Family: Resource or Liability for Youth?

R. KUMARAN Assistant Professor Department of Sociology Gandhigram Rural Institute Deemed University

Centrality of Family

Family as occupied central stage in human reflection for long time

Social Sciences such as Sociology and Anthropology have paid great deal of attention to the origin and function of family The form and structure of family hold mirror to the wider society

Changing Family

Family has been the most responsive institution to social change

Joint Family Agrarian Society Nuclear Family Industrial Society Single Parent Family- Post- Industrial Society

Family: the Medium of change

Family is the funnel into which the state and media push their desired image of citizen or consumer It is the last reducible unit for many social science research

Family as Stable Presence

Family, the only continuing and stable institution/primary Group

Family is the meaning- framework for individual

It is for and from family members choose life-course, Values etc Many youth find family as the stable noncontractual Institution

Paradigm Shift in Family

Youth perception has been changing Family is seen as repressive It all started in
Industrial Revolution Freudian Psychoanalysis Marxism

Family as Ideological Apparatus

Family as handmaiden of capitalism Anti-creativity and Freedom

Consumer industry too viewed strong family ties as hindrance to unbridled consumerism

Critical Threshold is pushed back

Family has suddenly moved away from being protective to repressive faster as youth earn earlier these days
The premium on individual freedom has changed the critical threshold

The Irrelevance of Family: Demographic Shift

Agrarian Society- All were at home Industrial Society- Father Left Home for work Late-Industrial Society Mother and Father Left home for work home Families became Week-end (or Weakened) Families Soon Week-end families are replaced by Summer-Vacation Families

Outside families

Simultaneously Kind-Based friends and relatives are replaced by transitory relationships

Challenges for Youth

Youth are now exposed to the vagaries of life with out protection and comfort of families Building and breaking relationships are to be handled alone So are the stresses and joys to be experienced alone

Moral Frameworks and Values are negotiated by youth all by themselves

Attack from All Sides

Consumer industries that were wary of familial ties, target the unguarded youth The fast earning youth now becomes a target for selling everything from objects to experiences offered hitherto free by families Now banks pay fees rather than fathers TV and internet tells more about values than parents

Quest for Family Continues Differently Virtual Families

The very forces (technologies) that undermined familial ties are now offering scope for reestablishing ties Now families though distanced can be accessed

selectively and virtually

Mobile phone, broadband internet, webcam, all keep members of the family together virtually But it i

Family Inevitable?

The family as unconditional resource is no longer accessed as it involves obligations All that family offered is offered elsewhere, may be for a price but without obligations Families are becoming more, transitory, contractual and functional in nature

Future?

This phase, may be viewed positively as heralding the true birth of absolute individual But can we trust the subsisting institution? Are they adequately substituting? What about the reassertion of caste-based religion-based collectivities? Will families to reassert themselves?