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Contents vii
■Reading 15
Kathryn Edin, Timothy Nelson, and Joanna Miranda Reed / Daddy, Baby;
Momma, Maybe: Low-Income Urban Fathers and the “Package Deal” of
Family Life 214
■Reading 16
Judith Stacey / Gay Parenthood and the End of Paternity as We
Knew It 232
8 Growing Up 249
■Reading 17
Steven Mintz / Beyond Sentimentality: American Childhood as a Social and
Cultural Construct 249
■Reading 18
Frank Furstenberg / Diverging Development: The Not-So-Invisible Hand of
Social Class in the United States 262
■Reading 19
Richard A. Settersten, Jr. and Barbara Ray / The Long and Twisting Path to
Adulthood 280
Part IV • Families in Society 303
9 Work and Family Life 309

■Reading 20
Arlie Hochschild, with Anne Machung / The Second Shift: Working Parents
and the Revolution at Home 309
■Reading 21
Pamela Stone / The Rhetoric and Reality of “Opting Out” 316
■Reading 22
Joan C. Williams / One Sick Child Away from Being Fired 325
viii Contents
10 Family and the Economy 341

■Reading 23
Lillian B. Rubin / Families on the Fault Line 341
■Reading 24
Arlene Skolnick / Middle-Class Families in the Age of Insecurity 358
11 Dimensions of Diversity 365

■Reading 25
Ronald L. Taylor / Diversity within African American Families 365
■Reading 26
Maxine Baca Zinn and Barbara Wells / Diversity within Latino Families:
New Lessons for Family Social Science 389
■Reading 27
Min Zhou / Conflict, Coping, and Reconciliation: Intergenerational
Relations in Chinese Immigrant Families 415
■Reading 28
Ann Bookman and Delia Kimbrel / Families and Elder Care in the Twenty-
First Century 428
12 Trouble in the Family 451

■Reading 29
Jeremy Travis / Prisoners’ Families and Children 451
■Reading 30
Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas / Unmarried with Children 468
■Reading 31
Demie Kurz / Violence Against Women or Family Violence? Current
Debates and Future Directions 474
Credits 487
Preface
This edition of Family in Transition is once again aimed at helping students make sense
of current trends in family life. It presents recent important research findings in articles
that are scholarly and yet readable for an audience of undergraduates.
Among the new readings are the following:
New to This Edition
• Richard A. Settersten, Jr. and Barbara Ray explore a fundamental shift in family
life: Today’s parents play much larger roles in the lives of their young adult chil-
dren than in the past. Without supportive parents, young people are less likely to
succeed in a highly risky and competitive world.
• Arlene Skolnick examines the precarious economic lives of middle-class families
in today’s “high risk, high stress,” winner-take-all economy. The costs of middle-
class living standards have risen faster than middle-class incomes, while the secu-
rity of jobs and benefits has declined.
• Kathryn Edin, Timothy Nelson, and Joanna Miranda Reed report that low-in-
come urban fathers no longer fit the “package deal” model of fatherhood in which
a man’s bond to his child depends on his relationship with the mother. Today,
these men seek to be involved in their children’s lives even if they are not con-
nected to the mothers romantically.
• Joan C. Williams explains that while the media focuses on professional women
“opting out” from high-pressure careers, low income employees are typically only
“one sick child away from being fired.”
• Judith Stacey shows how widespread gay fatherhood is overturning traditional
concepts of parenthood.
• Demie Kurz examines the debate over domestic violence: Should it be seen as a
family issue or a problem of violence against women?
Student and Teacher Resources
This text is available in a variety of formats—digital and print. To learn more about our
programs, pricing options, and customization, visit www.pearsonhighered.com.
ix
x Preface
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank all those who have helped us with suggestions in this edition, as
well as the previous ones. Special thanks to Rifat Salem, assistant professor of sociology
at the BMCC campus of the City University of New York, for her suggestions on revis-
ing the previous edition. Also, many thanks to the reviewers: Erica Hunter, University at
Albany; Antoinette Livingston, West Virginia University; Teresa Mayors, Northeastern
University; Amanda Moske, University of North Texas; Dennis McGrath, Community
College of Philadelphia; and Rosalind Fisher, University of West Florida.
Arlene S. Skolnick
Jerome H. Skolnick
Introduction
The aim of this book is to help the reader make sense of American family
life in the early twenty-first century. Most important, it aims to make clear
the complicated links between families and the larger society. Contrary to
most students’ expectations, “the family” is not an easy topic to study. One
reason is that we know too much about it, because virtually everyone has
grown up in a family. As a result there is a great temptation to generalize
from our own experiences.
Another difficulty is that the family is a subject that arouses intense
emotions. Not only are family relationships themselves deeply emotional,
but family issues are also entwined with strong moral and religious be-
liefs. In the past several decades, “family values” have become a central
battleground in American politics. Abortion, sex education, single parent-
hood, and gay rights are some of the issues that have been debated since
the 1980s.
Still another problem is that the current state of the family is always
being portrayed as “in decline” compared with the way families used to
be. The trouble is, most people tend to have an idealized image of families
in “the good old days.” No era ever looked like a golden age of family life
to people actually living through it. That includes the 1950s, which many
Americans now revere as the high point of American family life.
Finally, it is difficult to make sense of the state of the family from
the statistics presented in the media. For example, the Pew Research Cen-
ter reported that in 2010, married couples made up only 51 percent of
American households. Only 9 percent of 18 to 24 year olds were married,
compared to almost 50 percent in l960. The headlines seemed to suggest
that marriage is becoming obsolete. But in fact, 90 percent of Americans
are expected to marry eventually, according to the Census Bureau. Another
example: before Father’s Day in 2003, the Census Bureau issued a press
release headlined “Two Married Parents the Norm.” It went on to state
that, according to the Bureau’s most recent survey, about 70 percent of
children live with their two parents. Two months earlier, however, a report
by a respected social science research organization contained the following
1
2 Introduction
headlines: “Americans Increasingly Opting Out of Marriage” and “Traditional Families

