Family and kinship were the core of social life in Bangladesh. A family group residing in a bari would function as the basic unit of economic endeavor, landholding, and social identity. In the eyes of rural people, the chula defined the effective household--an extended family exploiting jointly held property and being fed from a jointly operated kitchen. A bari might consist of one or more such functional households, depending on the circumstances of family relationship. Married sons generally lived in their parents' household during the father's lifetime. Although sons usually built separate houses for their nuclear families, they remained under their fathers' authority, and wives under their mothers-in-law's authority. The death of the father usually precipitated the separation of adult brothers into their own households. Such a split generally caused little change in the physical layout of the bari, however. Families at different stages of the cycle would display different configurations of household membership.

Although the age at marriage appeared to be rising in the 1980s, early marriage remained the rule even among the educated, and particularly among women. The mean age at marriage in 1981 for males was 24, and for females 17. Women students often married in their late teens and continued their studies in the households of their fathers-in-law. Divorce, particularly of young couples without children, was becoming increasingly common in Bangladesh, with around 1/6 marriages ending in this fashion in the 1980s.

A woman began to gain respect and security in her husband's or father-in-law's household only after giving birth to a son. Mothers therefore cherished and indulged their sons, while daughters were often more strictly disciplined and were assigned heavy household chores from an early age. In many families the closest, most intimate, and most enduring emotional relationship was that between mother and son. The father was a more distant figure, worthy of formal respect, and the son's wife might remain a virtual stranger for a long time after marriage.