On the Conditions Favoring Extended Family Households

This paper suggests that extended family households will come to prevail in a society when there are incompatible activity requirements that cannot be met by a mother or father in a one-family household. We discuss why we think that the extended family household is a more likely solution to the problem of incompatible activity requirements than other logically possible solutions. A cross-cultural test indicates that the hypothesis about incompatible activity requirements strongly predicts extended family households, in both agricultural and non-agricultural societies.