In India many people still live in similar joint family structures. In my case,at present I do not stay with my parents as I'm in a different city. In case we stay together,besides me there would be my parents, my sister & my maternal grandmother[Yes,my maternal grandmother stays with us which makes our family slightly unique]... And,we even have research evidence to prove it. "According to research paper 60% of senior citizens in India, live with their married son & only 1% of senior citizens in India live with their married daughter. But this point was a digression.
According to Dr. Alice's article, there is the modernization theory. This modernization theory States that the more economically developed or urbanized we become, our extended/joint families would become nuclear families. This trend was observed in countries like Japan, Taiwan & Korea.
1) In such rich countries, people have lesser number of children.
2) The families in such counties are not joint families but nuclear families.
But Dr. Alice Evans observed something else.
This modernization theory did not apply to India. In case of India, the% of married men who live with their parents,has actually increased.
This is a very interesting puzzle about which we will discuss in these article's.
[Before understanding the arguments of this article, we will have to be clear with the terminology]
Broadly, families can be divided in to 3 categories.
1) Nuclear families:- These families have only 1 married couple.
2) Stem families:- There are 2 married couples.
3) Joint family:- There are more than 2 married couples.
Usually, they are found in India when 2 brothers who are married,live with their parents. "LET'S TRY TO UNDERSTAND ARGUMENTS"
In Asian societies,most married couples live with their parents. This could be due to several reasons.
One factor is fertility:- the average number of children a women gives birth to. In the case of South Asian countries which are very poor & fertility rate is high in poor countries. If the fertility is high, there are more chances of parents staying with one of their children. Also, there are cultural factors like Asian societies which are considered to be more collectivist while western societies are considered to be more individualists.
{Collectivist societies give more importance to a collective/community while western societies give more importance to an individual}
In such collectivist societies, families play an important role. As we could guess, India agrees with these factors. In fact, India is the highest in many matrics, among other countries. Among 9 Asian countries, India has the highest share of parents who live with their married children. Due to economic development, this number is not decreasing but instead, increasing which is very interesting puzzle.
Why is India not following this modernization theory?
🎯There are 3 reason for this......
The first 2 reasons could be dealt with together
1) Decrease in fertility rate:- Women are giving birth to less children, now.
2) Decrease in Life expectancy:- An average Indian lives for more years,now.
Looking at the data, India's fertility rate has decreased & life expectancy has increased. Due to both reasons, the probability of a married couples living with their parents, increases. This could be because the children live for a longer time the overlap in the lifetime of children & parents is very common. And, in fact has increased, understanding fertility rate is not very difficult.
Earlier,if there were 5 children in every household 🏠, there was a 20% probability of a parent living with one of the children. Now,on average if there are only 2 children in every household 🏠, there is a 50% probability of a parent staying with a married couple.
3) The third factor is that Indian economy is highly dependent on small, family businesses. While Japan and South Korea economy filled with large firms (business). India economy is not the same comparing with other countries, most Indians work for small companies. The growth in number of such small companies, is due to 2 reasons.
First, economic growth did happen in India. But,
India's growth is actually JOBLESS GROWTH. Although, our economy did grow to some extent, the number of jobs has not grown to the same extent. The jobs which were created due to the economic, were irregalar [like, construction workers, etc who earn daily wage] These are not salaried jobs where people usually get contracts & have job security. In such conditions where most jobs are casual or daily jobs, families prefer running their own business as it gives them financial safety both for children & family,as well.
Dr. Alice Evans mentions that young college graduates prefer working for their family business as they can be sure of both job and income security. If you work for your family business, there are more chances of your family being a stem or joint family.
These 3 reasons explain why more married couples in India, prefer staying with their parents.
But, during the research for this article I found that actually there are several variations of family types in India.
There are several variations on the basis of
caste,state & income level. The image of a perfect
family is absolutely not applicable as there are so many different types of family both, within & outside India.
family is absolutely not applicable as there are so many different types of family both, within & outside India.
As mentioned beginning of the article,60% of indian senior citizens live with their married sons. And, just 1% of Indian senior citizens live with their married daughters. It doesn't mean that these 1% families are less than perfect families. In fact, in Thailand and Cambodia, many parents prefer living with their youngest daughter's. In India, the joint,stem & nuclear are only 3 types of family.
"For example: In 20-30 year's, it might be very common to find a parent living with their married daughter"
Hopefully, we don't have to read research paper to see such changes. You could hopefully see, such changes on a movie poster.
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