Account for Only 7 Percent of U.S. Households.”
These are just a few examples of the confusing array of headlines and statistics
about the family that the media are constantly serving up. Most often, the news tells
of yet another fact or shocking incident that shows the alarming decline of the family.
But every once in a while, the news is that the traditional family is making a comeback.
No wonder one writer compared the family to a “great intellectual Rorschach blot”
(Featherstone, 1979).
Everyone agrees that families have changed dramatically over the past several de-
cades, but there is no consensus on what the changes mean. The majority of women,
including mothers of young children, are now working outside the home. Divorce rates
have risen sharply (although they have leveled off since 1979). Twenty-eight percent
of children are living in single-parent families. Cohabitation—once called “shacking
up” or “living in sin”—is a widespread practice. The sexual double standard—the norm
that demanded virginity for the bride, but not the groom—has largely disappeared from
mainstream American culture. There are mother-only families, father-only families,
grandparents raising grandchildren, and gay and lesbian families.
Indeed, the growing public acceptance of homosexuals is one of the most striking
trends of recent time. Local governments and leading corporations have granted gays in-
creasing recognition as domestic partners entitled to spousal benefits. In June 2003, the
Supreme Court struck down the last state laws that made gay sex a crime. The following
November 18, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that gays have the right
to marry. As of early 2013 nine states allow same-sex couples to marry, and more are
likely to follow. In 2011, the military dropped its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, allowing
gays and lesbians to serve openly.
All these shifts in family life are part of an ongoing global revolution. All indus-
trialized nations, and many of the emerging ones, have experienced similar changes. In
no other Western country, however, has family change been as traumatic and divisive
as in the United States. For example, the two-earner family is the most common family
pattern in the United States; 75 percent of mothers of children under age 18 and more
than 60 percent of those with young children work outside the home. Yet the question of
whether mothers should work is still a fiercely debated issue.
Family issues have been at the center of our electoral politics. Thus, the typical
pattern for public discussion of family issues is a polarized, either–or debate. Is single
motherhood the main cause of our social problems, such as poverty crime, drug use,
school failure? Is divorce so damaging to children and their futures that the govern-
ment should make it harder to get? This kind of argument makes it difficult to discuss
the issues and problems facing the family in a realistic way. It doesn’t describe the
range of views among family scholars, and it doesn’t fit the research evidence. For
example, the right question to ask about divorce is “Under what circumstances is di-
vorce harmful or beneficial to children?” How can parents make divorce less harmful
for their children? (Amato, 1994). In most public debates about divorce, however,
that question is never asked, and the public never hears the useful information they
should.
Introduction 3
Still another problem with popular discourse about the family is that it exaggerates
the amount of change that has actually occurred. For example, consider the previous
statement that only 7 percent of American households fit the model of the traditional
family. This number, or something like it, is often cited by conservatives as proof that
the institution is in danger of disappearing unless the government steps in to restore
marriage and the two-parent family. At the opposite end of the political spectrum are
those who celebrate the alleged decline of the traditional family and welcome the new
family forms that have supposedly replaced it.
But is it true that only 7 percent of American households are traditional families?
It all depends, as the saying goes, on how you define traditional. The statement is true
if you count only families with children under age 18 in which only the husband works
outside the home. But if the wife works too, as most married women now do, the fam-
ily doesn’t count as “traditional” by that definition. Neither does the recently married
couple who do not have children yet. The couple whose youngest child turns 18 is no
longer counted as a “traditional” family either.
Despite the current high divorce rates (actually down from 1979), Americans have
not abandoned the institution of marriage. The United States has the highest marriage
rate in the industrial world. About 90 percent of Americans marry at some point in their
lives, and virtually all who do either have, or want children. Further, surveys repeatedly
show that family is central to the lives of most Americans. Family ties are their deep-
est source of satisfaction and meaning, as well as the source of their greatest worries
(Mellman, Lazarus, and Rivlin, 1990). In sum, family life in the United States is a com-
plex mixture of continuity and change, satisfaction and trouble.
While the transformations of the past three decades do not mean the end of fam-
ily life, they have brought a number of new difficulties. For example, although most
families now depend on the earnings of wives and mothers, the rest of our institutions
have not caught up to the new realities. For example, most schools are out of step with
parents’ working hours—they let out at 3:00 p.m., and still maintain the long summer
vacations that once allowed children to work on the family farm. Most jobs, especially
well-paying ones, are based on the male model—that is, a worker who can work full
time or longer without interruptions. Workers can be fired if they take time off to at-
tend to a sick child.
An earnings gap persists between men and women in both blue-collar and white-
collar jobs. Employed wives and mothers still bear most of the workload at home. And
since the financial meltdown of 2008 and the start of the Great Recession, millions of
families continue to face joblessness, pay cuts, losses of funds saved for children’s educa-
tion or their own retirement.
Understanding the Changing Family
During the same years in which the family was becoming the object of public anxiety and
political debate, a torrent of new research on the family was pouring forth. The study of
the family had come to excite the interest of scholars in a range of disciplines—history,
4 Introduction
demography, economics, law, and psychology. We now have much more information
available about families of the past, as well as current families, than we have ever had
before.
The main outcome of this research has been to debunk myths about family life,
both past and present. Nevertheless, the myths persist and help to fuel the cultural wars
over family change.
The Myth of Universality

In some ways, families are the same everywhere. Yet families also vary in many ways—
in who is included as a family member, emotional environments, living arrangements,
ideologies, social and kinship networks, and economic and other functions. Although
anthropologists have tried to come up with a single definition of family that would hold
across time and place, they generally have concluded that doing so is not useful (Geertz,
1965; Stephens, 1963).
For example, although marriage is virtually universal across cultures, the definition
of marriage is not the same, and living arrangements vary. Although many cultures have
weddings and notions of monogamy and permanence, some lack one or more of these
attributes. In some cultures, the majority of people mate and have children without legal
marriage and often without living together. In other societies, husbands, wives, and
children do not live together under the same roof.
In U.S. society, the assumption of universality has usually defined what is normal
and natural both for research and therapy and has subtly influenced our thinking to re-
gard deviations from the nuclear family as sick, perverse, or immoral. As Suzanne Keller
(1971) once observed, “The fallacy of universality has done students of behavior a great
disservice by leading us to seek and hence to find a single pattern that has blinded us to
historical precedents for multiple legitimate family arrangements.”
The Myth of Family Harmony

“Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This
well-known quotation from Leo Tolstoy is a good example of the widespread tendency
to divide families into two opposite types—happy or unhappy, good or bad, normal or
abnormal. The sitcom families of the 1950s—Ozzie and Harriet, Leave It to Beaver, and
the rest—still serve as “ideal” models for how families should be.
But few families, then or now, fit neatly into either category. Even the most loving
relationships inevitably involve negative feelings as well as positive ones. It is this am-
bivalence that sets close relationships apart from less intimate ones. Indeed, from what
we have learned about the Nelson family over the years, the real Ozzie and Harriet did
not have an Ozzie and Harriet family.
Only in fairly recent times has the darker side of family life come to public atten-
tion. For example, child abuse was only “discovered” as a social problem in the 1960s.
In recent years, family scholars have been studying family violence such as child or
spousal abuse to better understand the normal strains of family life. More police officers
are killed and injured dealing with family fights than in dealing with any other kind of
Introduction 5
situation. In addition, of all the relationships between murderers and their victims, the
family relationship is most common. Studies of family violence reveal that it is much
more widespread than had been assumed, cannot easily be attributed to mental illness,
and is not confined to the lower classes. Family violence seems to be a product of psy-
chological tensions and external stresses that can affect all families at all social levels.
The study of family interaction has also undermined the traditional image of the
happy, harmonious family. About three decades ago, researchers and therapists began to
bring schizophrenic patients and their families together to watch how they behaved with
one another. Oddly, researchers had not studied whole family groups before. At first,
the family interactions were interpreted as pathogenic: a parent expressing affection in
words but showing nonverbal hostility; alliances being made between different family
members; families having secrets; or one family member being singled out as a scapegoat
to be blamed for the family’s troubles. As more and more families were studied, however,
such patterns were found in many families, not just in those families with a schizophrenic
child. Although this line of research did not uncover the cause of schizophrenia, it re-
vealed that normal, ordinary families can often seem dysfunctional, or, in the words of
one study, they may be “difficult environments for interaction.”
The Myth of Parental Determinism

The kind of family a child grows up in leaves a profound, lifelong impact. But a growing
body of studies shows that early family experience is not the all-powerful, irreversible
influence it has sometimes been thought to be. An unfortunate childhood does not doom
a person to an unhappy adulthood. Nor does a happy childhood guarantee a similarly
blessed future (Emde and Harmon, 1984; Macfarlane, 1964; Rubin, 1996).
Any parent knows that child rearing is not like molding clay or writing on a blank
slate. Rather, it’s a two-way process in which both parent and child influence each other.
Children come into this world with their own temperaments and other characteristics.
Moreover, from a very early age, children are active perceivers and thinkers. Finally,
parents and children do not live in a social vacuum; children are also influenced by the
world around them and the people in it—relatives, family friends, their neighborhoods,
other children, their schools, as well as the media.
The traditional view of parental determinism has been challenged by the extreme
opposite view. Psychologist Judith Rich Harris asserts that parents have very little im-
pact on their children’s development. In her book, The Nurture Assumption: Why Children
Turn Out the Way They Do (1998), Harris argues that genetics and peer groups, not par-
ents, determine how a child will develop. As in so many debates about the family, both
extremes oversimplify complex realities.
The Myth of a Stable Past

