ABSTRACT
There is no doubt at all that the traditional patterns of marriage and family life in East Africa are being radically changed at the present moment. The changes are not all even, nor are the starting points for the changes necessarily similar, since there was a variety of different family systems, in which one or another aspect of family or married life received italic rather than another. The transformation that is taking place is recognized, at least to the extent of idealizing the old system, and people—not necessarily old people—constantly refer to ‘customary marriage’ or to family ‘custom’ as though these things were recognizably intact at the present time. At the very least they envisage them as a kind of moral imperative, against which they judge modern developments as dangerous deviations.
