ABSTRACT
Like the former Marxist regimes of Europe, the Cuban government has not attempted to socialize family functions significantly. To have done so would have been so at odds with the deeply rooted culture of patriarchy and so socially disruptive as to endanger other goals of the revolution. Although measures were taken early on to assist families economically and to formalize consensual unions, it was not until the mid-1970s, that the government undertook to define the socialist family, its role in society and the rights of its members. Rather than weaken the nuclear family, the revolution aspired to recreate it as the basic unit of the new socialist society.
