The Family in Flux in Southeast Asia fills a gap in studies of the modern family. With much talk about the "family in crisis" in the industrialized world, new trends are affecting basic family structures in Southeast Asia as well: decreases in fertility rates, aging populations, a rise in divorce rates, increase in female-headed households, smaller families with a heavier burden on caregivers, and increasing mobility due to labour migration. While there has been abundant research on the historical evolution of the "family" in the West and much theorizing about the "family" in the industrialized world, accounts of the family in Southeast Asia are uneven, and understanding is still inadequate. This volume, with contributions from leading scholars from Southeast Asia and Japan, covers a wide range of topics, such as legal institutionalization, polygamy, national identity, nationalism and ideology, gender roles, migration, and trans-national marriage. The disciplinary backgrounds of the authors range across history, political science, economics, sociology, literary studies, and anthropology. The authors present cases of complementary, alternative, or parallel developments from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. They provide a critical look at how notions of the family are negotiated amidst worries over the family's disintegration in the face of globalizing trends and increasing mobility, and how it is affected by increasing flows in the globalizing world.