Do marriages forget their past?: marital stability in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia

Heuveline, Patrick; Poch, Bunnak

article

Do marriages forget their past?: marital stability in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia

Demography • 43 (1) • Published In 2006 • Pages: 99-125

By: Heuveline, Patrick, Poch, Bunnak.

Abstract
This paper assesses the impact of three main destabilizing factors on marital stability in Cambodia: the radical reformation of marriage under the Khmers Rouges (KR); the imbalanced gender ratio among marriageable adults resulting from gendered mortality during the KR regime; and, after decades of isolating from the West, a period of rapid social change. Although there is evidence of declining marital stability in the most recent period, marriages contracted under the KR appear as stable as adjacent marriage cohorts. These findings suggest that the conditions under which spouses were initially paired matter less for marital stability than does their contemporaneous environment.

Subjects

Basis of marriage

Regulation of marriage

Mode of marriage

Arranging a marriage

Aftermath of combat

Research and development

Termination of marriage