Family — UPSC Anthropology Optional Notes

1. Definitions of Family

G.P. Murdock (1949): in Social Structure he defined the family as a social group characterised by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction, which includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually cohabiting adults.

Basis of Murdock's claim: from a sample of 250 societies he concluded that the nuclear family is a universal human social grouping, either alone or as the building block of larger families.

MacIver and Page: described the family as a group defined by a sex relationship sufficiently precise and enduring to provide for the procreation and upbringing of children.

Lévi-Strauss ('The Family', 1956): said the family originates in marriage, consists of husband, wife and children (with possible other relatives), and is united by legal bonds, economic and religious rights and duties and a network of sexual rights and prohibitions.

Irawati Karve (1953): defined the Indian joint family as a group of people who generally live under one roof, eat food cooked at one hearth, hold property in common, participate in common family worship and are related to each other as some particular type of kindred.

Comparing definitions: Murdock stresses residence, economy and reproduction; Lévi-Strauss stresses marriage and rights; Karve stresses co-residence, commensality, property and worship for the joint family.

2. Family, Household and Domestic Group

Family: a group defined by kinship ties of marriage and descent, whose members may live apart, such as a migrant son who still belongs to his parents' family.

Household: a residential and economic unit of people who live together and share a hearth or budget, which may include servants, lodgers or unrelated persons.

Domestic group: Meyer Fortes, in The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups (edited by Jack Goody, 1958), described the domestic group as the unit that manages the reproduction and rearing of children, which passes through phases of expansion, dispersion (fission) and replacement.

Donald Bender (1967): argued that families, households and domestic functions are distinct and should not be merged in analysis.

A.M. Shah: in The Household Dimension of the Family in India (1973) showed that the Indian household changes through a developmental cycle, so a nuclear household at one time may be part of a joint family in another sense.

I.P. Desai (1964): in his study of Mahuva in Gujarat he measured degrees of jointness, showing that people living separately still met obligations as a joint family.

Indian examples: the Nayar taravad was a matrilineal household of a woman, her children, her sisters and their children and her brothers, managed by the eldest male, the karanavar; husbands lived elsewhere.

3. Universality of the Family

The case for: Murdock and functionalists argued that the nuclear family exists in all societies because its functions are essential to society.

Nayar challenge: Kathleen Gough (1959) showed that the traditional Nayar had no residential nuclear family of father, mother and children; the father had no economic or jural role, and the matrilineal taravad performed family functions.

Kibbutz challenge: Melford Spiro (1954, 'Is the family universal?') found that in an Israeli kibbutz children lived in children's houses and the community performed economic and educational functions; he first concluded the family was not universal there, then later revised his view and treated the kibbutz itself as a kind of extended family.

Matrifocal households: R.T. Smith (1956) described the matrifocal family in British Guiana (Guyana), where women and their children form the stable unit and men are marginal.

Mundurucu: among the Mundurucu of Brazil (Robert and Yolanda Murphy), men slept in a men's house apart from their wives and children, separating the nuclear family from co-residence.

Conclusion: most anthropologists now hold that some form of socially recognised unit for rearing children is universal, but not the nuclear family in a fixed form; the claim is debated.

4. Functions of the Family

Murdock's four universal functions: sexual (regulating sexual access), reproductive (producing new members), economic (cooperation and division of labour) and educational (socialising children).

Parsons (1955): argued that in industrial society the family keeps two basic and irreducible functions, the primary socialisation of children and the stabilisation of adult personalities.

Additional functions in tribal and rural India: property holding and inheritance, ritual and ancestor worship, care of the old and sick, status placement, and political and jural roles, such as the karanavar or the Khasi maternal uncle.

Tribal examples: among the Birhor and Chenchu the family is the basic unit of food production and sharing; among the Khasi the youngest daughter (khadduh) keeps the ancestral house and performs family rites.

Loss of functions: Ogburn argued that the modern family lost many functions (economic, educational, protective, religious) to other institutions, but kept affection; critics say functions changed rather than disappeared.

