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Hmong Community Debates ‘Dowry’ Cap
SACRAMENTO -- At the sprawling Hmong New Year celebrations at Gibson Ranch and Cal Expo last month, tens of thousands of American Hmong came to celebrate ancient customs - and perhaps find a mate for themselves or their children.
Hmong of all ages line up to toss tennis balls to members of the opposite sex - a classic ice breaker and conversation sparker.
And in the back of nearly every female catcher's mind is the question: how much am I worth to my future husband and his family?
Many pitchers are asking themselves the same thing: if she's the love of my life, how much will it cost me to marry her?
In traditional Hmong culture, the bride and groom's families will negotiate a "wedding gift," "dowry" or "ceremony price" that has averaged $5,000 to $8,000, and has gone as high as $25,000 for a Hmong bride who graduated from Stanford.
Hmong of all ages line up to toss tennis balls to members of the opposite sex - a classic ice breaker and conversation sparker.
And in the back of nearly every female catcher's mind is the question: how much am I worth to my future husband and his family?
Many pitchers are asking themselves the same thing: if she's the love of my life, how much will it cost me to marry her?
In traditional Hmong culture, the bride and groom's families will negotiate a "wedding gift," "dowry" or "ceremony price" that has averaged $5,000 to $8,000, and has gone as high as $25,000 for a Hmong bride who graduated from Stanford.
Wedding gifts have been negotiated for thousands of years, and serve as a sort of marriage insurance policy. If a couple divorces and clan leaders judge it to be the bride's fault, her family will have to return the gift, so everybody on the bride's side has a vested interest in making the marriage work.
But as more Hmong become Americanized, and new Hmong from Thailand struggle to house and feed their families, the escalating gift price has become a large bone of contention.
There have been reports of Hmong couples who elope because their parents can't agree on the gift price, and Hmong who ignore the gift price and marry out of the culture. Then there are heartbreaking accounts of young Hmong who tried to commit suicide because marriage negotiations collapsed.
...
But the gift price places a huge burden on the bride to make the marriage work at all costs, Ly said. "If anything should happen it's your fault, you're returnable, and she and her family would have to return the gift price."
Sometimes brides are unfairly blamed for a failed marriage, "even if it wasn't her fault or was in an abusive relationship," Ly said. "The wording is, `you now belong to your husband's family.' When you have trouble in the marriage, usually what we hear the men say is,`I bought you, and it's worse when the inlaws say `remember we bought you'."
Such statements "make you a commodity, don't respect you as a person, and that's what gets most people up in arms," said Ly. "We have all these young women coming out of college saying it may be a gift but I don't want anyone down the line saying `you're our property.'"
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http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=480714d0f85a29f2bf224826b49780b6
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