This thesis is an ethnographic study of the lives of young married women in a fishing village in the North East of Scotland. I illustrate the central role played by women in the maintenance of home, family and community through a discussion of their daily lives as housewives, as mothers, as members of kin networks, as friends and as social participants. Major achievements of the study are to demonstrate the complexity and multiplicity of women's personal interpretations of their roles, and to show how they respond to tradition and how they introduce change in their interpretations of these roles. The complexity and range of material I present therefore has resulted in a comprehensive study which is not theory-led and which draws no easy theoretical conclusions. Rather, in this thesis, I aim to make a significant contribution to the ethnographic quality of community and gender studies in Scotland.