Explains a lot behavior of older people in societies that were agrarian quite recently, like Slovakia.
“eyes are always watching and these are societies which expect the individual to place the community first, with individuals valued to the degree that they fill a communal role. There’s very little space for self-expression here and throughout the day, every day our peasants exist within a hierarchy beneath the male head of household. The older women direct the other women and girls, the men direct the boys and the male householder, who by law is the one that owns (or has claim to) the productive asset (land) that enables the household is the final decider on basically everything. But those heads of household are hardly able to make all of their own decisions either, constrained by the need to remain ‘respectable’ in a community that demands conformity and by debt or peonage to the Big Man.”
https://acoup.blog/2025/10/17/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-v-life-in-cycles/