Dysfunctions: feminists and critics such as Edmund Leach (1967 Reith lectures) argued that the private, inward-looking family can be a source of tension and discontent, and that domestic violence and inequality occur within it.

5. Theory and Debates

Evolutionist view: Morgan (1877) traced the family from promiscuity through group marriage to the monogamous family; Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) linked the monogamous family to private property; these schemes are rejected today.

Functionalist view: Malinowski, Murdock and Parsons explained the family by the needs it meets.

Structural view: Lévi-Strauss saw the family as the product of alliance between groups, not a natural unit; the incest taboo forces families to link through marriage.

Feminist and new kinship views: scholars such as Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Woman, Culture and Society, 1974) separated the domestic and public spheres, and others questioned whether the family is natural at all.

6. Diagrams to Draw

Murdock's nuclear family: triangle and circle joined by an equals sign, a vertical descent line from the equals sign, and a horizontal sibling bar with two children (a triangle and a circle).

Overlap diagram: two overlapping circles labelled family (kinship) and household (co-residence); the overlap is the co-resident family, one side holds a migrant son, the other a servant.

Developmental cycle: a circle with three arcs for expansion (marriage and children), dispersion (children marry and leave or divide) and replacement (the next generation takes over), after Fortes.

Nayar taravad diagram: a matrilineal group of a woman, her children and her daughters' children, with the karanavar marked as her brother and the visiting husbands drawn outside the group boundary.

7. Using It in the Exam

10-mark answer (150 words): on the universality of the family, give Murdock's definition and claim, then the Nayar, kibbutz and matrifocal challenges, and conclude with a balanced view.

15-mark answer (200 words): on family, household and domestic group, define each, cite Fortes, Bender and A.M. Shah, and give the migrant son and Nayar examples.

20-mark answer (250 words): on functions of the family, combine Murdock, Parsons and Ogburn, add Indian tribal functions and feminist critiques, and close with how functions are changing.

Keywords: nuclear family, common residence, household, developmental cycle, matrifocal, socialisation.

Quotation: Murdock's definition can be quoted nearly in full; for Karve's joint family, quote the five criteria.

1. By Structure and Size

Nuclear (elementary) family: a married couple and their unmarried children; it is the basic unit for Murdock and the dominant urban form today.

Family of orientation and family of procreation: W. Lloyd Warner's terms for the family into which one is born and the family one creates by marriage; every married adult belongs to both.

Extended family: two or more nuclear families linked by descent, usually through parent-child ties, living together; it can be patrilineal (father, sons and their wives and children) or matrilineal.

Joint family: in the Indian sense, a group of brothers or kin of several generations sharing residence, hearth, property and worship (Karve's five criteria); in Hindu law the Mitakshara coparcenary gives sons a right by birth in ancestral property.

Stem family: Frédéric Le Play's term for a family in which one married child (often the eldest son) stays with the parents and inherits, while others leave, common in rural Japan and parts of Europe.

Compound or polygamous family: two or more nuclear families sharing a spouse, as in polygynous households where each wife and her children form a sub-unit.

2. By Blood Relation (Linton)

Conjugal family: Ralph Linton (The Study of Man, 1936) used the term for a family centred on the married couple and their children, in which the marital tie is primary.

Consanguine family: Linton's term for a family built around a core of blood relatives, such as brothers and sisters, with spouses as marginal members; the Nayar taravad is the classic case.

Significance: conjugal families favour mobility and independence, consanguine families favour continuity of property and lineage.

3. By Form of Marriage

Monogamous family: one husband and one wife with children; the most common in practice.

Polygynous family: one husband with several wives, each often with a separate hearth, as among the Naga, Gond and Baiga.

Polyandrous family: one wife with several husbands, fraternal among the Toda and the Khasa of Jaunsar-Bawar, non-fraternal among the traditional Nayar.

4. By Residence after Marriage

Patrilocal or virilocal: the couple lives with or near the husband's kin; the most common rule, found among most Hindu castes and tribes such as the Munda, Oraon, Santal and Gond.

Matrilocal or uxorilocal: the couple lives with or near the wife's kin, as among the Garo, where the husband (nokrom) of the heiress daughter moves into her house, and among the Hopi of Arizona.