As we have seen, laments about the current state of decay of the family imply some ear-
lier era when the family was more stable and harmonious. Historians have not, in fact,
located a golden age of the family. Nor have they found any time or place when families
6 Introduction
did not vary in many ways from whatever the standard model was. Indeed, they have
found that premarital sexuality, illegitimacy, and generational conflict can best be studied
as a part of family life itself rather than as separate categories of deviation.
The most shocking finding of recent years is the prevalence of child abandonment
and infanticide throughout European history. It now appears that infanticide provided a
major means of population control in all societies lacking reliable contraception, Europe
included, and that it was practiced by families on legitimate children (Hrdy, 1999).
Rather than being a simple instinctive trait, having profound love for a newborn
child seems to require two things: the infant must have a decent chance of surviving, and
the parents must feel that the infant is not competing with them and their older children
in a struggle for survival. Throughout many centuries of European history, both of these
conditions were lacking.
Another myth about the family is that it has been a static, unchanging form until
recently, when it began to come apart. In reality, families have always been in flux; when
the world around them changes, families have to change in response. At periods when a
whole society undergoes some major transformation, family change may be especially
rapid and dislocating.
In many ways, the era we are living through now resembles two earlier periods of
family crisis and transformation in U.S. history (see Skolnick, 1991). The first occurred
in the early nineteenth century, when the industrial era moved work out of the home
(Ryan, 1981). In the older pattern, most people lived on farms. A father was not only the
head of the household, but also boss of the family enterprise. The mother, children, and
hired hands worked under his supervision.
When work moved out, however, so did the father and the older sons and daughters,
leaving behind the mother and the younger children. These dislocations unleashed an era
of personal stress and cultural confusion. Eventually, a new model of family emerged that
not only reflected the new separation of work and family, but also glorified it.
The household now became idealized as “home sweet home,” an emotional and
spiritual shelter from the heartless world outside. Many of our culture’s most basic ideas
about the family and gender were formed at this time. The mother-at-home, father-out-
at-work model that most people think of as “traditional” was in fact the first version of
the modern family.
Historians label this nineteenth century model of the family “Victorian” because it
became influential in England and Western Europe, as well as in the United States, dur-
ing the reign of Queen Victoria. It reflected, in idealized form, the nineteenth-century
middle-class family. The Victorian model became the prevailing cultural definition of
family, but few families could live up to the ideal in all its particulars. Working-class,
black, and ethnic families, for example, could not get by without the economic contribu-
tions of wives, mothers, and daughters. Even for middle-class families, the Victorian ideal
prescribed a standard of perfection that was virtually impossible to fulfill (Demos, 1986).
Eventually, social change overtook the Victorian model. Beginning around the
1880s, another period of rapid economic, social, and cultural change unsettled Victorian
family patterns, especially their gender arrangements. Several generations of “new
women” challenged Victorian notions of femininity. They became educated, pursued
careers, became involved in political causes—including their own—and created the
Introduction 7
first wave of feminism. This ferment culminated in the victory of the women’s suffrage
movement—the movement was followed by the 1920s jazz-age era of flappers and f laming
youth—the first, and probably the major, sexual revolution of the twentieth century.
Another cultural crisis ensued, until a new cultural blueprint emerged—the
companionate model of marriage and the family. The new model was a modern, more
relaxed version of the Victorian family; companionship and sexual intimacy were now
defined as central to marriage.
This highly abbreviated history of family and cultural change forms the necessary
backdrop for understanding the family upheavals of the late twentieth and early twenty-
first centuries. As in earlier times, major changes in the economy and society have desta-
bilized an existing model of family life and the everyday patterns and practices that have
sustained it.
In the last half of the twentieth century, we experienced a triple revolution: first,
the move toward a postindustrial service and information economy; second, a life course
revolution brought about by reductions in mortality and fertility; and third, a psycho-
logical transformation rooted mainly in rising educational levels. Although these shifts
have profound implications for everyone, women have been the pacesetters of change.
Most women’s lives and expectations over the past three decades, inside and outside the
family, have departed drastically from those of their own mothers. Men’s lives today are
also different from their fathers’ generation, but to a much lesser extent.
The Triple Revolution
The Postindustrial Family

A service and information economy produces large numbers of jobs that, unlike factory
work, seem suitable for women. Yet as Jessie Bernard (1982) once observed, the transfor-
mation of a housewife into a paid worker outside the home sends tremors through every
family relationship. It blurs the sharp contrast between men’s and women’s roles that
mark the breadwinner–homemaker pattern. It also reduces women’s economic depen-
dence on men, thereby making it easier for women to leave unhappy marriages.
Beyond drawing women out of the home, shifts in the nature of work and a rapidly
changing globalized economy have unsettled the lives of individuals and families at all
class levels. The well-paying industrial jobs that once enabled a blue-collar worker to
own a home and support a family have disappeared. The once steady secure jobs that
sustained the “organization men” and their families in the 1950s and 1960s have been
made shaky by downsizing, outsourcing, an unstable economy, corporate takeovers, and
a rapid pace of technological change.
The new economic uncertainty has also made the transition to adulthood increasingly
problematic. In the postwar years, particularly in the United States, young people entered
adulthood in one giant step. They found jobs, often out of high school, married young, left
home, and had children quickly. Today, few young adults can afford to marry and have
children in their late teens or early twenties. In an economy where a college degree is neces-
sary to earn a living wage, early marriage impedes education for both men and women.
8 Introduction
Those who do not go on to college have little access to jobs that can sustain a
family. Particularly in the inner cities of the United States, growing numbers of young
people have come to see no future for themselves in the ordinary world of work. In
middle-class families, a narrowing opportunity structure has increased anxieties about
downward mobility for offspring and parents as well. Because of the new economic and
social realities, a new stage of life has opened up between adolescence and adulthood. It
is simply impossible for most young people in today’s postindustrial societies to become
financially and emotionally independent at the same ages as earlier generations did.
This new stage of life is so new it doesn’t have an agreed-on name. It has been called
“arrested development,” “adultolescence,” or “emerging adulthood.” And many people as-
sume that today’s younger generations are simply slackers—unwilling to grow up, get jobs,
and start their own families. But the fact is that today’s economy demands more schooling
than ever before, and jobs that can sustain a family are fewer and less permanent than ever
before. These difficulties did not begin with the Great Recession, but the economic out-
look for young adults has grown worse since the financial meltdown of 2008.
The Life Course Revolution

