When married sons leave home: household fission in an agricultural society

Lisa D. Pearce, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Jessica Pearlman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Taylor Hargrove, Vanderbilt University

This is a paper about household fission, specifically the action of an adult, married son forming an independent family household apart from his natal home in a heavily patriarchal setting where agriculture has been the primary livelihood and multigenerational households are common. We examine the role of household demographic and economic characteristics, sons’ own experiences and attitudes, community context, and environmental quality in shaping the odds of household fission resulting from an adult son and his wife moving out. We follow a cohort of young men from the Chitwan Valley Family Study who were unmarried at the time of the first survey (1996) and married before 2008 (n=456). Once they marry, we estimate the odds that in any given month the adult son will be living away from his natal home with his spouse in an independent household. Results suggest key household, community, environmental, and individual factors influencing household composition in agricultural settings.