Women, Family, and Child Care in India: A World in Transition

by Susan C. Seymour

• ISBN13: 9780521591270
• ISBN10: 0521591279
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-01-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix	(2)
List of Tables and Figures	xi	(2)
Acknowledgments	xiii	(2)
Preface	xv
1 Introduction	1	(32)
2 Field Methods and Longitudinal Research in Bhubaneswar	33	(19)
3 The Patrifocal Family: Growing Up Female in the Old Town	52	(50)
4 Variations and Transitions: Being a Wife, Mother, and Daughter in the New Capital	102	(43)
5 Caste/Class and Gender: To Be Poor and Female	145	(34)
6 Going Out to School: Women's Changing Roles and Aspirations	179	(25)
7 Change and Continuity in Women's Lives: A Three-Generational Perspective	204	(61)
8 Systems of Family and Gender in Transition	265	(28)
Notes	293	(12)
References	305	(10)
Index	315