The Determinants of Family Structure in Rural South India

An ongoing research project in an area of 9 villages in south India provides the opportunity for studying the circumstances leading to the formation of families of different types and for determining whether the incidence of families of different types is changing. Methodological experimentation with a quasi-anthropological approach to demographic data collection together with the employment of village censuses and small sharply focused surveys permitted the full histories of family formation and partition to be obtained. It was found that the society had long been characterized by both stem and nuclear families the existence of 1 type necessitating the other and that there was still little evidence of transition in family type. Furthermore in terms of caste and socioeconomic characteristics the society was remarkably homogeneous. There are no fixed rules for the timing or nature of household partition. However the internal nature of the family and its relationships are changing: there is a growing concept of the immaturity of children while the adolescents within the household are increasingly likely to be daughters rather than daughters-in-law. (authors modified)