Page 117 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Social Structure and Social Change

Notes 4.5 Decline of Joint Family: Causes and Consequences

What are the factors responsible for the disruption of traditional (joint) family system? No one set of
influences brought about changes in family. Nor is it possible to assign priority to any of them. It was
a combination of industrialization with its application of universalistic criteria to an ever-widening
sphere, ideals of individualism, equality and freedom, and the possibility of an alternative way of life
which produced the ‘transitional’ family. Milton Singer (1968: 434) regards four factors responsible
for change in family: residential mobility, occupational mobility, scientific and technical education,
and monetization. This author has also identified five factors which have affected the family most.
These are: education, urbanization, industrialization, change in the institution of marriage, specially
in the age of marriage, and the legislative measures.
Education

Education has affected family in more than one way. It has not only brought change in the attitudes,
beliefs, values and ideologies of the people but has also created and aroused the individualistic feelings.
In India, education is spreading not only among the males but among the females too. While the male
literacy rate increased from 9.8 in 1901 to 15.6 in 1931, 34.4 in 1961, 46.9 in 1981, and 55.07 in 1991,
among the females it increased from 0.6 in 1901 to 2.9 in 1931, 13.0 in 1961, 24.8 in 1981, and 30.09 in
1991. The number of recognized educational institutions increased from 2.31 lakh in 1951 (2.09 lakh
primary, 13,600 middle, and 8,300 secondary and higher secondary) to 7.55 lakh in 1985 (5.28 lakh
primary, 1.34 lakh middle and 93,000 secondary and higher secondary), and the enrolment in the
educational institutions in the same period increased from 24 million to 132 million. This increasing
education not only brings changes in the philosophy of life of men and women but also provides new
avenues of employment to the latter. After becoming economically independent, women demand
more voice in family affairs and also refuse to accept anybody’s dominance over them. This shows
how education brings changes in relations in the family, ultimately leading to the structural changes
too.
I.P. Desai, and Aileen Ross have also referred to the reciprocal influence of educational system and
family system on each other. The former has referred to the working of education against the joint
family in two ways: one, by emphasizing individualism, it puts before the people the concept of the
type of the family which is contrary to the prevailing concept of joint family, and two, it prepares the
people for occupations which cannot be found in their native places, as a result of which they separate
from the ancestral family and live in areas which provide them the occupations suited to their
educational equipment. In course of time, these people lose contact with the parental family and
imbibe new ways of living and thinking which are inimical to the joint family sentiment and conducive
to the nuclear family.
But in his own study of 423 families in Mahuva, surprisingly Desai found that with the increase in
the educational level, jointness increased and nuclearity decreased. Observing the relationship between
the level of education and the degree of jointness, he found that jointness is more conducive to
education, and thus by encouraging education may lead to its own dissolution. Desai’s opinion is
that only a few people subscribe to papers or purchase books, and the views and the beliefs of the
people are not directly affected by the general reading of the newspapers, periodicals or English
books in particular or by the western educational system in general. Whatever effect education might
have on the people can be through the influence of what we might call the new elite and the home
and the school environment. Thus, it is not the amount of education of the head of family or the
whole household that may be the proper indication of the effect of the new or different views and
beliefs as the position of persons with new ideas and patterns of communication in a place.
We, however, do not find any logic in Desai’s argument. It is true that the type of the contacts of an
individual outside the family does affect his attitudes and beliefs but the educational level of his own
and his family members also is an important factor that changes his beliefs and ideologies. It, therefore,
cannot be maintained, as Desai does, that the amount of education of family members is not a very
significant factor in the change in the structure and the organization of the family.

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