ork standing in line at food markets
and other stores, buying the daily necessities. Household appliances and
convenience foods are scarce luxuries; therefore, housekeeping is a
time-consuming and tiring activity. Even peasant women must take care of
their households and children after putting in the required hours in
cooperative labor, whereas formerly they could fit their field work in
and around their other responsibilities.

As a consequence of these changes, the traditional roles of family
members have been altered. The dominance of the head of the family has
given way to a greater distribution of decisionmaking and a greater
independence on the part of other family members. As family members
spend less time together, the emphasis in daily life is shifted from the
family to the outside world. Persons come to be looked at more as
individuals than as members of a certain family. Individuality and
personal achievement become as important as family background in
determining the status of an individual and his nuclear family.
Similarly, individual action or personal status no longer reflects on
the larger family.

In the eyes of the state, marriage is a secular matter governed by civil
law. Religious ceremonies are permitted but must be preceded by a civil
marriage. The minimum age for marriage without parental consent or
special permission from the local authorities is eighteen for both men
and women. The urban marriage rate in the 1960s was considerably higher
than the rural one, reflecting the higher percentage of young people
living in urban centers. Men generally marry between twenty and thirty
years of age, and women, between fifteen and twenty-five. The law
assigns equal rights and obligations to both partners in a marriage.
Divorce is relatively easy to obtain and no longer carries the social
stigma of former times; the divorce rate in the early 1970s was average
for Eastern Europe.

Despite changing patterns of family life, most observers find that the
cohesive force of the extended family continues to be a factor in
contemporary society. In many cases the cohesiveness is perpetuated or
even strengthened by modern phenomena, such as the chronic housing
shortage and the need for grandparents or other relatives to care for
the children of working mothers. The housing shortage has revived the
traditional system of several generations of a family sharing the same
roof. The pressures of change and the burdens of