# {54.} The Nuclear and the Extended Family

CHAPTERS

- On the History of Family Organization

The family is the smallest unit of society which rests on material and intellectual foundations, and the form and content of it changes periodically. The small or nuclear family (kiscsalád) consists of the parents and the children up to the time they leave the economic unit of this community and establish their own family. In the case of the large or extended family (nagycsalád), three or maybe four generations (grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren) live on one lot, often in one house, working together in a patriarchal system. Many transitional steps have developed between these two family forms, and according to the most recent research which has also taken distant historical times into account, both can be found among the Hungarians, often within the same settlement.