Impact of Industrialization on family

General characters of traditional families

1. Large size
2. Common residence
3. Common kitchen
4. Joint property
5. Cooperation and sentiment
6. Authority Structure: The power Is rested in Karta, the eldest male member in the family. He allows little individual freedom to the family members. He controls the family members.
7. Formalistic organization: This refers to the subordination of individual interest to the interest of the family as a whole, which means that goals of the family must be the goals of the individual members.
8. Ritual bonds: The ritual bonds of a joint family are considered lo be an important component of jointness. A joint family is bound together by periodic performance of the rituals in honour dual ancestors. The members perform “Shraddha” ceremony in which the senior male member of the joint family propitiates his dead father’s or mother spirit offering it the pindals (balls of cooked rice) on behalf of all the members. Another ritual bond among joint family member is the common deity worship (Srinivas 1969:71).Still another important bond is pollutions. Birth or death results in pollution of the members of the joint family. The bonds created by ancestor worship, family deities and observation of pollution persist even after the joint family has split into separate or smaller residential and communal units. (Srinivas 1969:21)

IMPACT OF INDUSTRIALIZATION ON THE FAMILY

Who studied Industrialization impact on family ?

William J. Goode (1962), M.F. Nimukoff and Russel Middleton ( I960), M.L. Cohen (I967),R.L. Blumberg and R.F. Winch (1972), Mandelbaum (1960), K.M.Kapadia (1964), I.P. Desai (1964), Pauline Kolenda (1968), Milton Singer (1968) and several others have studied the impact of industriaiizalton on the faniily in general and the extended or joint family in particular in different parts of the world.

What are all the features of Industrialization life ?

In this regard they have shown how the individual components of industrialization in terms of (a) factory production, (b) individualism, (e) specialization, (d) professionalization, (e) appetite for excellence, (f) separate culture and (g) mass media have brought out changes in the different aspects of family system in different societies.

Impact on the structured of organizational aspect:
Industrialization has brought out changes in the very structural and organizational aspects of the family. These changes can be understood in terms of the altered statuses and roles of members in the family. Prior to industrialization, the family was patrilineal, patrilocal patripotestal and patronymic. Father or the senior-most male was the main figure in the family. But as a consequence of industrialization, there have been visible changes in the very arrangement of relations and the arrangement of activities in the joint family.

• First, there has been reduction in the size of the family. This happened in two ways. In the first, instance there were push and pull factors operating in favour of city-ward migration. As migrants searching for work in the factories settled in the industrial towns and cities, they have to break with their joint families in the villages. This has reduces the size of the joint families and broken them Into simpler units. Further, as these migrants seized in the industrial towns and cities, they established nuclear families. In the second instance, nuclear family has become the norm. More number of children has become a burden because of the exigencies of standards of living and standards of health and the risks involved in jobs. The use of contraceptives has reduced the number of children born during marriages. Moreover, the nuclear family excluded the older men or parents because they had no role to play in the modem setup. Such old people are ill equipped to adapt to the demands of an industrialized society and the rigors of old age have to be faced within the security of o family status. This is because of its neolocal independent household and its accompanying values in favour of separate lives for each couple.
• Second, the nuclear family system is neolocal and its internal kinship net works may become qualitalively different form what they had been earlier. Marriage, the foundation of the family, ceased to be a religion sacrament has become a civil contract. It can be broken at any time. In the nuclear family wife ceased to be the devotee of her husband but an equal partner in life with equal rights. She is no longer the drudge and share of olden days. The relations between wife and husband are now based on equality.
• Third, the structure of the family in terms of parent-child relations also has changed to a great extent. At one time the parents formed as the reference group to the children. After industrialization, they ceased to be a reference group to the children because parents are no more able to provide the requisite knowledge to their children. In this context, children depended upon teachers, specialists and other for their knowledge. This situation weakened the relationships between parents and children between the parental generation of children’s generation. The generation gap has become so much that the nuclear family is increasingly becoming a folio-centric one. As such the children tend to dominate the scene and their wishes determine the policy of the family.
• Finally, the ideals of industrial system and the ideals of family system have become incompatible with each other. Industrial system favours standards of performance on the basis of achievement. But joint Family system favours standards of performance based on ascription. Industrialization favours individualism rather than dependence, practicalism rather than idealism, science rather than superstitious belief. All these conflicting frameworks of industry of family system ultimately alienated individual from the family. Industrialism required a person to rise or fall in social rank and to move about whenever the job market is best. Formerly family fulfilled the needs of every one of its members. It did not follow the merit system.