Avunculocal: the couple lives with the husband's mother's brother; Malinowski described it among the Trobriand Islanders, where a boy moves to his maternal uncle's village as he grows up.

Neolocal: the couple sets up a new, independent home; typical of industrial and urban societies.

Bilocal or ambilocal: the couple may choose to live with either the husband's or the wife's kin.

Duolocal or natolocal: husband and wife live apart, each with their own kin; the traditional Nayar husband visited at night, and Meyer Fortes recorded duolocal residence among some Ashanti couples.

Khasi residence: among the Khasi the husband traditionally visited or moved into his wife's house, though many couples now set up separate homes (neolocal), especially in towns.

5. By Descent, Authority and Succession

Patrilineal family: descent and name are traced through the father; property passes to sons, as among most Indian communities.

Matrilineal family: descent is traced through the mother; among the Khasi, Garo and Nayar the clan name passes through women.

Khasi: the youngest daughter, ka khadduh, inherits the ancestral house and the main share of property and is custodian of family rites; but the mother's brother (u kni) has authority in clan affairs, so the Khasi family is matrilineal, not matriarchal.

Garo: the parents choose an heiress daughter (nokna), whose husband (nokrom) is usually her father's sister's son, taken from the father's clan; he manages the property but it belongs to his wife's machong (clan).

Nayar: property belonged to the taravad, managed by the karanavar (eldest male of the matrilineage), and passed through the female line (marumakkathayam inheritance).

Patriarchal and matriarchal: a patriarchal family vests authority in the father or eldest male; a true matriarchy, where women hold formal political authority, has not been reliably documented, so anthropologists prefer matrilineal or matrifocal.

Matripotestal and patripotestal: terms used by some writers for families where authority lies with the mother's or father's side respectively.

Succession and inheritance: succession refers to transmission of office or status (such as headship of the taravad or the office of a chief), inheritance to transmission of property; they may follow different lines.

6. Theory and Debates

Matrilineal puzzle: Audrey Richards (1950) described the tension in matrilineal societies between a man's role as father and as mother's brother, since authority and inheritance pass to his sister's son.

Evolutionist error: J.J. Bachofen (Mother Right, 1861) and Morgan believed mother-right preceded father-right, but there is no evidence of a universal matriarchal stage.

Indian joint family debate: some scholars thought the joint family was the traditional norm and is breaking down; studies by A.M. Shah and Pauline Kolenda showed that nuclear households were always common and jointness varies by caste, region and phase of the cycle.

Ecology and residence: Murdock and later comparative studies linked matrilocal residence with women's role in horticulture and patrilocal residence with warfare, herding and plough agriculture (a broad tendency, debated).

7. Diagrams to Draw

Classification chart: five columns headed structure, blood relation, marriage, residence and descent or authority, each listing the types with one Indian example.

Residence diagram: three houses labelled husband's kin, wife's kin and husband's mother's brother, with arrows showing where the couple moves for patrilocal, matrilocal and avunculocal residence, and a fourth new house for neolocal.

Khasi inheritance diagram: a matrilineal chart with the mother (circle) and three daughters; shade the youngest daughter as khadduh and mark the mother's brother as the authority figure.

Garo nokna-nokrom diagram: draw the father, his sister and her son; draw the father's daughter (nokna) married to her father's sister's son (nokrom), showing that the son-in-law comes from the father's own clan.

8. Using It in the Exam

10-mark answer (150 words): on the matrilineal family, define it, describe the Khasi and Garo with local terms, and add the matrilineal puzzle.

15-mark answer (200 words): on types of residence, define each with an example (Munda, Garo, Trobriand, Nayar, urban neolocal) and draw the residence diagram.

20-mark answer (250 words): on types of family, classify on all five bases asked in the syllabus, with tables and Indian examples, and end with changes towards nuclear and neolocal forms.

Keywords: conjugal and consanguine, avunculocal, khadduh, nokna and nokrom, taravad and karanavar, matrilineal puzzle.

