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.
Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Field methods and longitudinal research in Bhubaneswar; 3. The patrifocal family: growing up female in the Old Town; 4. Variations and transpositions: being a wife, mother, and daughter in the New Capital; 5. Caste, class and gender: to be poor and female; 6. Going out to school: women's changing aspirations; 7. Change and continuity in women's lives: a three-generational perspective; 8. Systems of family and gender in transition.
"Very readable and attractively packaged, it would probably be an excellent text in a psychology course with a cross-cultural dimension - on child development, family life, cultural psychology, or women. The intent is to give the reader the feel of the culture and the people described. In this, Seymour eminently succeeds." APA Review of Books
