ABSTRACT
In the community, households are autonomous units making their own decisions: how they come to decisions may vary from household to household, and from one type of decision to another, but in our society decisions are usually made from a number of possible choices, and the household or the householder is held responsible for the decisions reached. Although the heads of all units had some responsibility for the day-to-day running of their affairs, all units were parts of more or less complex hierarchical structures, the nature of which had implications for the role of the unit head. The delegation of more responsibility to hostel heads, allowing them to negotiate directly with outsiders for goods and services, actually appears to have released more of their time for the daily care of the children.