Attribution: cite Linton for conjugal and consanguine, Malinowski for Trobriand avunculocality and Audrey Richards for the matrilineal puzzle.

1. Industrialization and the Family

Talcott Parsons (1955): argued that the isolated nuclear family fits industrial society because it is small, geographically mobile and allows status by achievement rather than kinship; the family specialises in socialisation and emotional stabilisation.

William J. Goode (1963): in World Revolution and Family Patterns he showed a worldwide trend towards the conjugal family, with free choice of mate, weaker extended kin ties, neolocal residence and greater equality, but noted that the pace varies and that ideology (the idea of the conjugal family) spreads ahead of industry.

Peter Laslett (1972): in Household and Family in Past Time he used parish records to show that most households in pre-industrial England were already nuclear, so industrialization did not create the nuclear family there.

Michael Anderson (1971): found that in 19th-century Lancashire cotton towns extended kin households actually increased, as kin helped each other find jobs and housing.

Young and Willmott (The Symmetrical Family, 1973): described a shift in Britain towards a home-centred, symmetrical family with more shared roles between husband and wife.

Loss and transfer of functions: factories, schools, hospitals and the state took over production, education, health and welfare, while the family kept consumption, emotional support and early socialisation.

2. Urbanization and the Family

Louis Wirth (1938): in 'Urbanism as a way of life' he argued that city life weakens kinship and primary ties and makes relations impersonal and segmental.

Changes in urban families: smaller households, neolocal residence, late marriage, fewer children, more love and inter-caste marriages, more divorce, and dual-earner couples.

Modified extended family: Eugene Litwak (1960) argued that urban nuclear households stay linked to kin through visits, help and money, forming a modified extended family; in India this is visible in remittances, festival gatherings and care of parents.

Migration: seasonal and long-term migration of tribal men and women, such as Santal and Oraon labourers to brick kilns, tea gardens and cities, creates split households and women-headed households in the village.

Ageing and care: smaller families and migration of the young leave many elderly alone; the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 makes children legally responsible for maintaining parents.

3. The Indian Joint Family under Change

K.M. Kapadia (Marriage and Family in India, 1955): found that the joint family persisted in sentiment and obligations even when households were nuclear, and that educated people often still favoured jointness.

Milton Singer (1968): studied industrial leaders in Madras and found that many ran their businesses through the joint family, which adapted to industry instead of breaking up.

I.P. Desai and A.M. Shah: distinguished household from family and showed that nuclear households are often phases in the developmental cycle, so the joint family is not simply disappearing.

Pauline Kolenda (1987): compared many Indian studies and found jointness varies by region and caste, being higher among landed upper castes and in north India.

Legal changes: the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 allowed divorce and enforced monogamy; the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 gave daughters rights in property; the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 made daughters coparceners by birth in Mitakshara joint property, confirmed by the Supreme Court in Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma (2020).

Other laws: the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 changed rights within the family.

4. Change in Matrilineal Families

Nayar: British rule, a cash economy, English education and the end of the Nayar military role weakened the taravad; the Madras Marumakkathayam Act, 1932 allowed partition, and the Kerala Joint Hindu Family System (Abolition) Act, 1975 ended the joint taravad as a legal unit, so most Nayar now live in nuclear, patrilocal or neolocal families.

Khasi: Christianity, education, urban jobs and inter-community marriage have changed residence and property patterns; a Khasi men's body, Syngkhong Rympei Thymmai, has campaigned since the 1990s for a shift towards patrilineal inheritance, which is strongly contested.

Garo: similar pressures have weakened the nokrom system, and many families now divide property among several children.

5. Feminist Movements and the Family

Friedrich Engels (1884): an early critic, he linked the monogamous patriarchal family to private property and the subordination of women, which influenced Marxist feminists.

Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique, 1963): described the dissatisfaction of educated American housewives and helped launch second-wave feminism.

Ann Oakley (The Sociology of Housework, 1974): treated housework as unpaid work and showed that the burden fell on women even when they had paid jobs, the double burden.

