Page 119 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Social Structure and Social Change

Notes making, unlike the rural families, in the urban families parents rather than the eldest males take
decisions about their children. Similarly, urban people who favour the idea of brothers living together
after the death of parents are fewer than the rural people with the same attitude.
I.P. Desai (1964), however, did not share this belief that urbanization as such leads to the break up of
the joint family system. In his analysis of the effect of urbanization on jointness, he observed significant
relationship between the duration of the stay of the family in the urban area and traditional jointness.
His presumption was that longer the duration of the stay of family in an urban area, lower will be the
degree of jointness. However, he found that the jointness tends more among the ‘very old’ (living in
the town for fifty years or more) and ‘old’ families (living in the town for twenty-five to fifty years)
than in the ‘new’ ones (living since twenty-five years or less).
Louis Wirth (1938) also believed that city is not conducive to the traditional type of family life.
According to him, the family as a unit of social life is emancipated from the larger kinship group
characteristic of the village, and the individual members pursue their own diverging interests in
their vocational, educational, religious, recreational, and political life.
Our view is that the role of urbanization in changing the family system has been very significant. The
urban living weakens joint family pattern and strengthens nuclear families. Cities provide increasing
opportunities for new occupations and higher education. Those who deviate from the traditional
family occupation and take to new professions show a greater shift in their attitudes than those who
follow traditional occupations. Similarly, educated persons in urban areas are less in favour of, if not
less conforming to, joint family norms. It may, however, be maintained that the change in attitude
has direct relationship with length of stay in the city. Cities provide opportunities to females also for
gainful employment and when woman starts earning, she seeks freedom in many spheres. She tries
to break away more and more from her husband’s family of orientation. Urban residence thus seems
to introduce a certain measure of variation in family pattern in our society.
Industrialization

Industrialization got under way in India in the last quarter of the nineteenth and first half of the
twentieth century. Cities grew around the new industries. Before the industrialization, we had (i)
agrarian non-monetized economy, (ii) a level of technology where the domestic unit was also the
unit of economic exchange, (iii) a non-differentiation of occupations between father and son and
between brothers and brothers, and (iv) a value system where authority of the elders and the sanctity
of tradition were both supported as against the criterion of ‘rationality’. But the industrialization has
brought the economic and the socio-cultural changes in our society ingeneral and family in particular.
In the economic field, it has resulted in the specialization in work, occupational mobility, monetization
of the economy, and a breakdown of the link between the kinship and the occupational structures; in
the social field, it has resulted in the migration of people from rural to urban areas, spread of education,
and a strong centralized political structure; in the cultural field, it has brought secularization of beliefs.
There have been three important effects of industrialization on family organization: First, the family
which was a principal unit of production has been transformed into a consumption unit. Instead of
all family members working together in an integrated economic enterprise, a few male members go
out of the home to earn the family’s living. This has affected not only the traditional structure of the
joint family but also the relations among the members. Second, factory employment has freed young
adults from direct dependence upon their families. As their wages have made them financially
independent, the authority of the head of the household has weakened further. In the city, in many
cases, along with men their wives also have started working and earning. This has affected intra-
family relations to some extent. Finally, children have ceased to be economic assets and have become
liabilities. Although in a few cases, the use and abuse of child labour has also increased, law does not
permit children to work. At the same time, educational requirements have increased, lengthening
dependence upon parental support. Accommodation in the cities is expensive and child care is
demanding. Thus, work and home have become separated due to industrialization.
Some sociologists have, however, recently challenged the theory of emergence of nuclear families
due to industrialization. This challenge is based on the results of empirical studies and the

114 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY