Where the conjugal relationship and patrifiliation are jurally or ritually effective in establishing a child’s jural status, the husband—father becomes a critical link between the matricentral cell and the domestic domain as a whole. In this case the nuclear family may be regarded as the … reproductive nucleus of the domestic domain. It consists of two, and only two, successive generations bound together by the primary dependence of the child on its parents for nurture and love and of the parents on the child as the link between them and their reproductive fulfilment.