Fieldwork carried out in 1956–57 in the mountain commune of Kenscoff, an hour above Port-au-Prince, and long acquaintance with the same families going back to 1937, underpin this account of how peasant households there are formed, housed and broken up.

Two kinds of union coexist and collide. Plasaj, a stable customary arrangement that may involve more than one wife, has no standing in law, which treats it as concubinage and grants the plasé wife no claim on her partner's property; legal marriage confers rights that practice frequently overrides in her favor, with public opinion behind it.

The older container for all this was the laku, a cluster of households under a father, elder brother or uncle who held the land and whose word on marriage was final. It persists in the higher districts toward Furcy but has thinned near the bourg, which the road opened in 1932 turned into a summer resort.