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The following points highlight the three main types of families. The types are: 1. The Agrarian Family 2. Modern Family 3. Traditional Indian Family.
Type # 1. The Agrarian Family:
A major theme in sociological studies of the family is the relationship between the structure of the family and the process of industrialisation. Under the impact of industrialisation, the family has undergone tremendous changes in the Western societies. Similar changes have just started appearing on the Indian scene as a consequence of rapid industrial growth and spread of technology.
These changes may be understood better with reference to the features of the traditional agrarian family. As a starting point, we may examine the family in pre-industrial societies in order to establish a standard for comparison.
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An agrarian family is, for obvious reasons, closely associated with landed property, a permanent homestead, livestock, poultry and, sometimes handicrafts. Such a family generally exhibits the following characteristics. To begin with, family life is built around economic activities and functions related to housekeeping.
All elders, including women, are engaged either in agricultural production or in handicrafts, such as weaving, sewing, making of furniture, making or repairing the dwelling shed, etc. In such a family, the men usually work outside the home, while the women are expected to look after the home. Her role may be described as that of the manager of the household.
Secondly, the importance of wife in the economic life of the family determines the criteria of choosing one’s mate. Thus, a man considers the work habits and skills of the prospective mate while contracting a marriage. A woman, on the other hand, looks for a good ‘provider’. In either case, affection or love has a subordinate role in the choice of a mate. Thirdly, an agrarian family is generally large-sized.
Farming is, by nature, labour-intensive. A large labour force is needed for efficient management of a farm. A large number of children is the most natural way to achieve this result, for every new born child is an addition to the labour force of the family.
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Fourthly, this very factor also explains the popularity of joint or extended families in agrarian societies. The labour force of the family “may also be augmented by keeping the married sons at home and binging in daughters-in-law.”
The family may, thus, expand vertically, as in the case of a family in which three or four generations live under the same roof—grand-parents, parents, children, grand-children, etc. Sometimes the family may expand laterally, as in China, where relatives are invited to stay with the family.
Fifthly, since an agrarian family is “attached to so stable a property as land”, the reputation of the family largely determines the status of an individual. A person, whatever might be his individual worth, may enjoy a superior status in the community by virtue of the reputation of the family to which he belongs.
Similarly, a person may suffer in prestige for no fault of his own but for some bad reputation of the family. There is, thus, a complete subordination of the individual to the family.
As Ogburn and Nimkoff say :
“The status of the family may become so important that it overshadows the individual who tends to be identified as one family’s son or daughter, not as a personality in his or her own right”.
Finally, an agrarian family may be called a miniature community which is the centre of various kinds of activities: educational, religious, protective and even recreational. Since the members of an agrarian family do not stay away from their homes for a long period, a child grows up under their direct influence.
They help him discover what is good or bad, just or unjust, moral or immoral; they help him imbide family tradition, as also the tradition of the larger community.
Since mobility is very restricted in an agrarian community, the social control is pretty rigorous with the result that deviations from social norms are few and far between. An agrarian family performs different kinds of protective functions, such as the care of the sick, the aged and the unemployed. Recreation facilities are also generally confined to the family circle in an agrarian community.
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This may be explained by the fact than an agrarian family is large-sized and that the members spend their leisure-hours together. Another important factor is, of course, the absence of cheap, commercial entertainment in rural areas. It is interesting to note that even when there is some community ceremony – say, community worship – the participation in the function is on a family basis, rather than on an individual basis.
Type # 2. Modern Family:
To begin with, the nuclear family has largely replaced the consanguineous family, particularly in Western societies. Such changes are also increasingly taking place in urban, areas in India. The decline of the economic significance of the family as a producing unit’ has impaired the old-time unity of the family group.
When a man gets a job in a factory and earns his pay independently of the efforts of his parents and brothers, he is not so prone to turn over his earnings to the common family fund, as was the case when he and his brothers worked on the soil together.
Secondly, we have to take note of change in husband-wife relationship. This economic independence of a woman has affected her whole attitude towards marriage. She does not have to look so much for a “provider”. Her choice of mate is generally determined by considerations of love, affection and similarity of interest or temperament.
Since the modern family is no longer a producing unit, a man also usually chooses his bride on similar considerations and not on the basis of her skill or capacity for work. Moreover, economic independence of both men and women has freed them from “parental control and other forms of social pressure concerning whom and when they shall marry”.
Husband-wife relationship in modern family may be looked at from a different angle. The agrarian family being an economic organisation, there was the need for some sort of leadership. Generally, the men-folk used to fill this role.
But in a modern urban family, the necessity for leadership and control is not so great. Hence both husband and wife confront each other on terms of equality. They discuss the problems of the family together and arrive at decisions which meet with the approval of both.
We may consider, thirdly, the comparative instability of modern family. The possibilities of conflict between a husband and his wife are, therefore, greater in modern urban families than those in agrarian families of old in which roles of husbands and wives were clearly determined.