It’s not just the rise of a new economy that has reshaped the stages of life. The basic facts of
life and death changed drastically in the twentieth century. In 1900, average life expectancy
was 47 years. Infants had the highest mortality rates, but young and middle-aged adults
were often struck down by infectious diseases. Before the turn of the twentieth century,
only 40 percent of women lived through all the stages of a normal life course: growing up,
marrying, having children, and surviving with a spouse to the age of 50 (Uhlenberg, 1980).
Declining mortality rates have had a profound effect on women’s lives. Women
today are living longer and having fewer children. When infant and child mortality rates
fall, women no longer have five, seven, or nine children to ensure that two or three will
survive to adulthood. After rearing children, the average woman can look forward to
three or four decades without maternal responsibilities.
One of the most important changes in contemporary marriage is the potential
length of marriage and the number of years spent without children in the home. Our
current high divorce rates may be a by-product of this shift. By the 1970s, the statisti-
cally average couple spent only 18 percent of their married lives raising young children,
compared with 54 percent a century ago (Bane, 1976). As a result, marriage is becoming
defined less as a union between parents raising a brood of children and more as a per-
sonal relationship between two individuals.
A Psychological Revolution
The third major transformation is a set of psychocultural changes that might be de-
scribed as psychological gentrification (Skolnick, 1991). That is, cultural advantages once
enjoyed by only the upper classes—in particular, education—have been extended to
those lower down on the socioeconomic scale. Psychological gentrification also involves
greater leisure time, travel, and exposure to information, as well as a general rise in the
standard of living. Despite the persistence of poverty, unemployment, and economic
Introduction 9
insecurity in the industrialized world, far less of the population than in the historical past
is living at the level of sheer subsistence.
Throughout Western society, rising levels of education and related changes have
been linked to a complex set of shifts in personal and political attitudes. One of these
is a more psychological approach to life—greater introspectiveness and a yearning for
warmth and intimacy in family and other relationships (Veroff, Douvan, and Kulka,
1981). There is also evidence of an increasing preference on the part of both men and
women for a more companionate ideal of marriage and a more democratic family. More
broadly, these changes in attitude have been described as a shift to “postmaterialist val-
ues,” emphasizing self-expression, tolerance, equality, and a concern for the quality of
life (Inglehart, 1990).
The multiple social transformations of our era have brought both costs and ben-
efits: Family relations have become both more fragile and more emotionally rich; lon-
gevity has brought us a host of problems as well as the gift of extended life. Although
change has brought greater opportunities for women, persisting gender inequality means
women have borne a large share of the costs of these gains. We cannot turn the clock
back to the family models of the past.
Despite the upheavals of recent decades, the emotional and cultural significance
of the family persists. Family remains the center of most people’s lives and, as numer-
ous surveys show, is a cherished value. Although marriage has become more fragile, the
parent–child relationship—especially the mother–child relationship—remains a core at-
tachment across the life course (Rossi and Rossi, 1990). The family, however, can be
both “here to stay” and beset with difficulties.
Most European countries have recognized for some time that governments must
play a role in supplying an array of supports to families, such as health care, children’s al-
lowances, and housing subsidies. Working parents are offered child care, parental leave,
and shorter workdays. Services are provided for the elderly.
Each country’s response to these changes, as we noted earlier, has been shaped
by its own political and cultural traditions. The United States remains embroiled in a
cultural war over the family; many social commentators and political leaders have prom-
ised to reverse the recent trends and restore the “traditional” family. In contrast, other
Western nations, including Canada and other English-speaking countries, have re-
sponded to family change by trying to remedy the problems brought about by economic
and social transformations. These countries have been spared much of the poverty and
other social ills that have plagued the United States in recent decades.
Looking Ahead
The world in the early twenty-first century is vastly different from what it was at the be-
ginning, or even the middle, of the last century. Our public and private policies have not
kept up with the new realities of family life. Ironically, despite all the changes, despite all
the talk about the “decline of the family” family ties are more important than ever.
Far from having “lost its functions,” as some social theorists used to put it, the fam-
ily plays a critical role in the health and well-being of its members, the education and life
chances of its children. But families are not the freestanding, self-sufficient foundation
10 Introduction
stones of society our political rhetoric assumes them to be. They live in an entire socio-
economic and cultural landscape from the Internet to fast food to a fast-changing global
economy in which few jobs are steady, most do not support middle-class living stan-
dards, and the great majority of mothers have to work outside the home.
Still, there is no reason to be nostalgic for some earlier golden age. Our current
troubles inside and outside the family are genuine, but we should never forget that many
of the most vexing issues confronting us derive from benefits of modernization few of
us would be willing to give up—for example, longer, healthier lives, and the ability to
choose how many children to have and when to have them.
When most people died before they reached age 50, there was no problem of a
large elderly population to care for. Nor was adolescence a difficult stage of life when
children worked education was a privilege of the rich, and a person’s place in society was
determined by heredity rather than choice.
In short, family life is bound up with the social, economic, and cultural circum-
stances of particular times and places. We are no longer peasants, Puritans, or even sub-
urbanites in the 1950s. We are all pioneers, facing a world earlier generations could
hardly imagine, and we must struggle to find new ways to cope with it.
A Note on the Family
Some family scholars have suggested that we drop the term the family and replace it
with families or family life. They argue that the problem with the family is that it calls to
mind the stereotyped image of the Ozzie and Harriet kind of family—two parents and
their two or three minor children. But those other terms don’t always work. In our own
writing we use the term the family in much the same way we use the economy—a set of in-
stitutional arrangements through which particular tasks are carried out in a society. The
economy deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and ser-
vices. The family deals with reproduction and care and support for children and adults.
References
Amato, P. R. 1994. Life span adjustment of children to their parents’ divorce. The Future of Children 4,
no. 1 (Spring).
Bane, M. J. 1976. Here to Stay. New York: Basic Books.
Bernard, J. 1982. The Future of Marriage. New York: Bantam.
Demos, J. 1986. Past, Present, and Personal. New York: Oxford University Press.
Emde, R. N., and R. J. Harmon, eds. 1984. Continuities and Discontinuities in Development. New York:
Plenum Press.
Featherstone, J. 1979. Family matters. Harvard Educational Review 49, no. 1: 20–52.
Geertz, G. 1965. The impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man. In New Views of the Nature
of Man, edited by J. R. Platt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Harris, J. R. 1998. The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do. New York: Free Press.
Hrdy, S. B. 1999. Mother Nature. New York: Pantheon Books.
Inglehart, R. 1990. Culture Shift. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Keller, S. 1971. Does the family have a future? Journal of Comparative Studies, Spring.
Introduction 11
Macfarlane, J. W. 1964. Perspectives on personality consistency and change from the guidance study.
Vita Humana 7: 115–126.
Mellman, A., E. Lazarus, and A. Rivlin. 1990. Family time, family values. In Rebuilding the Nest, edited
by D. Blankenhorn, S. Bayme, and J. Elshtain. Milwaukee, WI: Family Service America.
Rossi, A. S., and P. H. Rossi. 1990. Of Human Bonding: Parent–Child Relations across the Life Course.
Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
Rubin, L. 1996. The Transcendent Child. New York: Basic Books.
Ryan, M. 1981. The Cradle of the Middle Class. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Skolnick, A. 1991. Embattled Paradise: The American Family in an Age of Uncertainty. New York: Basic Books.
Stephens, W. N. 1963. The Family in Cross-Cultural Perspective. New York: World.
Uhlenberg, P. 1980. Death and the family. Journal of Family History 5, no. 3: 313–320.
Veroff, J., E. Douvan, and R. A. Kulka. 1981. The Inner American: A Self-Portrait from 1957 to 1976.
New York: Basic Books.
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Part
I
The Changing Family
Over the past four decades, family matters have been much in the news.
For much of the time, the media have supplied an endless stream of stories
and statistics that seem to document the decline and fall of marriage and
the family as we knew them in the past. Conservatives denounce family
change, blaming it on a loss of “values.” They warn that recent changes in
marriage and family patters threaten the survival of American society.
Social scientists have been arguing for many years about how to define
the family, even before the dramatic changes of the past four decades. Now
the question of how to define the family has become a hot political issue. Are
a mother and her child a family? A cohabiting couple? A cohabiting couple
with children? A married couple without children? A grandmother who is
raising her grandchildren? A gay couple? A gay couple with children?
In fact, despite all the changes and diversity, most Americans still marry
and have children at some point in their lives. However, as William J. Good
argues in his classic article, “The Theoretical Importance of the Family,” we
should not think of “family” as particular kind of group living together under
one roof. Rather, he defines family as a special kind of relationship between
people. He argues that in all known societies, and under many social condi-
tions, people develop family-like social patterns—a “familistic package.”
What is in this “familistic package”? One essential element is
continuity—the expectation that the relationship will last through time.
This makes it possible to share money and goods and offer help to the other
person, knowing that in the future that person will reciprocate. In addition,
familiarity is another benefit; family members know one another and their
likes and dislikes, such as how each person likes their coffee or tea. One of
the most important elements in the package is that the family is something
like a mutual aid society. It helps individuals meet their multiple needs,
and also serves as an insurance policy in times of sickness or other troubles.
Finally, family members develop emotion bonds with one another, stronger
and yet more ambivalent than with people outside the group.
But family relationships do not take place in a social vacuum. They
are profoundly affected by the world outside the home—from the immedi-
ate neighborhood, to government policies, to events such as wars, disasters
and depressions, or other aspects of the historical times they are living in.
13
14 Part I • The Changing Family
Several of the selections hear explain these links. For example, Anthony Giddens
argues we are living through a major historical transition, a wave of technological and eco-
nomic modernization that is having a profound impact on personal life. Giddens labels this
wave of large scale change “globalization”; others call it the shift from industrial to postin-
dustrial society. As a result, he argues, there is “global revolution” going on in sexuality,
in marriage and the family, and in how people think of themselves and their relationships.
Further, Giddens sees a strong parallel between the ideals of a democratic society and
the emerging new ideals of family relationships. For example, a good marriage is coming
to be seen as a relationship between equals. Giddens recognizes that many of the changes
in family life are worrisome, but we can’t go back to the family patterns of an earlier time.
Nor would most of us really want to step into a time machine. Nostalgic images of
the family in earlier times typically omit the high mortality rates that prevailed before the
twentieth century. Death could strike at any age, and was a constant threat to family stabil-
ity. No historian has located a past golden age of family happiness that we have sadly lost.
Nevertheless, people continue to worry about the state of the family in the Unites
States. Often this worry has little to do with the realities of family life, or the serious
problems that plague too many families, such as economic hardship or the lack of health
care. Indeed, economists and others have been warning about growing income inequality
for the past three decades. Yet the problem has only recently been noticed by the media
and politicians, mostly because of the noisy demonstrations of the Occupy M ovement
and their slogan targeting the “1” versus the “99.”
One persistent worry in the United States is that the “social fabric” is shredding,
and individuals are becoming more and more isolated from friends and family. Every
so often the media trumpet a bit of research that seems to prove the decline in social
ties. Claude Fischer has examined a large body of survey data from l970 to the 2000s to
see how valid these worries are. It seems that once again the media have been too eager
to announce dramatic trends. Fischer finds very few noteworthy trends. Despite all the
changes in demography, technology, and society, relationships with family and friends
continue to offer both emotional and material support.
Another worry is the unsettled place of women in postindustrial society. As women
increasingly participate in the paid workforce, argues Sharon Hays, they find themselves
caught up in a web of cultural contradictions that remain unresolved and indeed have
deepened over the years. There is no way, she says, for contemporary women to get it
“just right.” Both stay-at-home and working mothers maintain an intensive commitment
to motherhood. Women who stay at home no longer feel comfortable and fulfilled be-
ing defined by themselves and others as “mere housewives.” And, working women are
typically anxious about the time away from children and the complexities of balancing
parental duties with the demands of the job.
The cultural contradictions that trouble motherhood can be seen as a part of the
larger “cultural war” over the family. But there are more than two sides in the family
wars. Janet Z. Giele carefully draws three positions on the family: the conservative, the
liberal, and the feminist. The latter, for Giele, is the most promising for developing
public policies that would combine conservative and liberal perspectives. The feminist
vision, she argues, appreciates both the “premodern nature of the family” with the inevi-
table interdependence of family and a modern, fast-changing economy.
Chapter
1
Families Past and Present
■Reading 1
The Theoretical Importance

