergenerational support is more frequently maintained across separate households through communication, financial transfers, and practical assistance [Kravchenko 2012: 197]. Although these arrangements differ in form, they reveal a shared challenge: how to sustain intergenerational care amid socio-economic transformation. This challenge reinforces the need for context-sensitive policy adaptation rather than direct institutional transfer.

Discussion: conditions for policy adaptation in Vietnam

The comparison between Vietnam and Russia highlights that the relevance of Russian and Soviet family policy experience lies not in institutional replication but in clarifying the conditions under which policy adaptation may be feasible. Despite facing similar demographic pressures, including population aging and declining fertility, the two countries operate within fundamentally different institutional, cultural, and economic frameworks of family–state relations.

A central distinction concerns the state's role in organizing care. In the Soviet model, caregiving was conceptualized as a state-managed function, supported by universal pensions, public childcare, and centralized welfare provision [Teplova 2007; Caldwell 2007]. These arrangements reduced the direct burden on families but also reconfigured intergenerational relations by partially displacing familial responsibility. In contrast, Vietnam's family system continues to be structured by Confucian norms of filial obligation and intergenerational interdependence, within a context of limited formal welfare provision and a large informal sector. As a result, care, particularly eldercare, remains primarily a family responsibility, and institutional alternatives are often viewed with cultural ambivalence.

Economic and institutional constraints further limit the transferability of Russian policy models. Russia's pronatalist programs, such as the Maternity Capital scheme, were implemented within a relatively stronger fiscal and administrative framework [Kormishkina, Koroleva 2019]. Vietnam, by contrast, faces constraints related to fiscal capacity, regional inequality, and the predominance of informal employment. These conditions complicate the implementation of comprehensive welfare programs and risk producing uneven access to care, similar to disparities observed in post-Soviet welfare systems [Cook 2017]. Consequently, large-scale institutional solutions, such as universalized eldercare systems, are unlikely to be feasible or culturally appropriate in the Vietnamese context. This governance dimension is especially important because policy transfer in the family sphere depends not only on normative compatibility but also on implementation capacity. Even well-designed measures may remain symbolic if local authorities lack administrative resources, coordination mechanisms, or stable funding. For this reason, selective piloting and phased expansion are likely to be more effective than universal reform introduced at the national level from the outset.

Governance capacity represents an additional constraint on policy adaptation. In post-Soviet Russia, the healthcare case shows how underfinancing, informality, and regional disparities could fragment formally universal social provision [Cook 2017]. In the Vietnamese context, policy adaptation must take into account the complexity of a centralized political-administrative system operating within a rapidly changing and internally diverse society [London 2023: 1–2]. Effective policy transfer, therefore, requires not only appropriate design but also attention to administrative feasibility, local capacity, and coordination mechanisms. Pilot-based approaches, gradual scaling, and strengthened accountability mechanisms may be necessary to ensure that policy innovations are not merely symbolic but practically effective.

Across both contexts, gender norms constitute a critical dimension of family policy. More broadly, comparative research has shown that family policy occupies a central place in the renegotiation of social contracts under conditions of welfare change [Dugarova 2016], making the Russia–Vietnam comparison especially relevant for understanding how care responsibilities are redistributed across state and family institutions. Despite high levels of female labour participation, women continue to bear primary responsibility for unpaid care work. The persistence of the Soviet "double burden" [Roudakova, Ballard-Reisch 1999; Caldwell 2007] finds a parallel in Vietnam, where Confucian expectations continue to associate caregiving with women. Without careful design, policies such as maternity leave may inadvertently reinforce this imbalance. Addressing gender inequality in care, therefore, requires not only formal provisions but also measures that actively redistribute responsibilities, including paternity leave, flexible work arrangements, and supportive workplace policies. This issue should not be treated as secondary to family policy. Unequal care responsibilities directly affect women's labour continuity, income security, and long-term access to social protection. In this sense, gender-sensitive family policy is not merely a matter of fairness within the household, but also a question of welfare sustainability and labour-market inclusion in an aging society.

Cultural factors also shape the limits of institutional reform. In Vietnam, strong normative expectations regarding filial piety can lead to resistance to formal eldercare services if they are perceived as replacing family responsibilities. It contrasts with Russia's greater acceptance of institutional care, shaped by historical experience. Policy design in Vietnam must therefore frame state support as complementary to, rather than a substitute for, family care. Community-based services, home-based support, and incentives for family caregivers may offer more culturally resonant approaches.

