Household and Family in Hispanic Northern New Mexico

The paper explores the fit between household and family, on the one hand, and the Spanish-Mexican system of land tenure and traditional values, on the other. The Hispanic New Mexican household is an economic unit consisting of a family of procreation plus occasional extras such as parents, children-in-law, and gradchildren, of the head of household. The members share a house, and eat together. If its adult males are farmers and ranchers, they work together. If they are wage laborers, each contributes to household expenses. The women share their chores of cooking, cleaning, gathering herbs, and child tending. A household is almost invariably one segmerit of a family. Family is a group of consanguines and their spouses who share social identity, including class status. It is a unit of inheritance. The typical family forms a radial network from a hub in a home village, along spokes to cities where family members hold wage jobs.