of the Family
William J. Goode
Through the centuries, thoughtful people have observed that the family
was disintegrating. In the past several decades, this idea has become more
and more common. Many analysts have reported that the family no longer
performs tasks once entrusted to it—production, education, protection, for
example. From these and other data we might conclude that the family is
on its way out.
But almost everyone who lives out an average life span enters the
married state. Most eventually have children, who will later do the same.
Of the increasing number who divorce, many will hopefully or skeptically
marry again. In the Western nations, a higher percentage of people marry
than a century ago. Indeed, the total number of years spent within mar-
riage by the average person is higher now than at any previous time in
the history of the world. In all known societies, almost everyone lives en-
meshed in a network of family rights and obligations. People are taught to
accept these rules through a long period of childhood socialization. That is,
people come to feel that these family patterns are both right and desirable.
At the present time, human beings appear to get as much joy and sor-
row from the family as they always have, and seem as bent as ever on taking
part in family life. In most of the world, the traditional family may be shaken,
but the institution will probably enjoy a longer life than any nation now in
existence. The family does not seem to be a powerful institution, like the mili-
tary, the church, or the state, but it seems to be the most resistant to conquest,
or to the efforts people make to reshape it. Any specific family may appear to
be fragile or unstable, but the family system as a whole is tough and resilient.
15
The Family: Various Views