These role conflicts are further reinforced by various other factors, such as disappearance or decline of the economic and protective functions of the family. The increased rates of divorce among urban families, not only in the West but also in India, indicate the strains and stresses to which these families are subjected.
Fourthly, modern families tend to be smaller in size than agrarian families. Two reasons are primarily responsible for this trend.
On the one hand, with the transference of production from the family, the raison d’etre for a large-sized family, which supplied additional labour force for the farm, disappeared. The advances in the techniques of birth control, on the other hand, made it possible for deliberate planning of parenthood.
Functions of Modern Family:
The modern family has parted with many of the traditional functions of the agrarian family. We have already seen that production functions have been transferred from the family to economic organisations away from home. Education has similarly been moved outside the home.
The schools provide various kinds of education which no family in the past could ever provide for children. With the increased use of nursery schools and kindergartens much of the early training of the child has been taken over by the specialists.
Moreover, small houses in cities with little or no playground have also tended to put the children on the streets or on public parks or playgrounds during their leisure time, thereby further removing them from the influence of their parents, brothers or sisters.
The fact that the father, and in some the influence of their parents brothers or sisters. The fact that the father, and in some cases also the mother, work outside the home has necessarily limited their contributions to the education of their children.
The protective functions of the family such as the care of the sick, the aged and the unemployed have been taken over either by the hospitals, nursing homes and clinics or by the state which provides for social security for its citizens in the form of old age pensions, unemployment relief, etc.
Recreational facilities are now largely sought outside the family circle. The smallness of the living quarters, the smaller number of the members of the family, the difficulty of getting them together, lack of recreational facilities at home, the development of relatively cheap commercial entertainment in the form of theatres, movies, etc., comparative ease of modern transportation—all these make the members of the family seek recreational opportunities outside the home circle.
Moreover, the organisation of these outside entertainments on age lines hinders the participation in these programmes of the family as a unit.
Having been thus stripped of most of its traditional functions, the modern family performs mainly the following three functions which Maclver and Page characterize as essential functions of the family:
(i) The procreation and rearing of children. Even here some of the responsibilities of the family have been taken over by outside agencies, such as maternity homes, antenatal clinics, etc.
(ii) Providing a stable basis for satisfaction of the sex needs of the partners. The institution of marriage provides the partners with an opportunity not merely to seek release for their physical appetite but also to deepen their mutual love and elevate it to a level higher than the physical,
(iii) Providing a home for its members who share, not simply a house, but, in addition, intimacy, affection, and a warm relationship which no other association can provide.
Type # 3. Traditional Indian Family:
The traditional pattern of the family in India is that of the joint family. Just how great an antiquity may be ascribed to the joint family system in India is not known. In Vedic times, sons did not acquire co-ownership in family property at birth.
The Vedas, however, spoke of several families of the same stock residing together in the same house. By the time of Chandragupta, about 300 B.C., some form of the joint family was common.
When the codes of Manu were being written about two or three centuries later, the joint family became quite common. The legal framework of the joint family was crystallized about the 11th century A.D. in the Mitakshara, a commentary on earlier sacred writings.
We presume that the author of the Mitakshara only formulated practices that must then have been long and well established, having been in operation for centuries. Since then, for some nine centuries the rights and duties of family members towards each other, the general structure of the Hindu family, etc. have followed without great deviation the prescriptions of the Mitakshara.
The traditional Indian joint family consists of a number of married couples and their children who live together in the same household. All the men are related by blood—as a man and his sons and his grandsons, or a set of brothers and their sons and grandsons; the women of the household as their wives, unmarried daughters and perhaps the widow of a deceased kinsman.
After marriage, a girl leaves her ancestral family and becomes a part of the joint family of her husband. Even now in rural areas there are households in which three or four generations are to be found living under one roof, and the number of members of the family group may approach one hundred. The characteristics of such a family are the same as are found in all agrarian families.
There is, in the first place, a common kitchen in which food is prepared for the whole household. Secondly, all property is held in common. There is a common purse into which all the members of the family contribute their gains and earnings and from which the expenses of all the members, earners and non-earners alike, are paid.
The eldest male member of the household generally handles this common family fund. Thirdly, the joint family is not only a single consumer unit, but typically a single producer unit as well.
Among the agricultural population, all the members of the family cultivate the family fields and work the harvest together. Among the artisan castes too, it is the family that is the producing unit, since the members of the family co-operate in the output of handicraft goods. Fourthly, like agrarian families in other parts of the world, Indian joint family also performs educational and protective functions.
Fifthly, the traditional Indian family is, barring a few exceptions, patrilineal and patrilocal in form. Sixthly, the family group is bound together by sraddha, which is a rite of commemorating the ancestors at which balls of rice called pinda are offered to the dead.
It is believed that three generations of the dead are beneficiaries of the benefits of the ceremony. Sons, grandsons and great grandsons of the deceased join together in sraddha. “Thus the dead and the living are linked together by this rite, which, like the ancestor worship of the Chinese, was a most potent force in consolidating the family”. The family group is defined by sraddha.
