It is impossible to discuss the problems of adjustment of the family
life of the immigrant to life in this country without taking notice of
several factors that complicate the problem. There is first the
disorganization in family life that is incident to the migration
itself. The members of most of the families that come to this country
are peasants who are almost forced to emigrate by the fact that the
land they own will not support the entire family as the children grow
up and establish families of their own.
There was, for example, among the families visited for this study, a
family from the Russian Ukraine. The man's father was a peasant farmer
with six acres of land and a large family of children. The income from
this small property was supplemented by hiring out as laborers on the
large estates near by. As the boys grew up they left home. Two had
already come to America when the father of this family left in 1910.
At the time he left there were thirteen people trying to get their
living from six acres of land.
Another family from the same country were trying to live on the income
from the farm of the man's father, who had four acres of land and five
sons.