Changing Patterns of the Family

This is the single most useful qualification in the chapter and the one that separates a good answer from a copied one.

2. In authority: from patriarchal towards egalitarian

Authority within the household has shifted, driven above all by women's earning and by neolocal residence. It has not equalised, and evidence on the division of domestic work, including India's own Time Use Survey, consistently shows women performing very much more unpaid domestic and care work than men, including where both are employed. Authority over money has moved faster than the division of labour, which is a cultural lag in the sense of [Culture].

3. In marriage: from arrangement towards choice

Set out in [Recent Trends in Marriage] and not repeated here.

4. In functions: transferred to specialised institutions

Set out in [The Family: Meaning and Functions]. The family has specialised rather than declined.

5. In the position of women

The most consequential change. Later marriage, more education, paid employment, fewer children, legal rights in inheritance since the 2005 amendment to the Hindu Succession Act, and remedies against violence within the home since 2005. Against those must be set the persistence of dowry, the unequal burden of domestic work, and the fact that women's labour force participation in India has not risen in step with their education, which is a well-documented puzzle.

6. In the position of the aged

The change with the sharpest legal consequence. In the joint household the old had a productive role, authority, and automatic maintenance. With neolocal residence and migration, all three weaken.

The state's response is direct: the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 provides a summary mechanism for parents to claim maintenance from children. A statute conferring on parents a right to be maintained by their children is a precise measurement of how far the informal arrangement has failed, because in a functioning joint family such a right would have no occasion to be exercised. This is the clearest single illustration in the whole module of law appearing exactly where an informal institution withdraws.

7. In the relations between kin

Contact with a wider kin circle has thinned, and obligations to distant relatives that were once automatic are now discretionary. Communication technology partly offsets this, sustaining relationships across distance that would formerly have lapsed.

8. New household forms

Single-person households, especially of migrants and of the elderly; single-parent households; skipped-generation households, where grandparents raise grandchildren whose parents have migrated for work; couples living apart for employment; and, in cities, unrelated adults sharing accommodation.

The disorganisation reading, and the answer to it

A standard line in older textbooks holds that these changes amount to the disorganisation of the family: rising divorce, neglect of the aged, delinquency among children of working parents, and the loss of values.

The answer, which a good student gives, has three parts.

Change is not disorganisation. An institution that alters its form in response to altered conditions is adapting, and the joint family itself was an adaptation to an agrarian economy that no longer exists.

The comparison is with an idealised past. The joint family is being compared with a version of itself that omits the subordination of women, the suppression of individual choice, and the quarrels over partition that fill the older law reports.

Some of what is called disorganisation is a gain in visibility. Violence within the family is not new; its appearing in statistics is new, and it appears because it is now reportable. Rising recorded figures can indicate rising reporting rather than rising incidence, and confusing the two is one of the classic errors in reading social statistics, dealt with in [Social Research: Nature and Purpose].

A worked example

The Deshmukhs held eight acres near Satara. In 1970 the household was joint: three brothers, their wives, their children and their mother, one kitchen, one head, land held together and never partitioned because dividing it would have made each share unviable.

By 1995 two brothers' sons had taken jobs in Pune and Mumbai. The household was formally still joint, and in fact two separate households now existed, sending money home. The land remained undivided; the reason for jointness had become property, not residence.

By 2020 the third generation lives in flats in three cities. Each household is nuclear. The land is let out and the income divided. Decisions about it are still taken collectively by telephone, and the grandmother lives four months a year with each of her sons, which is an arrangement, not a rule.

Ask the examiner's question: is this family joint or nuclear? It is residentially nuclear, functionally joint, jointly propertied and patrilineal, with authority that has become consultative. The answer is that the question is wrongly framed, and saying so, with this progression to support it, is the best thing a student can write on this topic.

Quick revision

1. Causes: industrialisation, urbanisation, migration, education, employment of women, legislation, media.
2. Structure: households smaller and less often joint; but the joint family was never universal, and jointness survives in property and function after the household divides.
3. The key formula: residentially nuclear, functionally joint.
4. Authority: towards egalitarian, driven by women's earning; the division of domestic labour lags well behind.
5. The aged: the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 measures how far the informal arrangement has failed.
6. Women: later marriage, education, employment, coparcenary rights after the 2005 amendment to the Hindu Succession Act; against which stand dowry and the unequal domestic burden.
7. New forms: single-person, single-parent, skipped-generation, and couples living apart for work.
8. Change is not disorganisation; the comparison is with an idealised past, and rising figures may mean rising reporting.

Test yourself

1. State the main changes in the Indian family and their causes. Smaller households and less frequent joint residence; a shift from patriarchal towards more egalitarian authority; a movement from arrangement towards choice in marriage; the transfer of production, education, health care and protection to specialised institutions; the employment of married women; a rise in neolocal residence; and a weakening of the position of the aged. The causes are industrialisation, urbanisation, migration, the education and employment of women, legislation, and the mass media.

2. Is the joint family disappearing? Give the qualified answer. The joint household has become less common, particularly in cities, but the simple claim is misleading in two ways. The joint family was never universal, its incidence varying with region, caste, occupation and especially with property. And jointness frequently survives the household's division: families are commonly residentially nuclear and functionally joint, holding property together, pooling resources in a crisis and deciding collectively while living apart. What has fragmented is the household rather than the family.

3. What does the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 tell a sociologist? That the informal arrangement by which the joint household automatically maintained its elderly has failed sufficiently often to require a legal substitute. In a functioning joint family a parent's right to claim maintenance from a child would have no occasion to be exercised. The statute is therefore a measurement of institutional change, and an instance of the general pattern that law appears at the point where an informal arrangement withdraws.

4. Answer the claim that the modern family is disorganised. Change is not disorganisation: an institution altering its form in response to altered economic and residential conditions is adapting, and the joint family was itself an adaptation to an agrarian economy that has gone. The comparison is also with an idealised past that omits the subordination of women and the litigation over partition. And some apparent deterioration is increased visibility: violence within the family is not new, but its appearance in official statistics is, and rising recorded figures may reflect rising reporting rather than rising incidence.

5. What is meant by residentially nuclear and functionally joint? A family whose members live in separate households, often in different cities, but which continues to operate as a single unit for the purposes that matter: property is held or managed together, major decisions are taken collectively, money is pooled in a crisis, and care of the elderly and of children is shared. The description fits a great deal of contemporary urban Indian experience that the simple nuclear and joint dichotomy misses.