Page 113 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Social Structure and Social Change

Notes denying sweets and toys, and putting alone in the room. Ross (1961: 122) found that the modes of
punishment used by parents to control their children are spanking, scolding, and reasoning.
Besides this general change in the relations between parents and children, we find more marked
change today in the mother-daughter relations particularly. This is probably because daughter is no
longer married at a very young age and she lives for quite a long period with her mother.
In spite of all these changes in the relations between parents and children, we find that the child is
still so conditioned as to not to think in terms of the first person singular: his own rights, his own
pleasures, his own status and his own privacy etc., but to think in terms of family. Even now, he
regards the parents and other family members around him as more or less permanent and rarely
thinks of cutting himself adrift from those who have brought him into this world and have been dear
and close to him. Youngsters today follow the old pattern of respecting the elders. Their attitude is
motivated by respect than by fear. There is cordiality between the two generations. The former
authoritarian attitude of the elders is more or less absent in the contemporary family. Referring to
this, Kapadia (1959: 292) writes that a considerable proportion of the younger generation does not
feel great restraint or awe with parents or guardians. The elders also do not now attempt so firmly as
in the past to impose the traditional ways on their children. Thus, the young people today do not like
the imposition of views of elders on them. They want that they should be consulted and their opinions
should be given adequate weight. Aileen Ross (1959) also feels that after the marriage, the new
generation today no longer accepted the older authority as fully as in the past.
But whatever change has taken place in the relations between parents and children, it has some
sociological implications. One, the process of socialization of children has been affected. Two,
competence and ability of individual now determines individual’s career more than the family interest.
Three, because of the freedom enjoyed, children today get more incentive for work and opportunity
for achieving their aspirations.
Relations between Husband and Wife

The relationship between husband and wife in early family was institutionally weak. Wife was
considered to be an outsider, intimate affection with whom might threaten the family. With time,
proper indoctrination by mother-in-law and the birth of sons, however, wife came to have an interest
in the family that nearly equalled that of her husband. And, in spite of the fact that the marriage had
been arranged by the parents, real affection between husband and wife often developed. By the time
the wife became a mother-in-law, the marriage was likely to be second in strength only to the father-
son relationship.
Today, the relations between husband and wife have definitely undergone some change. Our
hypothesis regarding the relations between husband and wife in the contemporary Indian family is
characterized by: (i) little diminution in the husband’s power role through sharing with and not
completely transferring to his wife; (ii) some degree of sharing of the expressive role by husband and
wife; (iii) little loss on the part of husband of the instrumental role resulting from sharing with his
wife and not abandonment to his wife; (iv) some degree of companionship in urban educated family
but its complete absence in rural family.
We will discuss our hypothesis by analyzing the relations between husband and wife in terms of:
(a) power-allocation in decision-making, (b) closeness, and (c) emancipation.
Power Allocation

No change in the Indian family is mentioned more often than the shift from one-sided male authority
to the sharing of power by husband and wife. This change is significant because it has affected their
roles in marriage and also has its repercussions on other aspects of their relationships.
Husband by convention is the arbitrary decision-maker and director of family policy in our families.
The superordinate status of the husband is reflected in any wife’s answers to three questions:
(i) which of you is more dominant person; (ii) who is more important person in the family; and

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