Social Mobility and the Durability of Family Ties

Abstract
Urbanization and industrialization are often identified as processes destructive of familial and kinship relationships. Research in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, the focus of forced-draft industrialization since 1945, shows that contacts between fathers and sons, and contacts between brothers, remain intense despite far-reaching urbanization, and geographical and social mobility. Frequency of contact is depressed more by factors of distance and inconvenience than by any others, and high social position and mobility enhance rather than discourage kinship contacts. A multiple regression analysis on data from 326 males with living but non-coresident fathers and/ or brothers forms the basis of the analysis.