Social class variation in household structure — the case of a small South African city

Abstract

Abstract The main theme of this article is class variation in family/household structure. This is illustrated by using data obtained from a survey of 300 white households in Grahamstown. The general finding was that conventional nuclear families were more common in the upper than lower strata of the white Grahamstown community — the opposite being true of extended family households. The same pattern was found to exist when the results of the Grahamstown survey were compared with those obtained from similar studies of black residents of the same town as well as whites elsewhere in South Africa.