sydney – Dry cleaner Phy Kim Ly points to a young ethnic Cambodian couple kissing near his shop and sighs.
“True love is respected here,” he says, almost wistfully. “Love has priority rights in Australia.”
What is a common sight in Sydney would be rare on the streets of Phnom Penh. Though Cambodian society is becoming more modern with some old traditions falling away, it is far outpaced by life in Australia. For Cambodians living here in Australia, there is a whole new set of freedoms and pressures that can strain and break up relationships—freedoms and pressures that possibly offer a glimpse of future life in Phnom Penh.
“Living there is like living in a modern communist society,” quipped Len Kep, a Cambodian-Australian from Melbourne who now is office manager at Jupiter Power in Phnom Penh. By that, he said, he means that people choose to work hard.
In Cambodia, family breakdowns often are caused by poverty, domestic violence, or a husband having an affair, drinking too much or spending too much time at the local karaoke bar. Acid attacks by jealous spouses are on the rise.
In Australia, family breakdowns within the Cambodian community also are caused by issues of money, unemployment, gambling and drinking.
However, there are often hidden reasons as well, the biggest being the problems of a new culture with new customs, said Ross Stelle of the Flinders University of South Australia’s faculty of social sciences.
Wives fulfill new roles, get an education, work and interact with society. They contribute to household income, and “the men who used to be unchallenged feel very threatened,” Stelle said.
In Cambodia, family breakups such as separations or divorce bring disgrace to women, who are perceived to be bad housewives. But in Australia, women hold more powerful roles in society and aren’t disgraced by marital breakups.
Chea Vannath, president of the Center for Social Development in Phnom Penh, said, “Cambodian women abroad—in Australia, in the US—have more freedom, can live alone, divorce doesn’t carry a bad image.”
Of course, there are also “fake” relationships, with people marrying merely to gain immigration papers to Australia. Many of these marriages end in separation or divorce.
As in almost everywhere in the world, family breakdowns have a bad effect on children, experts in Australia say.
Young children lose sleep and the ability to concentrate on their studies. Some also join gangs, steal or turn to drugs.
Heu Han, a social worker and coordinator of the Cambodian Association of South Australia, said the number of young Cambodian teen-agers addicted to drugs has steadily increased since 1996 to the point that he is very concerned.”
He said he personally knows of one who hung himself and another who shot himself to death.
Lychantha Sok, coordinator of multicultural family services at the Burnside Center near Sydney, recalled a woman who could not take money from an automatic teller machine because of language problems.
As a result, her children had a powerful grip on the family and its day-to-day finances, and even stole money from the family bank account.
Sovannairand Kay, president of the Cambodian Community of New South Wales and a social worker at Centerlink, also said she was worried about the apparent increase of teen-age drug use and gambling among Cambodians.
But she said she believes that families overall are beginning to adapt better to Australia’s multicultural society, with family breakdowns actually declining in recent years.
Chea Vannath of the Center for Social Development said she doesn’t believe that a high percentage of family breakdowns among Cambodians abroad necessarily indicates poorer family relations, just different relations.
In Cambodia, “there’s no divorce, but [the husbands] take more wives.” And the first wife is deemed a good wife if she bears such suffering to honor the family, Chea Vannath adds.
