The Self-Restraint of Friends

A Mechanism in Family Transition

Bibliographic Data

ID18955419
AuthorsJ E Mayer (0000-0002-5849-2971, corresponding author)
Year1957
Volume35
Issue3
Pages230-238
Publication date1957-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Forces (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0037-7732 • E-ISSN: 1534-7605
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2573506
OpenAlexW2320397543
LanguageEN
Citations received4

which have appeared in many parts of Asia and which to date have not been absorbed by either the Asiatic majority or the European minority. Even in situations as different from this setting as in the mixture of white and Negro in the United States the same tendency is noticeable. Thompson and Adloff'4 maintain that separate Eurasian communities are on the way out, and Myrdal'5 feels that the development of a separate mulatto caste in the United States was ended by the abolition of slavery. Whatever is the future outlook of such mixed communities, their formation seems to be an immediate result of the social regroupings caused by intermarriage, and they tend to persist whenever social barriers are placed in the way of their assimilation to the parent ethnic groups. In the light of this study it is certainly possible to argue that the processes of adiustment in intermarriage give rise to an intermediate cultural complex which is sufficiently unique to foster a sense of distinctiveness among those who have grown up in that milieu. This does not mean that the social context will enable mixed groups to survive indefinitely as separate cultural entities, although such groups as the colored in South Africa have been recognized for several generations. In the Philippine-American marriages described in this article, the couples did not appear to have assimilated either the American or Filipino practices, but were developing an intermediate type of culture. Housekeeping standards, interaction with relatives, child care practices, dietary habits, sexual practices, and handling of money tended to follow a pattern midway between that of the two cultures. Whether the exigencies of the husbands' employment would enable the family to remain in a place where this could be a permanent development is doubtful, but it seemed clear that this was a tendency toward which family interaction was developing while the family remained in the environment of the American military installation in the Philippines. 14Virginia Thompson and Richard Adloff. Minority Problems in Souitheast Asia (Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press, 1955), pp. 135-151. 15 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York: Harpers, 1944), p. 696

Caste · Context (archaeology) · Ethnic group · Geography · Optimal distinctiveness theory · Political science · Sociology · White (mutation) · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Philippine History and Culture · Psychology · Social Psychology

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