How and What Kind of Functions is Rural Family Performing ?

Abstract

We think it as a great step forward progress in the study of the family that in positivistic stukies on the structure of the family, measurement of family size, ratios of relationships and number of generations were brought under the same criteria, and this made possible the comparative studies of the results in accordance with differences of age, districts, races and so on. We think, however, it is necessary to grasp not merely the structure but the vital processes from the points of view of functions so as to make differences clear, for we have made these facts clear as such studies progress, for example, modern family has often the same composition as that of in primitive society. But many of former discourses on functions of the family are not based upon concrete data and naturally they are abstruct. In addition, their discourses are conflicting because they had no single point of view. On the other hand, it is true that the positivistic studies on particular functions of the family have been made for a long time, but few of them have been grasped as a whole and placed particular functions in it. In this sense, Murdock put the minimum number of functions of neuclear family, therefore, family in general, as four. Against his study, M. E. Spiro has raised a question basing on Greel's concrete data of agricultural collective. (cf. American Anthoropologist, Oct. 1954) We are interested in these recent movement, however, we are afraid that the problem of function of the family might involve the danger of becoming meaningless unless we devise general and objective criteria and base our study upon them. We are, therefore, eager that such criteria will be determined by international cooperation, but temporally we made a table of 392 kinds of function on the basis of occupational classification table in order to measure rural family with it, first of all. We utilized occupational classification table, because we believed such method would be quite effective as the method of measuring functions of the family, in other words, to measure how many occupations are involved in family.Now, in a rural village in which rice culture and sericulture are main progessions in central part of Japan proper (at 138, 19' east longitude, 36, 173' latitude, 613 metres above sea level), we could get the following table which shows the results of measurment on two families of three generations (Case I & II, Family Number 10 & 6) and two neuclear family (Case III & IV, Family Number 5 & 6)