tended family as his sons bring their wives into the
household. The sons, in turn, will start the circle
anew. Households of extended families are struc-
turally unstable.
Practically, this household form ranges from a
production and consumption unit under one roof
(including several wives) to a loosely cooperating
production unit with different contributions (cash
from a teacher son, labor from a farmer son) and
separate consumption, as different nuclear families
(or mother and children units in polygynous fami-
lies) live in separate rooms in a compound, apart-
ments in a house, or tents in a camp. Built into these
structures are the demand for cooperation, resent-
ment of authoritarian relations, and competition
for resources especially among married brothers. It
is said that nothing breaks up a household faster
than brothers’ wives fighting with each other and
with their mother-in-law. Co-wives are prover-
bially adversary. This is mostly due to the house-
hold structure: co-wives are pitched against each
other as are sons’ wives, and all against their
mother-in-law over resources and workloads;
mothers-in-law back their sons, especially in poly-
gynous marriages, because sons are their source of
power and of support in old age. The often bad
relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-
in-law leads to many old women’s reliance on their
own visiting daughters for care.
Rich men are more likely to be polygynous than
are poor men (although any man may be saddled
with his dead brother’s widow in addition to his
own wife), but they can also maintain separate
homes for their wives, minimizing contact and
potential strife among them. Such households in
effect are headed by a woman, with a visiting hus-
band. There are reports of older wives selecting a
young wife for their husband for various reasons.
The first wife will usually stay in charge of the
household, including management of co-wives and
supervising work. In the wealthy households of the
past, male and female servants did most of the
menial chores; with the trend toward nuclear fam-
ilies such large households have become rare. Mod-
ernity is expected to lower the rate of polygyny, but
especially in Iran today many wealthy professional
men are said to maintain several wives. Women
in Iran today are admonished to stipulate a sepa-
rate home if they contract a marriage with a mar-
ried man.
While sons may stay in their father’s household
with their wives, daughters leave upon marriage
and are replaced by their brother’s wives. As
strangers to the husband’s people and to each other,
ignorant of the new household’s customs, the
iran and afghanistan 253young wives must expect to be everybody’s ser-
vants. Unless the mother-in-law is amiable and the
young woman is hard-working and cooperative,
tensions and emotional and physical abuse are fre-
quent. Expected to keep wives and children under
control and to side with father, brothers, mother (in
this order), a man will not likely support his wives
against his own people. Contrary to Islamic law,
daughters especially in lower classes and rural areas
do not inherit, making them the more vulnerable
economically. In instances of hostile relations, only
through separation from the extended household
can a woman gain peace and control over resources
in the house, including, eventually, over her own
daughters-in-law. An old or widowed woman
expects to live in the nuclear-to-extended house-
hold of a son (the youngest, where ultimogeniture
is practiced). Only if earlier she had established
warm relationships with the daughter-in-law who
now is responsible for her care can she hope realis-
tically to be treated well. Recently, there is a notable
increase in the number of old women (but not old
men) living alone by choice, especially in Iran, with
financial assistance of their sons. An old widower
will stay with a son if he does not take another wife
and establish a new nuclear household. Since about
1990, as marriage age and divorce rates are in-
creasing (in Iran), single-person households have
increased in cities as have households of several
unmarried young women (or men) renting an
apartment to share costs, and even women-headed
households with children. Any household, espe-
cially in cities, at times will include temporary resi-
dents such as a wife’s parents, a relative who is
indigent, in need of education or medical care, or
who can provide childcare.
Men have few household duties and skills and
rely on service from women. In the traditional
households with many children and complemen-
tary gender roles, the division of labor made sense
to people. In the new, nuclear middle-class house-
holds with fewer children (in Iran), women accuse
men of being lazy and indolent, especially if the
women work outside the home. New patterns for
household forms and relationships are developing
especially in socially dynamic Iran, where people
aspire to middle-class lifestyles, while war and the
social ideology of the Taliban in Afghanistan have
encouraged large, traditionally structured house-
holds including many children, the extended family
and/or multiple wives and other relatives.Bibliography
M. Afkhami, Death of the patriarch, in E. W. Fernea (ed.),
Remembering childhood in the Middle East, Austin,
Tex. 2002, 157–62.