ABSTRACT
Professor Fortes has recently reiterated the principle of structural opposition which, he says, ‘has its roots in the structure of the nuclear field of social reproduction’ (Fortes, 1958) – ‘the constellation of parents and children in which the complementarity of the sexes and the polarity of successive generations are the critical factors’ (Fortes, 1967, p. 10). This paradigm bears a close similarity to Parsons’s view of the nuclear family: ‘The two fundamental axes of differentiation of the nuclear family as a small group’ are categorization by sex, and the difference of power (superior/inferior) exhibited in the relations of proximate generations (Parsons & Bales, 1956, p. 121).
