Page 114 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Unit 4: Family

(iii) who makes decisions in matters of mutual concern? Almost all wives are bound to credit their Notes
husbands with superiority in this area. But when it comes to (i) who budgets the family expenditure,
and (ii) who disciplines the children or who advises them, a good number might credit themselves as
equals (if not superior) in these aspects of the power role. The instrumental role of husband is based
upon the expectations that he will be primarily responsible for the support of the family. Indicative of
husband’s instrumental role are: taking primary responsibility for the education of children, helping
children with the home-work, competence in social choice, and being more aggressive than his wife.
On the other hand, wife’s expressive role lies in her mediation of conflict within family. For measuring
the precise balance of power between husband and wife and for assessing their influence in all the
family decisions, we can take some selected areas of decisions and find out who takes the final decision.
Some of these areas could be: (i) whether or not husband should send money to parents and how
much; (ii) whether or not wife should go to work or quit work; and (iii) whether or not to buy a
scooter or an insurance policy, and so on. The possible answers to these questions could be: (a)
husband always; (b) husband more than wife; (c) husband and wife exactly the same; (d) wife more
than the husband; and (e) wife always. It is to be assumed in advance that contemporary husbands
and wives, particularly in residentially nuclear families and in small joint families, would often talk
things over in the process of arriving at a decision. Even a patriarchal husband may consult his wife
as one source of opinion and one factor to be taken into consideration while he makes up his mind.
The crucial question is not who takes part in the discussion but who makes the ‘final’ decision. By
totaling as to in how many areas who takes the final decision, we can find out whether the family is
husband-dominant (husband taking final decision) or wife-dominant (wife taking final decision) or
equalitarian family (both taking decisions together). The equalitarian family may again be of two
sub-types: (a) syncratic family, where husband and wife make most of their decisions jointly; and (b)
autonomic family, where they assign equal number of separate decisions to both partners.
Under former historical circumstances, husband’s economic and social roles almost automatically
gave him pre-eminence. Under modern conditions, the roles of men and women, particularly in
urban areas, have changed so much that husbands and wives are potential equals. It is no longer
possible to assume that just because a man is a man, he is the boss. Today, the source of power has
partly shifted from ‘culture’ to what is called ‘resource’ by Robert O’ Blood (1968: 54-62). ‘Resource’
is defined as “anything that one partner may make available to the other helping the latter satisfy
his/her needs or attain his/her goals.” On this basis, the balance of power will be on the side of that
partner who contributes greater resources to the marriage. This process of weighing the balance is
not a conscious process, but it is an automatic re-adjustment which occurs as the contributing partner
discovers that he has a lot to offer to the marriage, while the receiving partner feels indebted for what
has already been given and for being dependent upon what he hopes to receive in future. The partner
who has no ‘resources’ has, thus, less influence.
Emphasizing on ‘resources’ factor here in power allocation does not mean that ‘culture’, or what Max
Weber has called ‘traditional authority’, has lost its importance. In fact, though both factors are important
today but between the two, the latter is more significant in our society than the former. Using these two
factors in the analysis of husband-wife relations, it may be maintained that though our family continues
to be husband-dominant family, yet there is some change in the relations between husband and wife
which is evident from the fact that husband today gives greater weight to his wife’s opinion in almost
all important issues before taking final decisions. The change in the balance of power between husband
and wife is partly due to democratic change in our ideas about how men and women ought to treat
each other and partly due to the fact that comparative ‘resources’ of Indian women have changed, that
is, changed from ideological source of power to the pragmatic one. That average Indian family is husband-
dominant and yet indicative of change in husband-wife relationships would be evident from wife’s
answers to the question: “When you and your husband differ about something, do you usually give in
and do it your husband’s way or does he usually come around to your point of view?” It should,
however, be remembered that change in relations between husband and wife is found less among the
rural families, immigrant families, uneducated couples, and in joint families in comparison to families
engaged in non-traditional occupation or in nuclear and educated families.

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