Note 38 — Chapter III

Since agriculture requires many hands, the parents try to keep their children with them as long as possible.38 Thus the custom grows up of several families living in the same house, and the husband comes to live with his wife’s family when he is unable to pay the purchase price. Even if this is not the case, a close relationship exists between the wife and her family, so that she returns to it with her children when her husband dies. The more important the position of the woman in the family becomes, the more it comes to pass that the married woman remains in her own family and the husband in his, and that the union consists only in more or less frequent visits paid by the man to his wife.