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Unit 4: Family

significance and each member has to make his own choice. The authority of the family over its Notes
members is minimum. Zimmerman’s contention is that American family has changed from trustee
to atomistic type. Is Indian family following the same pattern as claimed by Burgess and Zimmerman?
4.3.1 Traditional (Joint) Family in India

The concept of ‘jointness’ in the term ‘joint family’ has varied with different scholars. When some
scholars (like Iravati Karve) regard ‘co-residentiality’ as important in jointness, others (B.S. Cohn,
S.C. Dube, Harold Gould, Pauline Kolenda, and Ramkrishna Mukherjee) regard co-residentiality
and commensality as essential ingredients of jointness; yet others (F.G., Bailey, T.N. Madan) give
importance to joint ownership of property or co-parcenary, irrespective of type of residence and
commensality; and a few (like LP. Desai) give importance to fulfilment of obligations towards kin,
even if residence is separate and there is no common ownership of property. ‘Fulfilment of
obligations’ refers to identifying oneself as member of a particular family, rendering financial and
other kinds of help, and following joint family norms.
According to Iravati Karve (1953: 21), the ancient family in India (in the Vedic and Epic periods)
was joint in terms of residence, property and functions. She terms this family as traditional family or
joint family. Kapadia (1966: 220), however, maintains that our early family was not joint or patriarchal
alone. Side by side with the patriarchal families, we had individual families too.
But in spite of this trend towards individualism, the family was maintained as joint and agnatic.
Karve has given five characteristics of traditional (joint) family: common residence, common kitchen,
common property, common family worship, and some kinship relationship. Thus, her criteria of
jointness are: size, residence, property, and income. On this basis, she defines joint family (1953: 10)
as “a group of people who generally live under one roof, who eat food cooked at one hearth, who
hold property in common, who participate in common family worship, and who are related to each
other as some particular type of kindred”.
Thus, a man with his wife, two sons, two daughters, two grandsons and two grand-daughters shall
have to divide his property in five shares to be equally distributed amongst his wife and four
children. The grandchildren will share their parent’s property. The heirs in the branch of each pre-
deceased son or daughter shall take between them one share.
Desai (1956: 148), however, feels that we cannot place undue emphasis on co-residence and a common
kitchen as dimensions of jointness, because doing so would be failing to recognize the joint family
as a set of social relationships and a functioning unit. According to him, it is the relationship between
the members of a household among themselves and with those of another household that determines
the type of the family of that household. What distinguishes nuclear family from joint family is the
difference in the role relations and the normative pattern of behaviour among different relatives.
He thinks that when two families having kinship relationship are living separately but function
under one authority, it will be a joint family. He calls it functional joint family. In residential joint
family, he says that unless we have three or more generations living together, it will not be a
traditional type of joint family. According to him, two-generation families will constitute marginal
joint family. He, thus, takes three criteria for explaining joint family: generation depth, rights and
obligations, and property.

The word ‘common’ or ‘joint property’ here, according to the Hindu Succession Act, 1956,
means that all the living male and female members upto three generations have a share in
the paternal property and without the co-parcener’s consent, the property cannot be sold
or disposed off.

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