The intense emotional meaning of family relations for almost everyone has been
observed throughout history. Philosophers and social analysts have noted that any
society is a structure made up of families linked together. Both travelers and anthro-
pologists often describe the peculiarities of a given society by outlining its family
relations.
The earliest moral and ethical writings of many cultures assert the significance of
the family. Within those commentaries, the view is often expressed that a society loses
its strength if people do not fulfill family obligations. Confucius thought that happiness
and prosperity would prevail if everyone would behave “correctly” as a family member.
This meant primarily that no one should fail in his filial obligations. That is, the proper
relationship between ruler and subjects was like that between a father and his children.
The cultural importance of the family is also emphasized in the Old Testament. The
books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, and Proverbs, for example, pro-
claim the importance of obeying family rules. The earliest codified literature in India,
the Rig-Veda, which dates from about the last half of the second millennium b.c., and
the Law of Manu, which dates from about the beginning of the Christian era, devote
much attention to the family. Poetry, plays, novels, and short stories typically seize upon
family relationships as the primary focus of human passion, and their ideas and themes
often grow from family conflict. Even the great epic poems of war have subthemes fo-
cusing on problems in family relations.1
From time to time, social analysts and philosophers have presented plans for soci-
eties that might be created (these are called utopias) in which new family roles (rights and
obligations of individual members) are offered as solutions to traditional social problems.
Plato’s Republic is one such attempt. Plato was probably the first to urge the creation of
a society in which all members, men and women alike, would have an equal opportunity
to develop their talents to the utmost, and to achieve a position in society solely through
merit. Since family patterns in all societies prevent selection based entirely on individual
worth, to Plato’s utopia the tie between parents and children would play no part, because
knowledge of that link would be erased. Approved conception would take place at the
same time each year at certain hymeneal festivals; children born out of season would be
eliminated (along with those born defective). All children would be taken from their par-
ents at birth and reared by specially designated people.
Experimental or utopian communities like Oneida, the Shakers, the Mormons, and
modern communes have typically insisted that changes in family relations were necessary
to achieve their goals. Every fundamental political upheaval since the French Revolution
of 1789 has offered a program that included profound changes in family relations. Since
World War II, most countries of the world have written new constitutions. In perhaps
all of them, but especially in all the less developed nations, these new laws have been
far more advanced than public opinion in those countries. They have aimed at creating
new family patterns more in conformity with the leaders’ views of equality and justice,
and often antagonistic to traditional family systems. This wide range of commentary,
analysis, and political action, over a period of twenty-five hundred years, suggests that
throughout history we have been at least implicitly aware of the importance of family
patterns as a central element in human societies.
Chapter 1 • Families Past and Present 17
The Central Position of the Family in Society
In most tribal societies, kinship patterns form the major part of the whole social struc-
ture. By contrast, the family is only a small part of the social structure of modern indus-
trial societies. It is nevertheless a key element in them, specifically linking individuals
with other social institutions, such as the church, the state, or the economy. Indeed mod-
ern society, with its complex advanced technology and its highly trained bureaucracy,
would collapse without the contributions of this seemingly primitive social agency. The
class system, too, including its restrictions on education and opportunity, its high or low
social mobility rates, and its initial social placement by birth, is founded on the family.
Most important, it is within the family that the child is first socialized to serve
the needs of the society, and not only its own needs. A society will not survive unless its
needs are met, such as the production and distribution of commodities, protection of
the young and old or the sick and the pregnant, conformity to the law, and so on. Only
if individuals are motivated to serve these needs will the society continue to operate, and
the foundation for that motivation is laid by the family. Family members also participate
in informal social control processes. Socialization at early ages makes most of us wish to
conform, but throughout each day, both as children and as adults, we are often tempted
to deviate. The formal agencies of social control (such as the police) are not enough to
do more than force the extreme deviant to conform. What is needed is a set of social
pressures that provide feedback to the individual whenever he or she does well or poorly
and thus support internal controls as well as the controls of the formal agencies. Effec-
tively or not, the family usually takes on this task.
The family, then, is made up of individuals, but it is also a social unit, and part of a
larger social network. Families are not isolated, self-enclosed social systems; and the other
institutions of society, such as the military, the church, or the school system, continually
rediscover that they are not dealing with individuals, but with members of families. Even
in the most industrialized and urban of societies, where it is sometimes supposed that
people lead rootless and anonymous lives, most people are in continual interaction with
other family members. Men and women who achieve high social position usually find that
even as adults they still respond to their parents’ criticisms, are still angered or hurt by a
sibling’s scorn. Corporations that offer substantial opportunities to rising executives often
find that their proposals are turned down because of objections from family members.
So it is through the family that the society is able to elicit from the individual his or
her contributions. The family, in turn, can continue to exist only if it is supported by the
larger society. If these two, the smaller and the larger social system, furnish each other
the conditions necessary for their survival, they must be interrelated in many important
ways. Thus, the two main themes in this [reading] will be the relations among family
members, and the relations between the family and the society.
Preconceptions About the Family
The task of understanding the family presents many difficulties, and one of the greatest
barriers is found in ourselves. We are likely to have strong emotions about the family.
Because of our own deep involvement in family relationships, objective analysis is not
easy. When we read about other types of family behavior, in other classes or societies, we
are likely to feel that they are odd or improper. We are tempted to argue that this or that
type of family behavior is wrong or right, rather than to analyze it. Second, although we
have observed many people in some of their family behavior, usually we have had very
limited experience with what goes on behind the walls of other homes. This means that
our sample of observations is very narrow. It also means that for almost any generaliza-
tion we create or read about, we can often find some specific experience that refutes it,
or fits it. Since we feel we “already know,” we may not feel motivated to look for further
data against which to test generalizations.
However, many supposedly well-known beliefs about the family are not well
grounded in fact. Others are only partly true and must be studied more precisely if they
are to be understood. One such belief is that “children hold the family together.” De-
spite repeated attempts to affirm it, this generalization does not seem to be very strong.
A more correct view seems to be that there is a modest association between divorce and
not having children, but it is mostly caused by the fact that people who do not become
well adjusted, and who may for some reasons be prone to divorce, are also less likely to
have children.
Another way of checking whether the findings of family sociology are obvious is
to present some research findings, and ask whether it was worth the bother of discover-
ing them since “everybody knew them all along.” Consider the following set of facts.
Suppose a researcher had demonstrated those facts. Was it worthwhile to carry out the
study, or were the facts already known?
1. Because modern industrial society breaks down traditional family systems, one re-
sult is that the age of marriage in Western nations (which was low among farmers)
has risen greatly over many generations.
2. Because of the importance of the extended family in China and India, the average
size of the household has always been large, with many generations living under
one roof.
3. In polygynous societies, most men have several wives, and the fertility rate is higher
than in monogamous societies.
Although these statements sound plausible to many people, and impressive argu-
ments have been presented to support them, in fact they are all false. For hundreds of
years, the age at marriage among farmers in Western nations has been relatively high
(25–27 years), and though it rises and falls somewhat over time, there seems to be no
important trend in any particular direction. With reference to multifamily households,
every survey of Chinese and Indian households has shown that even generations ago
they were relatively modest in size (from four to six persons, varying by region and time
period). Only under special historical circumstances will large, extended households be
common. As to polygyny, the fact is that except under special circumstances, almost all
men in all societies must be content with only one wife, and the fertility rate of polygy-
nous marriages (one man married to several wives) is lower than that for monogamous
marriages. Thus we see that with reference to the incorrect findings just cited, common
beliefs did require testing, and they were wrong.
On the other hand, of course, many popular beliefs about how families work are
correct. We cannot assume their correctness, however. Instead, we have to examine our
observations, and make studies on our own to see how well these data fit in order to
improve our understanding of the dynamics of family processes in our own or in other
societies. If we emphasize the problems of obtaining facts, we should not lose sight of the
central truth of any science: vast quantities of figures may be entirely meaningless, un-
less the search is guided by fruitful hypotheses or broad conceptions of social behavior.
What we seek is organized facts, a structure of propositions, in which theory and fact
illuminate one another. If we do not seek actual observation, we are engaged in blind
speculation. If we seek facts without theoretical guidance, our search is random and of-
ten yields findings that have no bearing on anything. Understanding the family, then,
requires the same sort of careful investigation as any other scientific endeavor.
Why the Family is Theoretically Significant
