Page 103 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Social Structure and Social Change

Notes (2) It has familistic organization: This refers to the subordination of individual’s interests to the
interests of the family as a whole, which means that the goals of the family must be the goals of
the individual members. If a child wants to continue his higher education after graduation but
is asked to sit on the family shop for looking after the family business, he has to subordinate his
interest to the family’s interest.
(3) Status of members is determined by their age and relationship: The status of a man is higher
than his wife; in two generations, the status of a person in the higher generation is higher than
the status of a person in the lower generation; in the same generation, the status of a person of
higher age is higher than the status of a person of lower age; and the status of a woman is
determined by the status of her husband in the family.
(4) The filial and fraternal relationship gets preference over conjugal relationship: In other words,
husband-wife relationship is subordinated to father-son or brother-brother relationship.
(5) The family functions on the ideal of joint responsibility: If a father takes loan to marry his
daughter, it is also the responsibility of his sons to repay the loan.
(6) All members get equal attention: If a son of one brother earning more than Rs. 4,000 a month
is admitted in an expensive convent school, a son of another brother earning hardly Rs. 1,500 a
month will also have the same facility to get education in such a costly school. This is based on
the idea of pooling of income for running the household.
(7) The authority in the family (between men and women, men and men, and women and women)
is determined on the principle of seniority: Though the eldest male (or female) may delegate
the authority to someone else but even this delegation is based on the principle of seniority,
which limits the scope for the development of individualism.
4.4 Changing Family Pattern

Let us now examine how is traditional (joint) family changing in our society. Is it disintegrating?
Nature of Change

My contention is that ‘jointness’ of family (that is, co-resident and commensed kin group) is not
disappearing and that stage can never be envisaged in India when the joint family will be lost in the
mental horizon of people; only the ‘cutting off point of ‘jointness’ is changing. Instead of large joint
families, we will have only locally functioning effective small joint families of two generations or so.
At the same time, even the majority of those nuclear families in which a man, his wife and unmarried
children live separately, will continue to be ‘joint’ with their primary kin like father or brother in
terms of ‘functioning’.
Empirical Studies on Change

What do various empirical studies point out in this connection? The broad conclusion is that the old-
style family in the sense of numerous families living together is much rarer now than is commonly
supposed. The Census Commissioner of 1951 observed that a large proportion of small households
(33% in villages and 38% in towns) is a prima facie indication that families do not continue to be ‘joint’
according to the traditional custom of the country and the habit of breaking away from the joint
family and setting up separate households in quite strong. Several sociological studies made in different
parts of the country between 1950s and 1980s also indicated that the old-style joint family is rare and
the nature of jointness is changing from that of ‘residence’ to one of ‘fulfilling obligations’. We will
attempt to analyze these changes in Indian family in two areas, namely, change in structure, and
change in interpersonal relations.
Change in Structure

Of the studies conducted by a few scholars for analyzing the changing structure of family in India,
we will discuss here only the outstanding surveys of scholars like I.P. Desai, K.M. Kapadia, Aileen
Ross, M.S. Gore, A.M. Shah and Sachchidananda.

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