Studies of the Indian family have been strongly affected by the common assumption of social science, based largely on Western experience, that industri? alization, urbanization, and modernization lead inevitably to a transition from the extended family to the nuclear family. The Indian form of the extended family, commonly called the family, is usually patrilineal and patrilocal and/or virilocal. It emphasizes filial and fraternal solidarity and, based on the Mitakshara, a twelfth century legal text, each male family member is entitled to an equal share ofthe family property (Mandelbaum 1970:35). Two general factors are common? ly identified as stimulating the transition from to nuclear family. First, it is argued that the nuclear family is better adapted to modern economic conditions than the family (Goode 1963:10-18); for example, the nuclear family is said to be better suited to the modern labor market because its geographical and social mobility are relatively unhampered by ties of kinship. In this view, family type is directly influenced by economic factors; the employment practices and conditions of work in modern industrial enterprises favor small social units and promote the disintegration of larger ones. Second, there is an ideology of the nuclear family, Western in tone and origin, which is in accord with the ideology and conditions of technological development and economic progress (Goode 1963:19). This ideol? ogy extols independence, equality, and the importance of the individual. It is potentially destructive of the traditional Indian family. When economic development increases employment opportunities, young men, supposedly chafing at living under the control of older kinsmen, presumably seize the opportuni? ty to establish independent households. Empirical research has not yet settled the question of whether the nuclear family is gaining ground at the expense of the family under the stimulus of economic development and modernization. Proponents ofthe two basic positions in the joint family controversy argue from different perspectives, a circumstance which makes it difficult to evaluate the relative validity of the two points of view. Those social scientists who hold that the incidence of the family has remained relatively unchanged frequently invoke the normal functioning of the domestic cycle as the variable that produces the illusion of change in a basically stable situation (e.g., Gould 1968; Kessinger 1974). Birth, marriage, and death eventually produce changes in the structure of all families and can result in a fair amount of variation in the proportions of various family types in a given community from year to year. Such variation is random and should not be interpreted as a unidirectional trend. Studies that support the hypothesis of a transition from to nuclear family generally establish a correlation between a family type and a specific variable; if the variable has increased or will increase, as often seems likely, so will the proportion of the associated family type. For example, Yadava (1966:27-28) presents data that demonstrate that family heads who hold nontraditional jobs that pay a cash income and provide relative economic independence are much more likely to head a nuclear family than those who follow traditional occupa-