Impact on Family control:

Industrialization weakened the family controls on the members of the family. In this context several processes operated. The main processes have weakened the family control are as follows:

• First, – an increasing number-of-people have started – earning their living from jobs or positions that pay wages for a particular task. They ceased to depend on eventually obtaining a share of the land or a right to rent the land, both of which are usually in the hands of family elders.
• Second, the needs of efficiency In the industry and the economy require that jobs and promotions have given out mainly for competence of people who basically have little stake in the familial position of the worker.
• Third, the work positions in the market economy offer true possibility of gaining a living as an individual, not as a member of the family. If individuals can earn more in the economy because their own efforts than by pooling their labour with members of their family or their kin network, they can become independent of their kin or elders.
• Finally, the family unit has became fragile because of separation or divorce but the larger system offers little help in the crises for elders or their children. The industrial system hires , fires, lays off, and demands geographical mobility by reference to the individual ignoring the (financial stamina then actions may cause.

Impact on the economic aspect of the family:

According to the researchers, industrialization has dramatically modified the economic aspect of the family. The family ceased to be a unit of production. The family has become a new group whose members congregated in industrial centers to sell their sole marketable asset namely to labour. Economic security to the family had become more tenuous than it had before Industrialization. In economic terms, production moved out of home. Prior to industrialization all the members of the family worked in the same estate or workshop attached to the house or very near the home. After industrialization, work place and home separated. Not only that , Even the physical distance between the home and work place ceased to be a primary criterion. As industrialization has brought out its inevitable result of improved means of transport, distance between the work place and the house ceased to be a problem and the workers could easily reach home or work place by means of different types of transport. Prior to industrialization, all members in the family did the same type of work, either farm work or craft work. Industrialization provided numerous occupational opportunities to the same family have adopted different types of work depending upon their availability and their economic benefits. Prior to Industrialization, even the mastering of the farm work or the traditional arts of crafts was easy. At young age people were able lo learn the economic skills. However, industrialization has introduced acquiring of complex skills through long time training and apprenticeship outside the family. The members started earning long after they reached physical maturity. Further, the very place of job ceased to be one’s own village. This has affected the joint family system to the extent of fragmenting it into simpler components.

Impact on Household work:

Industrialization has promoted science and technology. The one impact of technology and science on family life is (he reduction of the drudgery of household chores lessening of the risk of unwanted pregnancies. In these connection contraceptives, running water, electricity and labour saving devices of all kinds proved quite useful to the women. There is another Impact of technology on family life. The products of technology merely raised standards of home making and of comfort in the house work. The scientific advances in medicine have also had a liberating effect by helping to improve the health of the family.

Impact on day- to-day life:

The separation of home and work had its profound effects on day-to-day family life, especially in terms of breaking the close interaction between the members of the family. The daily dispersal of the family members to the office, to the factory and to the school has become institutionalized. The very routine of the family has to be tailored to the needs of the industrial setting and its consequent urban life. If the husband and wife are employed, both has “to prepare for their office work hours” before to children go to school and make all arrangements for the dispatch of children lo the school. Or, some baby sitters are to be employed to look after the tiny tots in the house or the babies may be left in the day-care centers or crutches and they may be brought house only when the couple return home. With the recent employment of women in the labour force, their total work burden has increased, but only a few societies have attempted to develop programs for helping them in child care, or inducing men to share their tasks. The very enculturating activity of the family had to be adjusted with the life in industrial centers. In the new process of enculturation, traditional education has no place. All the joint family are no longer performed through the collective participation as in me past or through the services of a priest.

Some case studies Industrialization impact on family :

M.S. Gore (1968) studied a trading caste of North India, the Aggarwals of Delhi. The sample consisted of 499 families of which 236 were joint and the remaining 263 were nuclear. Gore characterized Delhi as less industrialized than other places. Its economy was based on commerce and services, rather than industry. Aggarwals who were a business community preferred the traditional family pattern. They did not need educational attainments lo start their work as they had monetary resources, within their community. Factors such as individuality, occupational differentiation, specialization in education had not drastically affected the Aggarwals. Hence, there was limited change in the pattern of joint family. The nuclear families among them were products of circumstances rather than choices. Gore concludes that the Aggarwals are Still largely-oriented to the joint family; here cultural setting is trying to adjust to physical/ urban setting.

L. P.Desai (1964) studied 423 families in Mahua, a town in Gujarat, of which 21% were joint families and 78% were nuclear families. Even among these 78% nuclear families, 40% were actually joint families; due to legal reasons (showing records as partitioned) and lack of accommodation, they dispersed. But they meet on different occasions, pool up their resources and give to Karta, respect him; there is a free flow of men, materials and ideas across these families and there is a single decision-making authority.

K.M. Kapadia (1986)-studied 246 farnilies of Navasari in Gujarat Of them 56.5% were functionally very effective joint families and 43.5% were nuclear.

ccording to I. P. Desai and K.M.Kapadia there was no marked decline in joint family system. They found that majority of the families maintained some nexus with the relatives. In other words, even when people were not living in joint households, they usually maintain active links with each other for ritual, economic and other purposes. Most families appear to be nuclear, but most of them act jointly and maintain connection at all times.