Abstract
A CENTURY ago Frederic Le Play set forth the results he had obtained by systematic participant observation of family life in a book called The Working Men of Europe.l In this and in his subsequent writings on social reform,2 he formulated the proposition that harmony in the family and in the society depended upon the appearance in the community of a particular type of family. This he called La famille souche, describing it in part from his field notes and in part as an ideal type. The stem family, as the term is usually translated into English, is a form of extended family; and when it permeates the society, Le Play believed that it allows the best personalities, a group of people whom he spoke of as the natural hierarchy of ability and virtue, to control the positions where decisions are made in the family, in the workshops, and in the council chambers. The central characteristic
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