The rural Appalachian community of a few decades ago functioned as a relatively autonomous social, economic, educational, and recreational unit. It was a producing and consuming unit that provided a setting for interaction patterns that led to the building of the family social structure, which, in certain respects, contained rigid and well-defined patterns of authority and division of labor. Factors that contributed to the nature of the family structure were the isolation and cohesiveness of the rural community, similarity in organization of the various families, and a value orientation which strongly supported family and community organization. In recent years, the rapid improvements in means of mass communication/transportation, the availability of employment opportunities in urban centers, and improved education have affected the isolation of Appalachia and its relationship with the larger society. Interaction and communication with the larger society have contributed to the breakdown of family autonomy, wherein the rural referent has become a negative one. For some Appalachian families, however, a lack of means and cultural pluralism have produced a discord and deviance which manifests itself in extremes of non-conventionalism or traditionalism--behavior born of certain fears and the inability to compete in the mainstream, which, when reinforced by local interaction constitutes a culture of poverty. (JC)