PIP: A review of family demography in Thailand is presented, and future research needs are identified. Suggestions for future research include a determination of an acceptable set of standard roles and obligations among family members in the "loose structure" paradigm and an analysis of marital stability. Other researchable topics include support to the elderly, family allocations to children, changes among rural adolescents, and family responses to AIDS. Embree and other researchers defined the Thai family as a "loosely structured" paradigm where behavior within the family was highly variable. Anthropologists Sulamith and Potter have described the matrilineal system, and others have referred to the influences of Buddhism on family roles. Foster identified traditional Thai marriage as based on individual choice of spouse, which was often based on romantic love and the desired approval of parents. Arranged marriages declined in importance. Rural Thais married within their villages but outside their matrilineage. Bridewealth payments were not rigidly enforced. Marriage forms included formal Buddhist marriage, legal registration, or both; elopement; and cohabitation. By 1991 marriage age had stabilized at 22 years for women and 24 years for men. Muslim women married at a younger age than Buddhist women. Marriage was delayed in urban areas, after migration, with increased education, and with labor force participation and nonagricultural employment. Studies by Limanonda found that first birth status and smaller sibling size were associated with earlier marriage. Marriage was nearly universal, but singlehood was accepted. 15% of first marriages during the later 1970s were found to have ended in divorce. Remarriage was common. Average household size was 4.0 in 1988. 15.7% of households with children 0-15 years old in 1990 were female headed. Higher education was found to be related to nuclear family formation. Kinship was a bilateral system based on sex, relative age, and generation. The family life cycle included alternate phases of being nuclear and extended. Social changes over the past 20 years have resulted in education being given as an inheritance, land shortages, delayed marriage, and increased child fostering. In urban slums matrilineal ties prevailed. The rate of post-nuptial residence with parents has remained stable.