In such homes, then, these Negro peasants live. The fami-
lies are both small and large; there are many single tenants,
--widows and bachelors, and remnants of broken groups.
The system of labor and the size of the houses both tend to
the breaking up of family groups: the grown children go away
as contract hands or migrate to town, the sister goes into
service; and so one finds many families with hosts of babies,
and many newly married couples, but comparatively few
families with half-grown and grown sons and daughters. The
average size of Negro families has undoubtedly decreased
since the war, primarily from economic stress. In Russia over
a third of the bridegrooms and over half the brides are under
twenty; the same was true of the antebellum Negroes. To-
day, however, very few of the boys and less than a fifth of
the Negro girls under twenty are married. The young men
marry between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five; the
young women between twenty and thirty. Such postponement
is due to the difficulty of earning sufficient to rear and
support a family; and it undoubtedly leads, in the country
districts, to sexual immorality.
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