This book presents an in-depth study of 24 Hindu families, of different caste and class groups, who reside in a recently urbanizing part of India. Beginning with a two-year study of family organization and child-rearing practices in the mid-1960s, the author follows the lives of 132 children and their extended families over nearly three decades. The book focuses upon women - the socialization of girls and the significance of women's roles through the life-cycle in a society where the patrifocal extended family is predominant. The effects of caste and class upon women's lives are examined, together with the effects of recent schooling and delayed marriage. Longitudinal research makes it possible to examine the impact of recent urbanization and modernization upon groups of contemporary Indian women, whose voices and changing perspectives are captured in a series of intergenerational interviews that imply further change for Indian systems of family and gender.
This book follows the lives of 24 families in India over almost thirty years, documenting a family and gender system based upon principles of male solidarity and dominance, sexual segregation, and age and gender hierarchies. Professor Susan Seymour also documents a family and gender system in transition, adapting to recent forces of urbanization and modernization.
