Points: 1. Family – basic unit of human society, now faces eroding forces.
2. Disintegration of joint family and growth of nuclear family – causes.
3. Impact of technological and economic changes on family system.
4. Change in people’s attitude to family life – Growth of individualism & erosion of authority
5. Bright and dark sides to family
The family has for time immemorial been considered the basis of society. The idea of this institution weakening or disintegrating is so disturbing that the United Nations declared 1994 the International Year of the Family. To many of us family is the ideal unit of the human community. And yet, there are several forces eating away at its roots today.
Those who have experienced it look back nostalgically at the joint family. Not just parents, but grandparents, aunts, uncles and all the other members shared your happiness and grief and helped you grow up. The problem of looking after children hardly arose.
However, with the rise of an industrialised society and the mobility (both physical and economic) associated with it, the joint family necessarily shrank in size. Contributing to the disintegration of those large family units were other factors too: inequality of incomes of its members and increasing number of women going out to jobs and the slow but steady breakdown of the hierarchical notions of society.
In recent years, the family has shrunk to what is known as “nuclear family.” But that is not all: we now have single-parent families as well. Emigration and relocation have assumed quite a dominant part in Indian homes, causing a disruption of family life.
Technological and economic changes have been rapid in the recent past. They have had an inevitable impact on social attitudes and values. On one level certain cherished valued have been lost, leading to confusion in the social setting. On another level, the pace of economic “progress”, and the modernity that comes with it have not been accompanied by a matching change in customs and attitudes. This is a paradoxical situation and it has led to disintegration of the family as a unit and disruption in family ties.
With increased earning power and a consumer culture, both parents and children have altered their responses to family life. The nature of parenting and the role of the spouses are no longer clear to one and all. Urban India clearly exhibits the changed and changing situation of eroding family bonds. With so many youngsters going abroad for studies and jobs, old parents are left to fend for themselves. These elderly people are faced with an emotional loss and fear of a future in which they may need, and not get, physical help.
Economic independence has brought in its wake individualism. Women have learnt to assert themselves within the family and participate in the same professional sphere as men. At the same tune, the general social attitude to working women and their role at home has been much slower to change. All this leads to conflict and confusion and loosens family bonds.
Authority is no longer unquestioningly accepted by children. Often having an awareness much wider and deeper than their parents (due to information boom), the children of today no longer stand in awe of parents or any elderly person for that matter. Unfortunately, in the explosion of information, human values are given a backseat. The moral values that a grandmother inculcates in a youngster while telling a story have been lost.
The erosion of authority has naturally taken away the conflict-solving power that families once had. Relations today are increasingly based on mercenary terms. As a consequence, warmth and obligations get eroded. Many a “joint” family is maintained today so that a convenient grandfather or grandmother can become a much needed baby-sitter. But if such grandparents are not available, working parents are in many instances alienated from their children. Often not knowing what goes on in their children’s lives, these parents substitute money and material comforts for moral guidance and affection in their interaction with their children. The result is disastrous. Everyone drifts apart till finally family ties crumble.
The family has been almost universally considered the ideal and perfect liming arrangement for human beings – “a heaven in a heartless world”. But as a famous writer has pointed out in one of her articles, there have always been two sides – the bright and the dark – to the family. On one side the family is expected to nurture warm, loving feelings, untouched by greed, selfishness, or hunger for power. It is generally only within a family that individuals are loved for themselves, be they old and infirm or eccentric.
And yet, what about the violence that actually takes place within several families – wife (and sometimes husband) battering, child abuse and even murder, not by strangers but by trusted relatives, the bruising of one another’s feelings, the petty rivalries and jealousies?
The family at its best teaches us generosity and love, fine human feelings; at its worst it is also the system in which we learn hate and rage and are made to feel guilty for so many things.
The family, as an institution may have to change in keeping with the winds of change and breadth of knowledge that the world of today is experiencing. If a nation goes wrong these days, outside forces think little of interfering in its affairs, ignoring protests of sovereignty. Similarly, many families need outside interference in the form of counselling and policing.
To an extent, in small village communities this was not only possible but a matter of routine. Atrocities were not then dismissed as private family affairs. If the love and generosity bred in a healthy family can be seen as ideals for individuals to develop, universally, the reverse also holds true; the concepts of human rights, equality, children’s rights, the balanced mix of discipline and freedom which are increasingly becoming part of the private world of the family. Authority must give way to understanding, dialogue must replace commands and moral teachings must be lived, not just preached. Only then will the family get a fresh lease of life in the changed circumstances and be the basis of a good society. *ZZZ*