Impact of urbanization on family – Anthropology by K.V RAMESH

General characters of traditional families

Large size
Common residence
Common kitchen
Joint property
Cooperation and sentiment
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.
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.
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 urbanization on family

Introduction:

William J. Goode ( 1963), R Clingiest and J. Sween (1974), R.L.Blumberg and R.F.Winch ( 1972), Desai (1964 ) and several others have studied the impact of urbanization – on the family in general and the joint family in particular in different parts of the world. In this’ regard, they have shown how the parameters of urbanization namely (a) size and density of urbanization committee, (b) social-cultural heterogeneity of towns and cities, (c) impersonality and anonymity, (d) formality, (e) blase attitude, as a need for white collar jobs and technicians have brought chances in the different aspects of family system in different societies.

Impact on daily pattern of family life:

The impact of urbanization especially the density of population on the daily pattern of family life has been remarkable.

sheer density of population has necessitated the urban centers to provide public services which negative effect on family life, especially public health, clean water supplies and sewage disposal.
public services enabled the families to raise their standards of comfort.
the system of transport provided the family a greater choice of locality In which to live.

All these are benefits to the family.

The sheer density of population has also created some disadvantages to the family.

it created expensive living conditions.
it influenced the family to remain aloof in order to achieve reasonable privacy and freedom from critics or interference. As a consequence, the nuclear family could not involve itself with a neighborhood or extended kinship group.
the sense of belongingness, or the boon of living together for generations has become absent or weak. Group spirit has become ephemeral and limited to specific occasions like neighborhood collection after an accident or the camaraderie

Impact of heterogeneity on family:
The impact of urban heterogeneity in terms of occupation, ethnicity, class, cultural background, and religious beliefs and practices on the family is very striking.

heterogeneity has enhanced scope for impersonal, superficial social relations.
heterogeneity made the secondary group relationships. The urban dweller joining the clubs and special interest groups which may be dispersed in localities distinct form his non neighborhood and bring with them disparate and segmented personnel relationships.
family ceased to be principal primary group a reliable buffer or permanent shelter in times of adversity. The isolation of nuclear family has become so much unbreakable that many people have a become victims of mental illness, suicide, crime of other social deviations. This speaks of the inadequacy of integration the family and the urban commit.

Impact of structure and organization of family:

The impact of urbanization on the structural and organizational aspects of the family is profound.

the family has become of limited size. Nuclear Family has become the norm. Even the philosophy of “small family’ through family planning has an impact on the size of the family. The nuclear family has become a procreation unit, but it exercises the procreation function with great irregularity, having few children in the family. Here we are confronted with another type of family shrinkage, not by people going away from the family, but by people not being born into it.
urbanization has affected the family by providing equal status to both man and woman. The wife is no more dependent on her husband. From the economic point of view, she is independent and her social and economic status has considerably increased. The woman in the urban family has taken to work in occupations which were hitherto the exclusive monopoly of the male members. Apart from this, education is impacted to women on par with the men. Daughters are now able to leave the parental home to seek employment and their employment and their leaving home has not created any family crisis. Daughters as well as sons have more freedom today than formerly to make decisions regarding their education and choice of occupation.
Courtship and marriages have become more of an individual and less a family affair, which means that daughters as well as sons are freer to select their marriage partners. However, in upper class families, there is a tendency still for relatives to hold some degree of control regarding this matter.
the family ceased to be the center of traditional education and informal training. It has become beyond the capacity of the family to give the children the types of education which is important for them to get an occupation in the present modem and urban setting. Education and training have moved out of home, but the most important aspect of socialization, which starts the child on the way to becoming a social being, remains.
in the urban setting, the profession or trade of one member of the family has become different from to other. This has created lack of synchronization of life routines of different members of a family.
the urban family has acquired excess of individuality. In traditional rural family set up, there is a similarity in the ways of thinking among the members. In an urban family set up there is a discrepancy with regard to this character. In urban family setup. every member has his/her own place of stance, and survive in the family with high degree of individualism.
The concept of familialism, which is characterized by unity and cooperation, is literally missing.
the urban family tends to be a mobile one, physically and socially, and it tends toward certain rootlessness. As a family moves on every two years, it keeps a low belongings, and possessions which are ephemeral and easily discarded. People buy only those goods which give immediate pleasure and discard them with little regret in order to facilitate the next move of the family.
ties of an urban family with other families have become brittle. They are broken without disrupting the lives irrevocably. Friendships are cast aside at each move. The urban family leads the life of a transient camp, it depends on transient association at each stop. At the same time, individuals depend entirely on other members of the facing for the really close emotional ties which have such importance for personal stability, but which these condition can easily turn sour a become suffocating.
the urban family surfer form increased rates of divorce. Due to the increasing -tend towards the equality in status of women in the family, there tends to be an increasing possibility for disorganized structural and also functional significance of family. This leads to lack of coordination and difference of opinion among the spouses and to marital breakdown. One of the main reasons given is the growing dominance of women over men and the latter’s reluctance in giving away their traditional dominance. Traditionally, the children usually are responsible for waxing up the marital bond. They use to act as buffers for any marital discord. In the modem setting, children are a burden, even though a joy, and this is one of the reasons why divorce rates are more prevalent among childrenless couples.
Finally ,in the urban setting, the family is becoming more the private holding of its members than a collective possession of many relatives. The family has become more socialist than autocratic. The relationship between the husband and wife has become one which is based on choice, instead of based on traditional static customs, the training is now based on more on mutual attraction and mutual happiness. Urban family is against the dominance of any one and it is based on self-reliance. Husband-wife relation has became self styled. Capitalism in the economic field, liberalism in the ideological domain, and the principle of equality in the social and political systems have become the anchor sheets of the urban family. The modem family is itself not static. It is still in the process of change into a new direction.