Domestic violence has been established as a common phenomenon among the human race. With this view, there has been an influencing notion that socio-cultural backgrounds, particularly in relation to family discipline and gender relation substantially influence ways in which people view and respond to domestic violence. Although effects of culture on family discipline and gender relation have been widely acknowledged, but amongst many initiatives in the area of domestic violence, few have focused on ethnic and cultural specificities of domestic violence occurrence amongst individual immigrant community such as Vietnamese-speaking. This paper examines the social and politico-historical factors of the Vietnamese refugee-immigrantswhich might affect their views and practice of family discipline and patterns of organised domestic life. The Vietnamese traditional view of family discipline and the author’s on-site experiences in transcultural consultancy and psychiatric nursing are central to this paper’s discourse. The social norms of Vietnamese family discipline and domestic organisation drawn from this insider approach-based discourse serve as a stepping stone for future nursing research and clinical studies.