Michelle Rosaldo (1974): argued that women's subordination is linked to their association with the domestic sphere and men's with the public sphere; Sherry Ortner (1974) asked 'Is female to male as nature is to culture?', linking subordination to the symbolic association of women with nature.

Radical feminists: such as Kate Millett (Sexual Politics, 1970) saw the family as the main institution of patriarchy.

Indian feminists: scholars such as Leela Dube and Bina Agarwal (A Field of One's Own, 1994, on women's land rights) showed how kinship, inheritance and the gendered family shape women's lives in South Asia.

Effects: laws on dowry, domestic violence, inheritance and maintenance, rising female education and employment, delayed marriage, and recognition of new family forms; the Supreme Court decriminalised homosexuality in Navtej Singh Johar (2018) but declined to legalise same-sex marriage in Supriyo Chakraborty v. Union of India (2023), leaving it to Parliament.

6. Theory and Debates

Convergence thesis: Goode and modernisation theorists expected all societies to converge on the conjugal family; critics point to the persistence of jointness in India, China and Japan.

Fit thesis questioned: Laslett and Anderson showed that family change does not follow industry in a simple way.

Diversity of forms: single-parent, live-in, blended, same-sex and transnational families have led anthropologists to speak of families in the plural, and new kinship studies (Janet Carsten, Cultures of Relatedness, 2000) stress relatedness created by care and sharing.

Indian middle path: scholars such as Patricia Uberoi stress that Indian families combine nuclear residence with joint obligations and arranged-cum-love marriages, so change is adaptive rather than a break.

7. Diagrams to Draw

Before-after diagram: on the left a three-generation joint household under one roof; on the right separate nuclear households in a city and a village linked by arrows labelled remittances, visits and care, to show Litwak's modified extended family.

Causes and effects chart: boxes for industrialization, urbanization, education, migration, law and feminism, each with arrows to effects such as smaller size, neolocality, women's employment and changing authority.

Taravad timeline: a line from the traditional taravad through the Marumakkathayam Act, 1932 to the Abolition Act (1975) and today's nuclear Nayar family.

8. Using It in the Exam

10-mark answer (150 words): on the impact of urbanization, list four changes, cite Wirth and Litwak, and give one Indian example.

15-mark answer (200 words): on industrialization and the family, contrast Parsons and Goode with Laslett and Singer, and conclude that the effect is not uniform.

20-mark answer (250 words): on all three forces, give a table, discuss feminist critiques and Indian laws, and add matrilineal change among the Nayar and Khasi.

Keywords: isolated nuclear family, conjugal family, modified extended family, double burden, coparcener, symmetrical family.

Attribution: Goode (1963) for the conjugal trend, Laslett (1972) for pre-industrial nuclear households, Singer (1968) for industrial joint families.

1. Definition, Universality and Functions of the Family

Example 1 (UPSC 2022, 10 marks): Household and domestic group.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(e)

Approach: Distinguish household and domestic group from each other and from the family, citing Fortes, Bender and A.M. Shah with Indian examples; an overlap diagram helps.

The household is a residential and economic unit of people who live together and share a hearth or budget, and it may include servants or lodgers. The family is defined by kinship, and its members may live apart, like a migrant son.

The domestic group, in Meyer Fortes's essay in The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups (edited by Jack Goody, 1958), is the unit that manages the rearing of children and passes through phases of expansion, dispersion and replacement.

Donald Bender (1967) argued that family, co-residence and domestic functions are distinct. In India, A.M. Shah (1973) showed that a nuclear household at one phase of the cycle may belong to a joint family in another sense, and I.P. Desai (1964) found separately living kin in Mahuva meeting joint obligations.

The Nayar taravad was a matrilineal household whose husbands lived elsewhere, separating marriage from co-residence.

Diagram: two overlapping circles labelled family (kinship) and household (co-residence); the overlap is the co-resident family, a migrant son lies in the family circle only and a servant in the household circle only.

The distinction is essential before judging claims that the joint family is breaking down.

Example 2 (UPSC 2015, 15 marks): Define family and critically examine the universality of family.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(a)

Approach: Define the family (Murdock), state his universality claim, then critically examine it with the Nayar, kibbutz and matrifocal cases and modern forms, ending with a balanced judgement.

