THE SOCIAL STRATEGY OF FAMILY FORMATION: SOME VARIATIONS IN TIME AND SPACE.

The article focuses on an assumption that there are patterns of courtship, marriage, child bearing, and family dissolution which are characteristic of social groups; such patterns vary among societies, sub-cultures, and social groups; and in time and space; arid in give a groups, they may change over time. The patterns or "strategies of family formation" characterizing a group, and the changes therein, have very important consequences for population composition and social organization, on the one hand, and for the rate and structure of population growth on the other hand. None of the survey materials has attempted to examine fertility control characteristics in relationship to age at marriage, and none has viewed these two variables as facets of family formation behavior to be considered simultaneously. It is hoped that future studies can extend the comparisons both geographically and in time and that more detailed social and economic specification of cohorts may permit investigation of relationships between cohort attributes and their family formation patterns and strategies.