ABSTRACT
Thomas and Znaniecki and many later writers who have constructed a model of the family in European peasant societies present an ideal type of peasant household, in the Weberian sense, as a corporate unit linked to land and patrimony in which property is attached to the family rather than the individual: 'Property essentially belongs to the family, the individual is a temporary administrator'. Various explanations have been given for the low proportion of extended and multiple household types based principally on the introduction of the concept of the developmental cycle in the analysis of household forms. During the years in which the people have looked at transformations in household composition, there were, as they have already pointed out, important changes in social structure and in the distribution of property in Formentera. The new class of small landowners who gained their resources through emigration gave no importance to the institution of the single heir and undivided patrimony.
