Geographic Mobility and Extended Family Cohesion

The hypothesis is advanced that extended family relations can be maintained in an industrial, bureaucratized society despite differential rates of geographical mobility. This is so because institutional pressures force the extended family to legitimize geographical mobility, because technological improvements in communication systems have minimized the socially disruptive forces of geographical distance, and because an extended family can provide important aid to nuclear families without interfering with the occupational system. In support of these views, data are presented from a survey of 920 wives in the Buffalo urban area.