DISORGANISATION / DISINTEGRATION OF JOINT FAMILY IN INDIA
The following factors are responsible for its disintegration:
1. Influence of education:
The modern education system changes people’s attitudes, beliefs, values, and ideologies and enables them to get into jobs. After getting jobs, they settled down in their place of work and made a procreation family there. As a result, their joint family in the village breaks down.
2. Impact of industrialization:
Setting up new industries has attracted many people to employment in the factories. Once employment is available, the person leaves the joint family and settles down in a nuclear family near the industrial town. As a result, most of the ties that bind all family members together in an industrial society began to loosen.
3. Influence of urbanization:
The urban centres provide people with various amenities of life concerning transport and communication, sanitation and health, education and employment, etc., migration of young adults from rural to urban areas, or from small town to metropolises and also often their choice of the spouse from the other community, add the reasons for the disintegration of families. The conjugal family ties are becoming more intense than they were in the past, and yet at the same time, they have become more fragile, giving rise to a greater incidence of separation and divorce in urban areas.
4. Change in marriage system:
Change in the marriage system has an adverse impact on the continuance of the joint family system. Factors like the solemnization of marriage at a late age, the restricted role of the head of the family in mate selection, the freedom enjoyed by young men and women in matrimonial affairs, and the perception of marriage by most people as a social ceremony rather than a religious sacrament, etc., have weakened joint family ties.
5. New Social Legislation:
The joint family system has received a great setback from several legislations. These legislations are:
a. The Civil Marriage Act (1872)
b. The Hindu Law of Inheritance, 1929
c. Hindu Women’s Right to Property Act, 1937
d. Special Marriage Act, 1954
e. Hindu Marriage Act, 1955
f. The Hindu Succession Act, 1956
g. Dowry Restraint Act, 1961
These Acts have modified the inter-personal relations and the composition of a family and the stability of the joint family. This has affected the marriage system to a large extent.
6. Influence of Western Values:
Influenced by Western values such as rationalism, equality, freedom, etc., they do not like to remain submissive under the tight grip of the joint family. The result is the disintegration of the joint family system.
7. Awareness among Women:
Increasing female education and widened freedom and employment opportunities created awareness among women, particularly in the middle and upper classes. They also sought chances of becoming “free” from the authoritarian hold of the join family.
8. Extension of Communication and Transport:
Difficulties of communication and travel in ancient times compelled all the family members to live together and jointly carry on the family occupation in agriculture and trade. Today when the means of communication and transportation have been extended, it is no longer necessary for men and women to stay with the family and carry on the family occupation. Now they go to the city and take up any other occupation or even living in the village and adopt some other trade and when they adopt a trade different from the family’s trade, they establish a new home.
9. Decline of agriculture and village trade:
The joint family system in India flourished when agriculture and trade in the villages were in a sound position. Today, with the establishment of factories, the commodities produced by the village craftsmen cannot compete in quality or price with those produced in factories. The village industries suffer a loss and, after some time, close down. With the closing down of the village industries, the workers in villages were also compelled to go to the city to find a job there.
It is, however, to be remembered that joint family system in India has not completely died out. The Indian people keep intact the family attachment and live their traditional morality. The thinkers who criticize the system have not been able to appreciate it properly. Compromise and mutual adjustment are the keynotes of the Indian joint family system. The joint family is not a place where individuality is crushed, but it is a cooperative institution where every member does his duty under the guidance of the eldest member. In it, we have a synthesis of individual and common interests; here are included social virtues which makes man a good citizen and teach him to live for all. What is needed today is to find out the ways by which the good points of the joint family can be retained. All this will require intelligent cooperation of rulers and social scientists aided by enlightened public opinion.
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