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| | The ()()()__FuFa- FUlly FAaltoo NETWORK__()()() Network is not currently active and cannot accept new posts | | Joint vs. Nuclear family system | Views: 489 | | May 18, 2005 5:21 pm | | Joint vs. Nuclear family system | # | 
FuFaji Lalit Vashishta | | Mumbai a city of dreams and now many cities in India are following up and taking it as a model. The family life is degenerating in these metropolitan cities.
After having lived in joint family systems for ages, the people here are now breaking out to live in nuclear families. Eventhough the individuals know all the pros and cons of both the systems, still we see an evident drift.
Are we happy? Do we want the joint family system back again?
(I am again talking from my own experiences and am sure many of you would still be continuing to live in the age old family system)
Yes, I do agree that an individualistic thinking gained predominance as we drifted to the nuclear system. It was a whole new world of freedom and exciting exploration with no boundaries and the sense of achievement to establish a living set up on one's own.
The nuclear family gave us the freedom from the traditions and ways of life that the old system was full of. And with this freedom came a sense of being able to do things on our own. So whenever a child grew up and came of age and was able to afford a roof for himself, he would move out to build a house to call his own.
The society and the people have started to get comfortable with these changes, seeing the family systems, values being disintegrated in front of their own eyes. The nuclear families have become the order of the day, the old generation has slowly started to accept the realities and become comfortable with it.
But on the other hand, we have actually lost a lot.
The depression, suicides and heart disorders due to highly stressed lives is on the increase. It is becoming impossible to share the problems with your closed ones(other than your wife/husband)
This further gets magnified, when the pain of being physically separated from your dear ones comes back and knocks on our hearts and minds
Life in the earlier days was so convenient, with aging parents, grand parents taking care of our children. Now we have to be living with the stresses of bringing up our children only relying on Creches/ child care centers. It is very difficult when not enough facilities are available for care of children during the day.
The whole fabric of the society is getting disintegrated. We all are now missing out on celebrations and festivities that used to bind us to our culture and gives us a sense of being at home, with all the elders teaching us these traditions holding our fingers.
Being two (too) busy working parents we don't have the time to pass on the cultural values to our children. Cultural values are learnt and taught by seeing them in action. Where do we have time in this stressed out life?
I have come across so many families in Mumbai, where the kids today do not even know their own mother tongue.
Where are we heading?
What went wrong?
Did we make the right decisions?
Can we see a society making their way back to the age-old Joint family system?
What are your views? Private Reply to FuFaji Lalit Vashishta | | May 18, 2005 5:51 pm | | re: Joint vs. Nuclear family system | # | 
Ronald Hunter | | The United States went through this decades ago. Families are seperated by 100's of miles. It is sad to see this happening in your country too.
RonPrivate Reply to Ronald Hunter | | May 18, 2005 6:40 pm | | re: re: Joint vs. Nuclear family system | # |
FuFaji Lalit Vashishta | | It is not a new phenomenon in India Ronald. I think the process in India has also started decades ago.I know it is sad, but this is a reality of life.
Now is the time of realisation. Atleast, I favour the Joint family system, and I have tried to put my point across above.
Cheers
LalitPrivate Reply to FuFaji Lalit Vashishta | | May 19, 2005 4:05 am | | Joint vs. Nuclear family system | # | 
SOEB FATEHI | | what is a family?
my family is my wife, son, daughter and me.
no, my family also includes my eldest brother, his wife, his three children, his three children-in-law, his three grandchildren, my second brother, his wife, my sister, her husband, my third brother, his wife, and his three children.
no, no, no. i must include also my late father and late mother and late nephew.
no, no, no, no, no, no. my three late paternal uncles and three late paternal aunts are family too. they come as a package bundled with their six late spouses, their seventeen living children and fourteen childrens' spouses. add to that four late cousins of mine and their spouses three late and one surviving. and add also my cousins' children who number twenty four and their spouses numbering four. my cousins have grand children too and they are seven in all.
if you are still reading this then i will tell you that i have not mentioned my maternal uncle and aunt at all nor have i talked about their children and grandchildren. we meet very regularly and enjoy it but they would not live with us as 'joint family' if we decide in favour of it.
