Abstract
Small groups of close-kin households in a Thai-Lao village were found to cooperate intimately in daily agricultural production and consumption as if they formed a single household. The predominant relationship between households was that of parent-daughter.
Koichi Mizuno called this unit a ‘multi-household compound’ and characterized it as being formed at a certain phase of the family developmental cycle. Because of the postmarital uxorilocal residence rule and the inheritance pattern emphasizing female devisees in the community, a married daughter and her husband often stay in her parents' house for some years after marriage, before moving to their own house. When the daughter's household is not economically independent, her parents help and in return expect the help of their married daughter's family in farming. As a result an intimate cooperative unit is formed between the households concerned.
Although such is the typical form of this unit, it is limited neither to one phase of the family developmental cycle nor to the parent-daughter relationship. Close mutual help is expected as a norm between close kin with a strong religious background, and other relationships are also found which follow kin norms.
