THE FAMILY AND CULTURAL CHANGE.

From the beginnings of culture there has been an intimate web of interrelationships between the family and other institutions because the persons who make up the family are also participants in the economic, religious, and other social activities of a community. Never has the family lived alone. The family as an isolated institution is unrealistic. The exigencies of the struggle for survival from primitive to contemporary societies have required not only that individuals have the additional security which economic and psychological participation in the family life affords, but have demanded as well that several families cooperate in economic activities. Moreover, families have always commingled on ceremonial occasions, whether religious or political, and have combined into larger groups in feuds and warfare. One effective method of studying the impact of culture on the family is through an analysis of how cultural change affects the status and role of woman as wife and mother and, consequently, how it affects family form and function.