DEPRIVATION AND SOLIDARITY IN THE SOVIET URBAN FAMILY.

One of the distinguishing features of modern industrial society is a high degree of structural differentiation, that is, the tendency for roles in a given social sub-system to be highly specialized. In describing the social changes accompanying the urbanization-industrialization process, it has become a commonplace to emphasize the segregation of work, protective, recreational, family, and other roles, and to point to the loss of functions of the contemporary urban family. In modern society the activities associated with the lost functions are indeed carried on in a wide assortment of extra-familial social contexts and their separation from the family is in many respects of undeniable significance. Nevertheless, it is also apparent that activities, statuses, and interpersonal relationships in extra-familial situations are not independent, especially on the informal level, of those features of social structure more narrowly associated with family life. In the literature on the American family there are two broad groups of studies which have been at least partly concerned with this aspect of family life. They are the investigations showing how various external factors are related to indices of marital stability or marital adjustment and the family crisis studies, in which family crises or problems have been examined for their effect on a number of aspects of family social structure.