the head of the family as i have listed would naturally be my late grandfather with my late grandmother ably assisting him in counting us in before shutting the door every evening.
and i must tell you too about the grandchildren of my eldest late cousin and so many others getting married (God willing!) this year (ooooooolalalala) !
now please do not compel me to tell you about the generation above and so on - (ever wondered why i can dare anyone to talk about a mathematical pyramid and why MLMs fail?) - actually i have a recorded tree going up eight generations above me and three below.
now will someone please decide where the line gets drawn on a joint family? and how many generations can live together? to classify being called a 'joint family'?
i have lived the first few years of my life in a five story building (was called a tower at that time) with a mezzanine on the topmost floor too. the building belonged to the family and everyone who lived there was family. the kitchen was on the topmost floor and all the 'branches' of the family (each had a set of rooms) were served two meals a day from the common kitchen in their respective rooms by a male servant named Muhammed who hailed from the Nizam's Hyderabad. breakfast every morning was prepared in individual quarters my our respective mommas. at least twice a week we sneaked out early to breakfast with our cousins and they reciprocated when our mommas were willing to oblige. it was common for my brother to study in someone's room on the fifth floor though we lived on the third floor. my mom did not forget to call him down for lunch though he would eat exactly the same daal at the same temperature right where he was for surely my aunt would not let him remain hungry. in fact sometimes he did eat there because my aunt brought some super achaar whenever she visited her sister in the gaon and that achaar was not expected to be pooled into the kitchen.
the passage outside my house on the third floor was the football field. the second floor was for the juniors to play cricket. the girlies and the limbu timbus were allowed to play only in the adjoining balcony cum terrace admeasuring 350 sq feet (actually part of the roof of the masjid next door but accessibe through an easement door on our second floor). sometimes the chowk on the first floor was available to them when not used to store imported cast iron pipes and manilla ropes which the family business traded in.
slowly as numbers grew migrations took place and naturally the family turned what you call 'nuclear'. the bomb was dropped when some decided to live in a different country.
but the transtions were smooth and today all the branches are connected through the internet on common egroups and sub groups. interest groups and business groups with a common thread of ancestry continue. some get along better than others. some do not wish to continue to stay connected.
an heirarchy exists and is respected. some of the elders are rigid and orthodox in their views. but we do not think that they are draconian or oppressive. they mean well and love us all. we love them too. our affection is so intense that we forgive without asking for an explanation. and the elders word is always followed not because it is a farmaan or a fatwa but because it is delivered after consultation and deliberation.
i think these discussions are rather narrow. the real issues are culture. the culture you imbibe is the culture you live with. there are social, economic and personal reasons why people adopt one or the other style. to make a success of the endeavor one needs a common interest. this common interest is the well being of the family and it requires character and consistency to believe in that. it requires a transparent relationship without hidden agendas. it requires a heart free from envy and an attitude free of oneupmanship.
a family can be as 'nuclear' or 'joint' as dictated by circumstance. it need not matter. what matters is the warmth. in my immediate family of siblings' families we have fourteen outside the country and ten in India living in seven houses. we are in contact at least once a day. we are probably more connected than many similarly sized 'joint families' living under one roof. i appreciate the concerns listed by many here and elsewhere. i still fail to see the debate (where i come from). Private Reply to SOEB FATEHI | | May 19, 2005 10:57 am | | re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Joint vs. Nuclear family system | # |
ranjit roy | | nuclear family?
joint family?
nuclear? - no nukes is good nukes
family? - disengagement and disintegration to single units - all lonesome folks (aka the Man with No Name)
joint? - reckon thats all right:)
Private Reply to ranjit roy | | May 19, 2005 11:12 am | | re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Joint vs. Nuclear family system | # | 
Vipin Arumugham | | Both of them have their pros and cons.
Private Reply to Vipin Arumugham | | May 19, 2005 11:25 am | | re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Joint vs. Nuclear family system | # | 
Rhea | | I live in a semi-joint family. We have the best of both worlds :) My in-laws live on the 2nd floor, we are on the 3rd. Everytime we feel the need for some 'family bonding' we meet. the rest of the time everyone does their own thing.
This apart, since we have a family run business, it helps coz everyone is nearby. For days where the work load is big, everyone chips in.