Because the family is so much taken for granted, we do not often stop to consider the
many traits that make it theoretically interesting. A brief consideration of certain pecu-
liarities of the family will suggest why it is worthwhile exploring this social unit.
The family is the only social institution other than religion that is formally de-
veloped in all societies: a specific social agency is in charge of a great variety of social
behaviors and activities. Some have argued that legal systems did not exist in preliterate
or technologically less developed tribes or societies because there was no formally orga-
nized legislative body or judiciary. Of course, it is possible to abstract from concrete be-
havior the legal aspects of action, or the economic aspects, or the political dynamics, even
when there are no explicitly labeled agencies formally in control of these areas in the
society. However, kinship statuses and their responsibilities are the object of both formal
and informal attention in societies at a high or a low technological level.
Family duties are the direct role responsibility of everyone in the society, with rare
exceptions. Almost everyone is both born into a family and founds one of his or her
own. Each individual is kin to many others. Many people, by contrast, may escape the
religious duties others take for granted, or military or political burdens. Moreover, many
family role responsibilities cannot usually be delegated to others, while in a work situa-
tion specialized obligations can be delegated.
Taking part in family activities has the further interesting quality that though it
is not backed by the formal punishments supporting many other obligations, almost
everyone takes part nonetheless. We must, for example, engage in economic or productive
acts, or face starvation. We must enter the army, pay taxes, and appear before courts, or
face money penalties and force. Such punishments do not usually confront the individual
who does not wish to marry, or refuses to talk with his father or brother. Nevertheless, so
pervasive are the social pressures, and so intertwined with indirect or direct rewards and
punishments, that almost everyone conforms, or claims to conform, to family demands.
Although the family is usually thought of as an expressive or emotional social
unit, it serves as an instrumental agency for the larger social structures, and all other
institutions and agencies depend upon its contributions. For example, the role behavior
learned within the family becomes the model or prototype for behavior required in other
segments of the society. Inside the family, the content of the socialization process is the
cultural tradition of the larger society. Families are also themselves economic units with
respect to production and allocation. With reference to social control, each person’s total
range of behavior, and how his or her time and energies are budgeted, is more easily
visible to family members than to outsiders. They can evaluate how the individual is
allocating his or her time and money, and how well he or she is carrying out various du-
ties. Consequently, the family acts as a source of pressure on the individual to adjust—to
work harder and play less, or go to church less and study more. In all these ways, the
family is partly an instrument or agent of the larger society. If it fails to perform ad-
equately, the goals of the larger society may not be effectively achieved.
Perhaps more interesting theoretically is the fact that the various tasks of the fam-
ily are all separable from one another, but in fact are not separated in almost all known
family systems. Here are some of the contributions of the family to the larger society:
reproduction of young, physical maintenance of family members, social placement of the
child, socialization, and social control.
Let us consider how these activities could be separated. For example, the mother
could send her child to be fed in a neighborhood mess hall, and of course some harassed
mothers do send their children to buy lunch in a local snack bar. Those who give birth
to a child need not socialize the child. They might send the child to specialists, and in-
deed specialists do take more responsibility for this task as the child grows older. Parents
might, as some eugenicists have suggested, be selected for their breeding qualities, but
these might not include any great talent for training the young. Status placement might
be accomplished by random drawing of lots, by IQ tests or periodic examinations in
physical and intellectual skills, or by popularity polls. This assignment of children to
various social positions could be done without regard to an individual’s parents, those
who socialized or fed the child, or others who might supervise the child’s daily behavior.
Separations of this kind have been suggested from time to time, and a few hesitant
attempts have been made here and there in the world to put them into operation. How-
ever, three conclusions relevant to this kind of division can be drawn: (1) In all known
societies, the ideal (with certain qualifications to be noted) is that the family be entrusted
with all these functions. (2) When one or more family tasks are entrusted to another
agency by a revolutionary or utopian society, the change can be made only with the sup-
port of much ideological fervor, and usually political pressure as well. (3) These experi-
ments are also characterized by a gradual return to the more traditional type of family.
In both the Israeli kibbutzim and the Russian experiments in relieving parents of child
care, the ideal of completely communal living was once urged. Husband and wife were
to have only a personal and emotional tie with one another: divorce would be easy. The
children were to see their parents at regular intervals but look to their nursery attendants
and mother surrogates for affection and direction during work hours. Each individual
was to contribute his or her best skills to the cooperative unit without regard to family
ties or sex status (there would be few or no “female” or “male” tasks). That ideal was at-
tempted in a modest way, but behavior gradually dropped away from the ideal. The only
other country in which the pattern has been attempted on a large scale is China. Already
Chinese communes have retreated from their high ambitions, following the path of the
kibbutz and the Russian kolkhoz.
Various factors contribute to these deviations from attempts to create a new type
of family, and the two most important sets of pressures cannot easily be separated from
each other. First is the problem, also noted by Plato, that individuals who develop their
own attitudes and behaviors in the usual Western (European and European-based) fam-
ily system do not easily adjust to the communal “family” even when they believe it is the
right way. The second is the likelihood that when the family is radically changed, the
various relations between it and the larger society are changed. New strains are created,
demanding new kinds of adjustments on the part of the individuals in the society. Per-
haps the planners must develop somewhat different agencies, or a different blueprint, to
transform the family.
These comments have nothing to do with “capitalism” in its current political and
economic argument with “communism.” They merely describe the historical fact that
though various experiments in separating the major functions of the family from one
another have been conducted, none of these evolved from a previously existing family
system. In addition, the several modern important attempts at such a separation, includ-
ing the smaller communes that were created in the United States during the 1960s and
1970s, mostly exhibit a common pattern, a movement away from the utopian blueprint
of separating the various family activities and giving each of them to a different social
unit.
It is possible that some of these activities (meals) can be more easily separated than
others; or that some family systems (for example, matrilineal systems) might lend them-
selves to such a separation more easily than others. On the other hand, we have to begin
with the data that are now available. Even cautiously interpreted, they suggest that the
family is a rather stable institution. On the other hand, we have not yet analyzed what
this particular institution is. In the next section we discuss this question.
Defining the Family: A Matter of More or Less
Since thousands of publications have presented research findings on the family, one
might suppose that there must be agreement on what this social unit is. In fact, soci-
ologists and anthropologists have argued for decades about how to define it. Indeed,
creating a clear, formal definition of any object of study is sometimes more difficult than
making a study of that object. If we use a concrete definition, and assert that “a family is
a social unit made up of father, mother, and children,” then only about 35 percent of all
U.S. households can be classed as a family. Much of the research on the family would
have to exclude a majority of residential units. In addition, in some societies, one wife
may be married to several husbands, or one husband to several wives. The definition
would exclude such units. In a few societies there have been “families” in which the
“husband” was a woman; and in some, certain “husbands” were not expected to live with
their “wives.” In the United States, millions of households contain at least one child,
but only one parent. In a few communes, every adult male is married to all other adult
females. That is, there are many kinds of social units that seem to be like a family, but do
not fit almost any concrete definition that we might formulate.
We can escape such criticisms in part by claiming that most adults eventually
go through such a phase of family life; that is, almost all men and women in the
United States marry at some time during their lives, and most of them eventually have
children. Nevertheless, analysis of the family would be much thinner if we focused only
on that one kind of household. In ordinary language usage, people are most likely to
agree that a social unit made up of father, mother, and child or children is a genuine
family. They will begin to disagree more and more, as one or more of those persons or
social roles is missing. Few people would agree that, at the other extremes, a household
with only a single person in it is a family. Far more would think of a household as a
family if it comprised a widow and her several children. Most people would agree that a
husband-wife household is a family if they have children, even if their children are now
living somewhere else. However, many would not be willing to class a childless couple as
a family, especially if that couple planned never to have children. Very few people would
be willing to accept a homosexual couple as a family.
What can we learn from such ordinary language usage? First, that family is not a
single thing, to be captured by a neat verbal formula. Second, many social units can be
thought of as “more or less” families, as they are more or less similar to the traditional
type of family. Third, much of this graded similarity can be traced to the different kinds
of role relations to be found in that traditional unit. Doubtless the following list is not
comprehensive, but it includes most of those relationships: (1) At least two adult per-
sons of opposite sex reside together. [In the United States and some European countries,
same sex marriage has been advancing in both public opinion and the law.] (2) They en-