Those who are entitled to participate in the ceremony are called sapinda members of the family group. Finally, the traditional Hindu marriage practice exhibits elements of both endogamy and exogamy. Both the partners must belong to the same caste. The caste of the prospective mate is, therefore, to be considered first.
The second thing to be considered is the gotra of the prospective mate. Gotra may be defined as “a patrilineal clan which reckons descent from some common and usually mythical ancestor”.
Basham explains the origin of gotra thus:
“The original meaning of gotra is a ‘cowshed’, or ‘a herd of cows’; in the Atharva Veda, the word first appears with the meaning of ‘clan’, which it has retained with a special connotation. Some ancient Indo-European peoples, such as the Romans, had exogamous clans, as well as generally endogamous tribes. It may well be that the gotra-system is a survival of Indo-European origin which had developed specially Indian features”.
The marriage partner must not come from a family having the same gotra. Here is the element of exogamy exhibited by Hindu marriage practice. There is another element of exogamy.
Among many of the upper castes of Northern India, marriage is prohibited among partners who are connected with one another within certain degrees of relationship, called sapinda. It means that a man’s wife may not be a sixth cousin as reckoned Arough the male line or a fourth cousin as reckoned through the female line.
Another interesting feature is that before marriage is settled, the horoscopes of both the bride and the groom are compared. If the astrologers agree that the comparison is favourable, only then the wedding can take place. If hot, the negotiations are cancelled.
Another unique feature of traditional Indian family is that divorce is not sanctioned by the sacred writings. Marriage is for eternity, irrespective of whether the marriage proves happy or unhappy, fecund or barren. This has, of course, been superseded by Hindu Marriage Act which permits divorce.
We have seen that the traditional Indian joint family is based on the relations among adults rather than on the conjugal bonds between spouses. The chances of break-up of such a family into nuclear households because of intense conjugal bond are lessened by a few other arrangements. One is the system of arranged marriages in which the guardians on both sides play important roles.
Segregation of the sexes for most part of the day after marriage further lowers the possibility. There are certain norms which still further lessen the chances of break-up of joint family into nuclear households. Husband and wife are not expected to show much affection toward each other in the presence of others.
A father is not expected to express tenderness and affection towards his children and the care of them to the exclusion of all other children in the family. These and many other rules “block the normal tendency of the nuclear family to break away and to form a separate household”.
There are, however strong pressures in the opposite direction also. Wives come from outside and they cannot be expected to share the weakness of their husbands toward other members of the joint household. If the husband earns more than his other brothers and nephews, his contribution towards the common pool of the family would naturally be high. This may be resented by his wife.
Such tensions and simmering discontent would grow when there are lazy members whose families have to be fed, protected and taken care of by more diligent members of the family. In an agrarian society, such problems did not exist because the expenses of the joint household were met out of income drawn from common ancestral property.
In an industrialised society, all the brothers, for instance, may not be at the same level in terms of income. Such disparities in income have the potential of breaking up the joint family household into a number of nuclear households.
We have briefly indicated the nature of centripetal and centrifugal forces which operate in respect of joint family households. It is difficult to make a generalized statement this way or that for a vast country like India. The picture that comes out from a survey of a particular region may not agree with the picture which emerges from another survey in another region.
Contradictory statements about the state of joint family households in India are, therefore, made by sociologists.
Goode, for instance, observes:
” … it is not surprising, then, that surveys over the past decade show that a majority of Indian families live in nuclear households…”
William Kapp, on the other hand, makes an exactly opposite observation:
“It is often believed that the number of joint families in relation to nuclear families is declining especially under the impact of urbanisation. However, such limited data as are available on this subject seem to refute this belief. Thus, it has been found that the joint family structure is not disintegrating and that there are almost as many joint families in urban areas as in rural areas”.
The fact is, however, undeniable that the centrifugal forces are more powerful and are increasingly being strengthened by urbanisation, industrialisation and many other modernizing influences. During the transitional period, Indian family system is exhibiting diverse forms and features and will defy all attempts at neat categorization.
One such form which stands out very prominently in so far as rural families are concerned is the stem family pattern in which the main trunk of the family is located in its own ancestral house while most of the members, particularly those belonging to comparatively younger age- group, live most of the time in urban centres and work there.
It is, however, interesting to ‘note that the bonds of the joint family are rarely severed completely. The members of the joint family who work and live in cities generally remit something to their village homes towards the expenses of the joint family because some members, usually the elderly ones and women, remain in the ancestral village and maintain the old family patterns.
Those who stay in urban centres sometimes have a feeling that their real home is not in urban centres or towns but in their joint household of the village. They generally visit their village homes in connection with some religious festivals and social functions. The most important such occasion is, of course, a wedding which is usually a common family enterprise.
The members of the family who may have stayed away from ancestral village home for a long period come back to participate in the preparation and celebration of the wedding ceremony. Such deep attachment to the ancestral village household explains the migratory character of Indian labour.