Its a system of cooperation with enough space for everyone, and it works very well for us.
It is truly the best 'compromise' between the two systems. Everyone has their space and independence and at the same time the unit stands strong. especially in a crisis. Private Reply to Rhea | | May 19, 2005 2:26 pm | | Joint vs. Nuclear family system | # |
SOEB FATEHI | | See Lalit how a lady (daughter-in-law) can be on top when another lady (mother-inlaw) is prepared to live in the floor below! Exercise in Accomodation! Private Reply to SOEB FATEHI | | May 19, 2005 6:01 pm | | re: Joint vs. Nuclear family system | # |
Rhea | | just goes to prove that women are ALWAYS on top!!!! :) Private Reply to Rhea | | May 19, 2005 6:34 pm | | re: re: Joint vs. Nuclear family system | # | 
Wot's... Uh The Deal (Vijai) | | Lightning strikes the tallest structures, doesn't it?
But that I can tell you is a myth!
So does that throw light on who's the brightest of them all?
Aiyla, yeh maine kya shuru kar diya?Private Reply to Wot's... Uh The Deal (Vijai) | | May 20, 2005 3:11 am | | re: re: re: Joint vs. Nuclear family system | # |
FuFaji Lalit Vashishta | | Rhea,
That also goes to point that women don't let an opportunity pass by.....OK, baba agreed that women are always on TOP
But coming back to the topic. Rhea you have mentioned a case which is still a joint family - getting big houses or bunglows is just a dream for the average person here, so families tend to buy flats in their immediate neighbourhood and continue to live like a Joint family
Take the example of families which are drifting away because of the distance. Soeb your points well taken, about the bonding amongst the family members, even if they are distantly placed. If we start taking examples of communities - I think the best example where these values are intact are - Parsis, Muslims and if we look amongst the Hindu families, it is the Marwadis who have been able to still keep this system intact to some extent.
Vipin
I agree that there are pros and cons - but I think the balance will get tilted towards the Joint family system finally to keep the basic culture intact.
As Ronald has put it that this came into the US decades ago, so is it slowly percolating and making its in-roads into this country as well? Are we merely aping some systems which have actually failed, but are a just fashion statements? Like we hear statements like = Oh in the west it is very common to see a girl or a boy of 16 leaving their house and living on their own. Is it the impact of these cultures which is forcing the younger generations allowing us to forget our Indian-ness?
Or is it circumstantial as Soeb puts it.
btw, have you heard these statements?
....paapi pet ka sawaal hai?
....Shehar mein zyada opportunities hain?
....Ek chhotte se shehar mein main kya karoonga Pitaji - main kissi mahanagri mein ja kar jeena chahta hoon.
It is the ambition and the fast changing pace in life / competition / globalisation etc. which is driving people away from their houses.
Take for example a simple farmer, he is now willing to leave his family - his fields and move towards better pastures in cities and is happy driving a Rickshaw -
I am getting confused now. Private Reply to FuFaji Lalit Vashishta | | May 20, 2005 5:01 am | | re: re: re: re: Joint vs. Nuclear family system | # |
Rhea | | it is not so much the large or small house that is really the issue here,Lalit. For that matter my house is pretty small, its just that we are in the same bldg.
I have close friends who made it a point to buy a flat as near as possible to the parents house. This was done specifically so that they could be near by, and yet live their own lives.
I have friends in Pune too, who have done the same thing. They were fortunate enough to get a flat in the same bldg.
This seems to be a workable solution keeping in mind the present way of thinking where a traditional joint family doesn't suit the younger generation, but they don't want to be totally cut off either. They want their children to know their grand parents, aunts and uncles, and yet they want to have their own space too.
Sometimes its not only these big issues like family ties and learning about your culture from the elders in the family- its also about practical realities and convenience.
For eg. the bldg in which we live is more than 100 years old. Every house has its own water pump to fill up water from the municipal supply. The municipality releases water in our area between 8.45 and 10.30 in the night. So if we want to go out at that time, my in-laws start our pump, and if they are out, we start theirs.
This makes sure we can all have a social life without worrying about filling water!
I think it works very well. Private Reply to Rhea | | |
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