gage in some kind of division of labor; that is, they do not both perform exactly the same
tasks. (3) They engage in many types of economic and social exchanges; that is, they do
things for one another. (4) They share many things in common, such as food, sex, resi-
dence, and both goods and social activities. (5) The adults have parental relations with
their children, as their children have filial relations with them; the parents have some au-
thority over their children, and both share with one another, while also assuming some
obligation for protection, cooperation, and nurturance. (6) There are sibling relations
among the children themselves, with, once more, a range of obligations to share, pro-
tect, and help one another. When all these conditions exist, few people would deny that
the unit is a family. As we consider households in which more are missing, a larger num-
ber of people would express some doubt as to whether it really is a family. Thus, if two
adults live together, but do nothing for each other, few people would agree that it is a
family. If they do not even live together, fewer still would call the couple a family.
Individuals create all sorts of relations with each other, but others are more or less
likely to view them as a family to the extent that their continuing social relations exhibit
some or all of the role patterns noted above. Most important for our understanding of the
family is that in all known societies, and under a wide range of social conditions, some
kinds of familistic living arrangements seem to emerge, with some or all of these traits.
These arrangements can emerge in prisons (with homosexual couples as units), under
the disorganized conditions of revolution, conquest, or epidemic; or even when political
attempts are made to reduce the importance of the family, and instead to press people
to live in a more communal fashion. That is, people create and re-create some forms of
familistic social patterns even when some of those traditional elements are missing.
This raises the inevitable question: Why does this happen? Why do people con-
tinue to form familistic relations, even when they are not convinced that it is the ideal
social arrangement? Why is this and not some other social pattern so widespread? Of
course, this is not an argument for the universality of the conjugal family. Many other
kinds of relations between individuals are created. Nevertheless, some approximation of
these familistic relationships do continue to occur in the face of many alternative temp-
tations and opportunities as well as counterpressures. Unless we are willing to assert that
people are irrational, we must conclude that these relationships must offer some advan-
tages. What are they?
Advantages of The “Familistic Package”
We suppose that the most fundamental set of advantages is found in the division of labor
and the resulting possibility of social exchanges between husband and wife (or members
of a homosexual couple), as well as between children and parents. This includes not only
economic goods, but help, nurturance, protection, and affection. It is often forgotten
that the modern domestic household is very much an economic unit even if it is no longer
a farming unit. People are actually producing goods and services for one another. They
are buying objects in one place, and transporting them to the household. They are trans-
forming food into meals. They are engaged in cleaning, mowing lawns, repairing, trans-
porting, counseling—a wide array of services that would have to be paid for in money if
some member of the family did not do them.
Families of all types also enjoy some small economies of scale. When there are two
or more members of the household, various kinds of activities can be done almost as eas-
ily for everyone as for a single person; it is almost as easy to prepare one meal for three
or four people as it is to prepare a similar meal for one person. Thus, the cost of a meal
is less per person within a family. Families can cooperate to achieve what an individual
cannot, from building a mountain cabin to creating a certain style of life. Help from all
members will make it much easier to achieve that goal than it would be for one person.
All the historic forms of the family that we know, including communal group mar-
riages, are also attractive because they offer continuity. Thus, whatever the members
produce together, they expect to be able to enjoy together later. Continuity has several
implications. One is that members do not have to bear the costs of continually search-
ing for new partners, or for new members who might be “better” at various family tasks.
In addition, husband and wife, as well as children, enjoy a much longer line of social
credit than they would have if they were making exchanges with people outside the fam-
ily. This means that an individual can give more at one time to someone in the family,
knowing that in the longer run this will not be a loss: the other person will remain long
enough to reciprocate at some point, or perhaps still another member will offer help at
a later time.
Next, the familistic mode of living offers several of the advantages of any informal
group.2 It exhibits, for example, a very short line of communication; everyone is close
by, and members need not communicate through intermediaries. Thus they can respond
quickly in case of need. A short line of communication makes cooperation much easier.
Second, everyone has many idiosyncratic needs and wishes. In day to day interaction
with outsiders, we need not adjust to these very much, and they may be a nuisance;
others, in turn, are likely not to adjust to our own idiosyncracies. However, within the
familistic mode of social interaction, people learn what each other’s idiosyncratic needs
are. Learning such needs can and does make life together somewhat more attractive be-
cause adjusting to them may not be a great burden, but does give pleasure to the other.
These include such trivia as how strong the tea or coffee should be, how much talk there
will be at meals, sleep and work schedules, levels of noise, and so on. Of course with that
knowledge we can more easily make others miserable, too, if we wish to do so.
Domestic tasks typically do not require high expertise, and as a consequence most
members of the family can learn to do them eventually. Because they do learn, members
derive many benefits from one another, without having to go outside the family unit.
Again, this makes a familistic mode of living more attractive than it would be other-
wise. In addition, with reference to many such tasks, there are no outside experts anyway
(throughout most of world history, there have been no experts in childrearing, taking
care of small cuts or bruises, murmuring consoling words in response to some distress,
and so on). That is, the tasks within a family setting are likely to be tasks at which insid-
ers are at least as good as outsiders, and typically better.
No other social institutions offer this range of complementarities, sharing, and
closely linked, interwoven advantages. The closest possible exception might be some
ascribed, ritual friendships in a few societies, but even these do not offer the range of
exchanges that are to be found in the familistic processes.
We have focused on advantages that the members of families obtain from living
under this type of arrangement. However, when we survey the wide range of family pat-
terns in hundreds of societies, we are struck by the fact that this social unit is strongly
supported by outsiders—that is, members of the larger society.
It is supported by a structure of norms, values, laws, and a wide range of social
pressures. More concretely, other members of the society believe such units are neces-
sary, and they are concerned about how people discharge their obligations within the
family. They punish members of the family who do not conform to ideal behavior, and
praise those who do conform. These intrusions are not simply whimsical, or a matter
of oppression. Other members of the society do in fact have a stake in how families dis-
charge their various tasks. More broadly, it is widely believed that the collective needs
of the whole society are served by some of the activities individual families carry out.
In short, it is characteristic of the varieties of the family that participants on an average
enjoy more, and gain more comfort, pleasure, or advantage from being in a familistic
arrangement than from living alone; and other members of the society view that arrange-
ment as contributing in some measure to the survival of the society itself. Members of
societies have usually supposed it important for most other individuals to form families,
to rear children, to create the next generation, to support and help each other—whether
or not individual members of specific families do in fact feel they gain real advantages
from living in a familistic arrangement. For example, over many centuries, people op-
posed legal divorces, whether or not they themselves were happily married, and with
little regard for the marital happiness of others.
This view of what makes up the “familistic social package” explains several kinds of
widely observable social behavior. One is that people experiment with different kinds of
arrangements, often guided by a new philosophy of how people ought to live. They do
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DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI
Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)
The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.
NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA
I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.
MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]
MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY
With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
“We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
BRAZIER
Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT
SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB
CUTTING THE EDGE

FINISHING THE BOTTOM
LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING
FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE
TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL
NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK
DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG
REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

BEATING THE BARK
WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT
MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN

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Family in Transition 17th Edition,

Part IV • Families in Society 303

9 Work and Family Life 309

10 Family and the Economy 341

11 Dimensions of Diversity 365

12 Trouble in the Family 451

New to This Edition

Student and Teacher Resources

MySearchLab with eText

Test Bank (0-205-21598-X)

headlines: “Americans Increasingly Opting Out of Marriage” and “Traditional Families

Understanding the Changing Family

The Myth of Universality

The Myth of Family Harmony

The Myth of Parental Determinism

The Myth of a Stable Past

The Triple Revolution

The Postindustrial Family

The Life Course Revolution

A Note on the Family

The Theoretical Importance

The Family: Various Views

The Central Position of the Family in Society

Preconceptions About the Family

Why the Family is Theoretically Significant

Defining the Family: A Matter of More or Less

Advantages of The “Familistic Package”

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

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