(IPS) feature Van Thi Anh already has two children, but she is anticipating the arrival of the third with much enthusiasm and excitement.

Her doctor has told her she is finally going to have a son, and the news has pleased her and her husband to no end.

Like many young couples in Ho Chi Minh City who have already two children, they thought they could not afford to have another child - unless it was a son. Anh and her husband had decided to abort the child had it turned out to be another girl.

''In so called chopstick-culture countries - like Vietnam, China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan - there is still a strong preference for sons,'' explains Tran Tien Duc, information director of the National Committee for Population and Family Planning (NCPFP).

Sons not only provide more muscle in the fields, but are also expected to care for their parents later in life. Most important for many, they will carry on the family line.

Vietnam actually has a two-children-only policy, and Communist Party members who have more than that limit face automatic expulsion. Other parents, meanwhile, are asked to pay the health and education costs of the third child, aside from getting more serious sanctions, such as having land confiscated.

Penalties not enforced

But these penalties have not been enforced on a nationwide basis. Parents whose third child turns out to be a son are also often more than happy to bear the consequences.

Others try to go around the rules by seeking the help of doctors to determine the sex of their unborn child, and opting to abort if it happens to be female.

At least that latter practice may become illegal soon as the authorities are preparing a law that will stop doctors from performing such tests on pregnant women.

According to the NDPFP, this will be one of the measures it will impose in line with efforts to ensure strict compliance with the country's two-children policy.

On the surface, having just two children seems to sit well with many young couples who say the modern lifestyle does not go with having a big family.

Wreaking havoc

As Mai Thi Van Anh reasons, ''If we have too many children we have to find the money to support the babies and we have to spend so much time looking after them. ''

But NDPFP officials say the preference for sons is wreaking havoc on the policy as parents either try and try to have a boy regardless of the number of children they already have, or else abort if the foetus is female.

In truth, it had been concern for this preference that officials thought it wise not to follow China's one-child policy. Says the NDPFP's Duch: ''If you have a one-child policy many couples will try to have only a boy. ''

Officials, however, say that Vietnamese parents are still aborting female babies, a practice that they say is leading to a gender imbalance.

Although officials say it was even worse in the past, Vietnam still has more men than women, with the ratio now at 106 to 100. In some rural areas, the ratio is about 116 males to 100 females.

Learn from China

NDPFP officials say that they have learned a lesson from China, where the availability of early foetal sex testing has led to a situation in which there are now an estimated 100 million Chinese males unable to find a wife.

Demographers say that it is partly because of years of war that Vietnam now has more men than women. But they also admit that the strong preference for sons has also been a major reason why there are now more men than women in Vietnam.

Officials add that many pregnant women seek tests determining the gender of their unborn child, and choose to abort if it is not male. In fact, Vietnam now has one of the world's highest rates of abortion, with its registered cases alone already reaching more than 900,000 a year.

Indeed, if it were not for such abortions and the gender imbalance, Vietnam officials would have been declaring the country's population control programme as an out-and-out success.

In the late 1980s, Vietnamese women had an average of 3.8 children. Comparative figures today are at 2.3 children.

NCPFP Deputy Chair Nguyen Thien Truong also says that Vietnam's population growth rate dropped from 2.1 percent in 1989 to 1.4 percent last year.

Effective population programme

Even some international experts say that the country's population programme is one of the most effective in the world.

Remarks Omar Ertur, country representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) of the efforts of Vietnamese officials: ''They have been very successful. They have achieved a tremendous reduction in a very short period of time.''

Population control officials say they are now focusing on minimising unwanted pregnancies, reducing abortions, improving maternity health and children's health, and controlling sexually transmitted diseases.

But they have not given up on the policy limiting couples to two children, which they describe as a ''very reasonable fertility level'' for Vietnam.

They also believe that as their education programmes begin to hit home, there will be less need to ''coerce'' couples to have just two children - regardless of gender - each.