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Indian Culture 3

The document discusses family structure and marriage in India. It describes the traditional joint family system where extended family members lived together, usually led by the oldest male. However, with urbanization and economic development, India has increasingly witnessed a break up of joint families into more nuclear family settings due to high costs of living and challenges of spending time together.

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Vinay landge
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44 views2 pages

Indian Culture 3

The document discusses family structure and marriage in India. It describes the traditional joint family system where extended family members lived together, usually led by the oldest male. However, with urbanization and economic development, India has increasingly witnessed a break up of joint families into more nuclear family settings due to high costs of living and challenges of spending time together.

Uploaded by

Vinay landge
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Family structure and marriage[edit]

Further information: wedding in India, Bengali Hindu wedding, and Telugu wedding ceremony
Marriage in India

North Indian Hindu wedding with the bride and groom in traditional dress.

South Indian Telugu Hindu wedding ceremony officiated by priests.

For generations, India has had a prevailing tradition of the joint family system. It is when extended
members of a family – parents, children, the children's spouses, and their offspring, etc. – live
together. Usually, the oldest male member is the head of the joint Indian family system. He mostly
makes all important decisions and rules, and other family members are likely to abide by them. With
the current economy, lifestyle, and cost of living in most of the metro cities are high, the population is
leaving behind the joint family model and adapting to the nuclear family model. Earlier living in a joint
family was with the purpose of creating love and concern for the family members. However, now it's
a challenge to give time to each other as most of them are out for survival needs. [56] Rise in the
trends of nuclear family settings has led to a change in the traditional family headship structure and
older males are no longer the mandated heads of the family owing to the fact that they mostly live
alone during old age and are far more vulnerable than before.[57]
In a 1966 study, Orenstein and Micklin analysed India's population data and family structure. Their
studies suggest that Indian household sizes had remained similar over the 1911 to 1951 period.
Thereafter, with urbanisation and economic development, India has witnessed a break up of
traditional joint family into more nuclear-like families.[58][59] Sinha, in his book, after summarising the
numerous sociological studies done on the Indian family, notes that over the last 60 years, the
cultural trend in most parts of India has been an accelerated change from joint family to nuclear
families, much like population trends in other parts of the world. The traditionally large joint family in
India, in the 1990s, accounted for a small percent of Indian households, and on average had lower
per capita household income. He finds that joint family still persists in some areas and in certain
conditions, in part due to cultural traditions and in part due to practical factors. [58] Youth in lower
socio-economic classes are more inclined to spend time with their families than their peers due to
differing ideologies in rural and urban parenting.[60] With the spread of education and growth of
economics, the traditional joint-family system is breaking down rapidly across India and attitudes
towards working women have changed.

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