Clique Contacts and Family Orientations

Abstract

The relationship between patterns of informal interaction and orientations in regard to nuclear family roles is analyzed. Using the principle of a finite pool of sociability, it is suggested that tightly-knit interaction networks and companionship-oriented families represent two alternative structures for providing emotional support. Data on working-class wives show that participation in tightly-knit interaction networks is directly related to seeking out friends and relatives rather than husbands for primary group support, and inversely related to conceiving of nuclear family roles in compassionate terms. Additional findings on marital satisfaction further support the major hypothesis by showing that satisfaction is a consequence of the interaction between interaction networks and family orientations rather than a separate effect. Some parallels between the general findings and classical thories of urbanism are discussed.