Family and Kinship

In Cambodia the family was the foundation of agrarian life, framing social organization, individual reference, and economic needs. The basis of the household was a nuclear family, with close relatives living nearby. Rural communities were often clusters of such households. Mutual aid and cooperation to and from consanguinal and affinal kin helped people to celebrate and support life events and to share material resources, information, services, advice, and contacts. In Canada a number of Cambodian households are composed of a nuclear family and several bilateral relatives and friends (usually individuals with families killed by the Khmer Rouge). These household networks provide emotional bonds and mutual aid, child care, translation, and transportation. Extended family groups tend to congregate in specific areas and, with close friends, will provide job and housing information, financial help, and cultural instruction as in completing income tax forms. Single youths often share accommodation to cope with difficult circumstances and loneliness.

Cambodian communities in Canada follow the hierarchies of traditional Khmer society. Patterns of authority in the family are determined along gender and generational lines, with men at the head; wives and children are expected to submit to the man’s extensive authority. Women take care of the children, household finances, and domestic duties. They maintain the honour of the family (through their own and their daughters’ behaviour), resolve family conflicts, and provide a harmonious environment. Wives are blamed when the children acculturate too quickly or begin to exhibit lack of discipline or respect towards the father.

The Khmer Rouge terror disrupted and rearranged Cambodian families; consequently, almost one in five of Cambodian households in Canada is headed by a widow. The resulting instability slows the building of strong family ties and a solid social foundation in Canada. Community service workers and religious leaders have observed increasing stress within Cambodian families – family breakdown, domestic violence, juvenile delinquency, gambling, alcohol abuse, family separation, and divorce. Cambodians tend not to go to battered women’s shelters or approach government and other agencies, few of which have service workers who speak Khmer.

As well, abuse or stress is kept private, and any public disclosure is considered a source of shame and family dishonour. The 1980s saw a high turnover of Khmer-speaking service workers, many of whom were not qualified and lacked professional credentials. As a result, individuals have tended to turn to friends to share emotional difficulties or for guidance. Most Cambodians turn to outsiders only when a child or spouse runs away from home and authorities have to be notified, or when social assistance or emergency housing is needed, or when Children’s Aid or police intervene.

Divorced or widowed Cambodian women remain especially vulnerable. With little education, poor command of English or French, and sole responsibility for child care and domestic duties, they are unlikely to enter the workforce or deal effectively with their social isolation and withdrawal. Except in Montreal, Cambodian communities have no counsellors in social work or mental health trained to assess or help ease excessive trauma. Several, however, employ Khmer-speaking service workers to advise on resettlement and to assist in dealings with bureaucracy.

The United States, Australia, and New Zealand have developed effective mental-health treatment for Cambodian refugees. In contrast, Canada has not set up coordinated teams of medical and mental-health staff to study or treat Cambodian concepts of well-being and somatic idioms of personal and social distress. It has no medical clinics prepared to accommodate somatic presentation of psychological problems among Cambodians or to provide therapeutic intervention. Depression and torture-related trauma go unrecognized and untreated, placing enormous stress on families. The Centre for Victims of Torture, in Toronto, for example, has just recently listed Cambodians as a “community in need.”