The Rural Family Thailand Part 2
A sense of responsibility is also inculcated from early childhood, with each child assigned such chores as feeding chickens and buffaloes, leading livestock to graze in communal pastures, or looking after younger brothers and sisters to free his parents for essential household and field work. Duties are determined according to age, and as capabilities manifest themselves, by ability. Responsibility gradually increases to include a greater share of the family interests. Children are allowed to participate in family discussions and their opinions
are taken into account.
One of the prime responsibilities placed on children is that of taking care of parents in their old age. This form of social security is a prominent feature of the Thai concept of family. There is no feeling of being inconvenienced by caring for aged parents, whose acquired wisdom gives them an elevated place in the household. Unlike old people in many other cultures, who live out their last years lonely and rejected, Thailand's aged see their former devotion to their children reciprocated and actively help in ushering their grandchildren and great grandchildren into responsible adulthood.
Beyond the family, the next larger unit of social organization is the village. Identifiable in all its aspects as an extension of the family beyond the home, each village is composed of many households, a temple, a school and a village government. Villages have no oligarchies defining codes of conduct. Decision-making within the village on major issues is by consensus; Thais will generally abide by community decisions reached in this manner.
Personal friendships within the village but outside the immediate family are predominantly based on kinship and proximity. Individual talents for farming, hunting, astrology, medicine, music or storytelling also give people reasons for seeking and enjoying each other's company. The principal larger social groups within the village are formed spontaneously to aid each other in various activities. Usually comprised of neighbouring families and their friends, these groups will gather to muster the required labour force for planting and harvesting, irrigating the fields, constructing a house or any similar task which makes requirements above what a single family could manage unassisted. Often these community groups will extend their attention to the maintenance of communal property such as the wat, the village school, roads and canals.
Religion is at the root of this sincere consideration for others that permeates every aspect of Thai village life. Buddhism is the source of the Thai virtue of namjai, a pastel concept encompassing spontaneous warmth and compassion that allows families to make profound anonymous sacrifices for friends and to open the door to a stranger as if he were one of the family.
The community also shows up in force for weddings, births and funerals, when the household overflows with relatives and friends who come to offer emotional, moral, physical and often financial support. The entire village normally joins in the appropriate rejoicing or sorrow, demonstrating an expanded family-type solidarity that will manifest itself on a countrywide scale during national calamities. On these occasions Thais from every province will contribute to support victims of natural catastrophes.
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