Murdock (Social Structure, 1949) defined the family as a social group characterised by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction, including adults of both sexes in a socially approved sexual relationship and their own or adopted children.

From 250 societies he concluded that the nuclear family is universal, alone or as the unit of polygamous and extended families, because it performs sexual, reproductive, economic and educational functions.

Kathleen Gough (1959) found no residential nuclear family among the traditional Nayar: visiting sambandham husbands had no economic or jural role, and the matrilineal taravad performed family functions.

Melford Spiro (1954) found kibbutz children reared in children's houses, with the community providing economic and educational functions, though he later treated the kibbutz itself as a family. Matrifocal households in Guyana (R.T. Smith, 1956) further separated the elements of Murdock's definition.

Single-parent, same-sex and transnational families today, and the Toda and Nuer cases where the social father differs from the biological one, show other forms.

Yet in each case some recognised unit rears children; Ira Reiss (1965) therefore reduced the universal family to a small kin group performing nurturant socialisation. Child-rearing within a recognised kin unit is universal, but not Murdock's nuclear family.

2. Types of Family

Example 3 (UPSC 2021, 15 marks): Critically evaluate Lewis Morgan's classification of family.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(c)

Approach: Outline Morgan's five stages of the family and their basis in kinship terminology, then evaluate merits and criticisms, concluding on his place in kinship studies.

L.H. Morgan, in Ancient Society (1877), building on Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871), arranged the family in an evolutionary sequence after a hypothetical stage of promiscuity, inferring each form from kinship terminology.

The consanguine family was group marriage of brothers and sisters, inferred from Hawaiian (Malayan) terms that call all of a generation brother and sister. The punaluan family was group marriage of brothers with each other's wives, excluding sisters, inferred from Hawaiian punalua and classificatory terms.

The syndyasmian or pairing family was a loose union of one couple, dissolvable at will; the patriarchal family was one man with several wives under paternal power, as among Hebrew pastoralists; the monogamian family came with private property and descriptive terminology in civilisation.

Merits: Morgan founded the comparative study of kinship terms, showed that terms express social relations, and influenced Engels (1884).

Criticism: no society with consanguine or group marriage as its main form has been found; Hawaiian terms reflect generation, not past sibling marriage; Rivers and Lowie argued that terms reflect present institutions, not survivals; and simple foragers such as the Andamanese were monogamous. Boas rejected such unilinear, conjectural schemes.

Morgan's classification is thus rejected as history but valued as the beginning of kinship studies.

3. Family and Social Change

Example 4 (UPSC 2026, 10 marks): Feminist movement and family

Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(c)

Approach: A short note: show how feminist movements and scholars criticised the family, name key thinkers, and state the effects on family life and law.

Feminist movements questioned the family as a natural, harmonious unit and exposed power within it; Engels (1884) had linked the monogamous family to private property and women's subordination.

Second-wave feminism, sparked by Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), criticised the housewife role; Ann Oakley (1974) showed housework as unpaid labour and the double burden of employed women; Kate Millett (1970) saw the family as the core institution of patriarchy.

In anthropology, Michelle Rosaldo (1974) linked subordination to women's confinement to the domestic sphere, Sherry Ortner (1974) asked whether female is to male as nature is to culture, and Leela Dube and Bina Agarwal showed how kinship and inheritance shape South Asian women's lives.

Effects include dual-earner families, later marriage, more divorce and single-parent households, and in India the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and daughters' coparcenary rights (2005).

The family has been democratised rather than abolished.

Example 5 (UPSC 2024, 15 marks): Define urbanization and discuss its impact on family in India with examples.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(b)

Approach: Define urbanization (with Wirth and the Census figure), then discuss its impact on the structure, roles and marriage of the Indian family, the evidence of persistence, and the problems created.

Urbanization is the growth in the share of population living in towns and cities and the spread of urban ways of life. Louis Wirth (1938) saw urbanism, marked by size, density and heterogeneity, as weakening kinship; India was 31.1% urban in Census 2011.

