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

By Susan C. Seymour

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521598842
• ISBN13: 9780521598842
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Long Lasting Impressions

This author has wrote her stories through a family (families) in Orissa, a state in Northeastern India - central coastline. I feel it is more sociological than anthropolical (and may be an easier read) than the book by Margaret Trawick (Notes on Love in a Tamil Family). However, I still find Margaret's book more enthralling!