One aim of this chapter is to outline the economic background of Maduzai marriage. The annual productive cycle, the character and amounts of capital resources controlled by households of the subtribe, and employment within the subtribe, will all be discussed, but the principal focus of this chapter is the relationship between marriage and household structure. The two are intrinsically linked, and the ‘household’ might also be defined as all those people who accept the decisions of the household head with regard to their marriages and those of their children and who allow the head to manage the raising of a brideprice or the disposal of a brideprice received. However, since household heads may not face such decisions for years or indeed at all during the period of their leadership, such a criterion is not sufficient for definitional purposes. Nonetheless, decisions about marriage remain the most important opportunity for household members to test the head's continuing dominance, and such decisions frequently become a pretext for household division, while the character of relationships between married members of a single household is viewed by Durrani as the ultimate determinant of household continuity or dispersal. Other factors are also relevant to a discussion of the developmental cycle of Durrani households, especially the number of marriages to be managed and their sequence, in terms of both the intervals between them and the sex of the principals.