ABSTRACT
The use of the household as the unit of analysis is "pursued primarily as a means of bridging the gap between social and individual levels of analysis". According to Schmink, the key concept is "mediation", that is, the way in which family survival strategies are mediated by the household. The household is the unit that analytically relates external social and economic forces into individual and familial behaviors designed to cope and respond to these forces. The household in El Progreso is a unit of varying size and with a number of workers producing income and consuming goods at any one moment in time. The most important economic strategy for children's nutrition, development, and survival is for the money coming into the house to be under the control of the mother rather than the father; the mothers' first priority is to purchase food for the household.