These conditions suggest that Vietnam should pursue a limited, pilot-based and culturally legitimate model of family support, with eldercare, childcare and parental leave treated as complementary pillars rather than isolated interventions.

Policy implications for Vietnam

The comparison with the Russian and Soviet experiences suggests that Vietnam should strengthen family resilience through selective and culturally legitimate forms of formal support. Rather than constructing a state-centred welfare regime, Vietnam should prioritize measures that relieve household care burdens while preserving the family's normative role in care provision.

First, Vietnam should develop community-based eldercare services that support families without replacing filial responsibility. A feasible pilot could be organized at the commune or ward level through local health stations, elderly associations, and community organizations. Core services may include periodic home visits for frail older persons, day-care or half-day centres for older adults whose children work full time, short-term respite support for family caregivers, and basic caregiver training. Priority should be given to households with high care burdens, older persons living alone, migrant-worker families, and low-income urban households.

Second, childcare support should be expanded in ways that reflect Vietnam's changing labour market. In urban and industrial zones, policy should prioritize affordable childcare near workplaces, extended opening hours, and targeted support for children of informal or migrant workers. Such measures would reduce pressure on mothers and grandparents while helping working-age adults remain economically active. The Russian experience is relevant here because it shows that childcare policy may support women's employment but still reproduce the "double burden" if unpaid care remains feminized [Roudakova, Ballard-Reisch 1999; Teplova 2007].

Third, parental leave and workplace policy should encourage a more balanced distribution of care. A modest paternity-leave quota, workplace protection for fathers who take leave, and flexible work arrangements for employees with young children or dependent elderly parents would make shared caregiving more practical. These measures should be accompanied by public messaging that presents care as a family responsibility shared by men and women, rather than a maternal duty.

Finally, policy should recognize that intergenerational solidarity increasingly operates across separate households. Support for family caregivers, grandparental childcare, remittances, and rotating visits would help modernize family care without weakening filial piety. In this sense, the most useful lesson from the Russian case is not institutional imitation, but the need to design formal support as a complement to family-based reciprocity.

Conclusion

This article has argued that direct transplantation of the Soviet welfare model to contemporary Vietnam is neither institutionally feasible nor culturally appropriate. The comparison shows that the fundamental divergence lies in the logic of care provision: whereas the Soviet model was built on state-centred institutional substitution, Vietnam's family welfare order remains deeply anchored in Confucian norms of filial obligation, intergenerational solidarity, and moral reciprocity.

By examining three interrelated dimensions of family life—eldercare, gendered care responsibilities, and intergenerational solidarity—the study demonstrates that state intervention is inherently ambivalent. On the one hand, the Russian and Soviet experience shows that public provision can reduce household vulnerability, expand care infrastructure, and partially redistribute social risk. On the other hand, it also reveals that care policies may weaken family-based reciprocity or reproduce women's unequal care burdens when underlying gender norms remain unchanged.

The main implication for Vietnam, therefore, is not institutional imitation but selective adaptation. A viable reform strategy should combine limited formal support with the preservation of the family's normative caregiving role. In practical terms, this means developing culturally legitimate measures—such as targeted financial support, community- and home-based eldercare, affordable childcare, and more gender-equitable parental leave—that alleviate care pressures without displacing family responsibility.

More broadly, the article contributes to comparative policy scholarship by showing that successful policy transfer in the field of family welfare depends not only on institutional design and fiscal capacity, but also on cultural legitimacy and implementation context. Future research should extend this analysis through primary empirical evidence and closer examination of how state, market, and community actors interact in Vietnam's evolving care regime.

 

¹ This research paper is solely funded by VNU University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Hanoi, under project number USSH-2025.08.

About the authors

Duy Quynh Nguyen

Vietnam National University, University of Social Sciences and Humanities

Email: quynhnd69@gmail.com
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-4542-2146

Ph.D (Political Science), Lecturer

Viet Nam, Hanoi

Trung Kien Nguyen

Vietnam National University, University of Social Sciences and Humanities

Author for correspondence.
Email: kienllct@gmail.com

Ph.D (Philosophy), Lecturer

Viet Nam, Hanoi

References

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