Conducted in four villages situated near Tarnow, a large urban and industrial centre, this study examined the process of change in the functioning of the rural family, as set against the transformation of their general living conditions brought about by the socialist industrialization and urbanization in post-war Poland. Issues studied were: family problems in country life; formation of a new value system; new cultural demands and consumption patterns in the villages; role of endogenous and exogenous elements in the urbanization process; degree of realization of the social consequences of this process; and concrete manifestations of the process of adaptation of rural Poland to the changed situation, namely, that of a socialist industrialized community. The sample included 2 successive generations of rural families: 120 procreation families (married 5 years or less) and 120 origin families (parents and in-laws of the procreation families). It was found that the process of change consisted--within the scope of a family--mainly in a decrease of the determining effect formerly exerted by the productive-economic function upon the remaining ones, i.e., the procreational, educational, securing, and integrational-expressive functions, owing to the accessibility of extra-agricultural sources of income and to the constant decline of the significance of land as a value decisive for a given family's living conditions. (NQ)