ABSTRACT
Until comparatively recently there was a widespread assumption – deriving partly from an evolutionist perspective and partly from a functionalist one – that a modern economy is incompatible with an extended family structure. The extended families of ‘traditional’ societies were thought to be disintegrating under the impact of industrialization and urbanization; and change was assumed to be in the direction of the sort of elementary family typical of industrial Western society. Different writers suggested different reasons why this should be the case. Parsons, for example, argues that a modern economy demands a mobile labour force and that the type of family best adapted to this requirement is ‘an isolated conjugal family which (is) not bound to a particular residential location by the occupational, property, or status interests of other members’ (Parsons 1949:189–90). Other versions of the same general theory stress the occupational diversification which accompanies the new economy, and which creates disparate interests among the members of the extended family (e.g., Linton 1952). It is felt that this puts an intolerable strain on the unity of the group and almost inevitably leads to its dissolution.
