Complex Households,a Fading Glory: Household Formation During the Collective Period in the People’s Republic of China

Abstract

The collective period fermented a historical transition in rural Chinese families toward reducing the household to simple forms and toward weakening the stigma on household division. Using ethnographic and demographic data collected in a northeastern village, I investigate two mechanisms of change in household formation. The new political-economic institutions—the collectives and class divisions—brought structural changes in household organization and sustained the departure from the traditional ideal of a complex household. Unique circumstances—the turbulent social environments, the famine of 1960, and the prevalent poverty—triggered and justified the deviation from the family tradition.