The Dispersion of Kinship Ties in Modern Society: Contemporary Data and Historical Speculation

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Abstract
This essay uses a 1977 survey of social networks to describe "modern" California kinship. Respondents' active relations with kin outside the household— relations involving existing or likely exchanges-tend to be geographically dispersed and focused on immediate kin, especially parents and adult children; extended kin ties are largely latent. The degree of dispersion varies systematically with respondent characteristics; notably, the more educated respondents tended to have the most dispersed networks and to be least dependent on kin. Assuming that this pattern is indeed a "modern" development, the article examines alternative explanations for its appearance and speculates that it may have been most stimu lated by twentieth-century developments in space-transcending technologies.

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