Structure: flats and wage jobs favour small, neolocal nuclear households, and migrants from Bihar or Odisha live far from their parents.

Roles: women's education and employment create dual-earner couples, weaken elders' authority and give wives more say, as in the symmetrical family of Young and Willmott.

Marriage: later marriage, fewer children, more inter-caste and love-cum-arranged marriages through matrimonial websites, and more divorce.

Persistence: Kapadia (1955) found joint-family sentiment in nuclear households, and Milton Singer (1968) found Madras industrialists running firms through joint families. Litwak's modified extended family appears in remittances, festival visits and care of parents.

Problems: lonely elderly (hence the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007), childcare stress and split households of tribal migrants such as Santal labourers.

Urbanization has changed the form of the Indian family more than its values, as Patricia Uberoi notes: adaptation, not breakdown.

Example 6 (UPSC 2020, 20 marks): Explain the impact of feminist movement on universality of marriage and family structure.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(a)

Approach: Explain the functionalist claim of universal marriage and family, then show how feminist movements and feminist anthropology challenged it, separately for marriage and for family structure, with Indian developments, and conclude.

Murdock (1949) held the nuclear family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, to be universal, and Parsons saw an instrumental husband and expressive wife as functional. Feminist movements challenged both claims.

Second-wave feminists argued that the family is a social construction serving patriarchy, as Engels (1884) had hinted by linking monogamy to private property: Kate Millett (1970) called it patriarchy's chief institution and Ann Oakley (1974) exposed unpaid housework. Yanagisako and Collier (1987) argued that gender and kinship are cultural, not biological, domains to be studied together.

Michelle Rosaldo (1974) tied subordination to the domestic-public split and Sherry Ortner (1974) to the association of women with nature. The Nayar, Nuer woman-marriage and Khasi matriliny were reread to show how much marriage and fatherhood vary.

On the universality of marriage: cohabitation, voluntary singlehood, divorce and same-sex marriage, legal in the Netherlands since 2001, have made marriage optional in many societies, and anthropologists dropped the man-and-woman clause from definitions.

On family structure: dual-earner, mother-headed, blended and chosen families (Kath Weston, 1991) replaced the male-breadwinner model, so anthropologists speak of families in the plural.

In India, campaigns led to the Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and daughters' coparcenary rights (2005), and the Supreme Court decriminalised homosexuality (2018), but it declined to legalise same-sex marriage (2023) and marriage remains near-universal.

Feminism has thus undermined the claim that one form of marriage and family is universal, while some unit of care and child-rearing persists in plural, negotiated forms.

Example 7 (UPSC 2016, 20 marks): Discuss the impact of urbanization and feminist movements on family in India.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(b)

Approach: Treat urbanization and feminist movements in turn, giving their effects on the structure and internal relations of the Indian family with studies, laws and data, and conclude that change is adaptive.

The Indian family, idealised as the joint family defined by Karve (1953) through co-residence, common hearth, property and worship, has been reshaped by urbanization and feminist movements, though change is adaptive.

Urbanization (31.1% urban in Census 2011): migration and wage jobs produce nuclear, neolocal households, smaller size, later marriage and lower fertility.

Yet Kapadia (1955) and I.P. Desai (1964) found jointness surviving in sentiment and obligations, Milton Singer (1968) found Madras industrialists using joint families in business, and A.M. Shah showed nuclear households are often a phase of the developmental cycle. Litwak's modified extended family appears in remittances and care of parents.

Costs include lonely elderly, childcare stress and split tribal households as Santal and Oraon migrants go to brick kilns and cities.

Feminist movements, through anti-dowry and anti-rape campaigns from the late 1970s, targeted violence within the family. Laws followed: amendments to the Dowry Prohibition Act in the 1980s, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 making daughters coparceners.

Rising female education and employment create dual-earner couples, more say for wives and more choice of spouse; Bina Agarwal (1994) linked women's status to land rights. But dowry, son preference and a child sex ratio of 918 (2011) show resilient patriarchy.

Indian families now combine nuclear residence with joint obligations (Patricia Uberoi): urbanization changed their form, feminism the relations within them.