Day 19 – Q 2.What impact does the decline of family as an institution have on the value system of the society? Analyse.

2. What impact does the decline of family as an institution have on the value system of the society? Analyse. 

एक संस्था के रूप में परिवार के क्षीण होने का समाज के मूल्य प्रणाली पर क्या प्रभाव पड़ता है? विश्लेषण करें।

Introduction

Family is regarded as a major social institution by many sociologists; it is a place where much of a person’s social activities occur. The concept of the family is considered as a social unit or a group of kin connected by blood, marriage or adoption, living in the same residence and can be described as nuclear and joint family. The family, in Indian society, is an institution by itself and a typical symbol of the collectivist culture of India right from the ancient times.

Body

Impact of decline of family:

• Emotional connection will be hampered: The integration bonds in a family are mutual affection and blood ties. A family is a closed entity and is held together not only due to a tag but also due to emotional ties.
• Socio economic factors: Families continue to provide the natural framework for the emotional, financial and material support essential to the growth and development of their members, particularly infants and children, and for the care of other dependants, including the elderly, disabled and infirm.
• Relationship: The specific functions of families include establishing emotional, economic and social bonds between spouses; providing a framework for procreation and sexual relations between spouses. Family regulates the behaviours of various members of the family like maintaining sexual fidelity or exclusivity.
• Lack of emotions: A disadvantage of nuclear family system is less imbibing qualities of sharing, caring, empathy, co-operation, honesty, listening, welcoming, recognition, consideration, sympathy and understanding.
• No fixed habitation: In the daily life if an individual doesn’t have a home the life would be one of great unrest as it would be haphazard in nature.
• A sense of responsibility among members: The family provides full security to all members including the young and the old. For example, when such responsibility is ignored as in the case of abandoning of a child or an old mother or father it results in breaking up of the family i.e. it disorganizes a family.
• Narrow mindedness: High earnings and less responsibility to other family members have attracted extended families to split up.
• High divorce rates: Divorce rates are very high across all cultures and a replacement of lone-parent, childless, remarried, homosexual, foster and adoptive families have been established. Breaking down of marriages, and anti-social behaviour is increasingly destroying families. 

Conclusion

The present-day lifestyle is causing serious damage to the critical role played by a joint or an extended family system in preserving cultural values, traditions and customs, which have been passed on from generation to generation. However, at the same time, we, Indians must consider ourselves to be better placed than others because the concept of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ (world is one family).