The family as a living, evolving social institution, is facing its most difficult challenge in the history of man as a social animal. One of its major challenges is a redefinition and reformulation of the term ‘family’ Apart from the death of the spouse within the first ten years of marriage, desertion, separation, divorce of both or either parent are conditions that demand a redefining of family values and a shifting of parental responsibilities. It is therefore, necessary to respect these diversities and changes, without always questioning them without logic, and to promote concepts based on family rights and responsibilities.
One research begun in Kolkata in 1976 focusses exclusively on Children of Divorce. Its findings show that five years after the break-up, one out of three kids experiences moderate or some depression; ten years later, a significant number appear to be troubled, drifting, inadequate; 15 years later, many of them, now adults, are struggling to establish strong relationships, and find it harder to relate to their own kids. Maladjustments are particularly marked in relationships with the fathers who behave like ‘threat daddies’; sometimes, mother-child relationships are eroded. Besides documenting family disorientation, the study shows a sudden fall in the child’s well-being and school performance, and a steady rise in suicide rates, crime and promiscuity.
The Declaration of the Rights of the Child adopted by the General Assembly of United Nations on 30th November, 1959, formulates several principles. It lays down that “mankind owes to the child the best it has to give." It further says that "a child of tender years shall not, save in exceptional circumstances, be separated from his mother. Society and the public authorities shall have the duty to extend particular care to children without a family and to those without adequate means of support.” But children of single parents do belong to a family, albeit, a fragmented family.
This includes children of mothers who have been imprisoned and kept in captivity in prisons. Research by Prayas, a Mumbai-based NGO, under the auspices of the TISS published its report entitled Forced Separation – Children of Imprisoned Mothers – An Exploration in Two Indian Cities in 2002. Some fathers, the study revealed, unable to cope with work and a large family, asked relatives to take in some of the children. (An example: On the imprisonment of the mother, four children were left with the father. He decided to keep the older children at home, and send the younger two — who needed more care — to live with the grandparents in the village.) Sometimes, older children are forced to become caregivers without knowing the responsibilities these entail. The study adds that if the mother is imprisoned for several years and the child grows up with a grandmother or aunt, it does not know who its real mother is.
Namita Singh Jamwal in an article in The Mainstream Weekly (August 29, 2009) states that according to a consultant psychiatrist of Kolkata’s Belle Vue Nursing Home, nearly six out of ten married couples now require counselling to prevent break-ups and for every five weddings registered in Mumbai in the past five years, there have been two divorce applications—an increase of nearly 50 per cent. (Hindustan Times, February 17, 2008)
Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)’ research on troubled marriages points out that divorce rates among young couples has grown in magnitude. The Institute, which receives over 50 cases a day, blames modern lifestyles, materialistic pursuits and unreasonable expectations as the three key reasons for this disturbing trend. “It is not father-absence versus mother-absence that moulds the child’s outlook, but the personality and the attitude of the parent left behind. The way the parent copes with the absence gets easily communicated to the child and determines the way he will cope with it,” says Neerja Sharma, lecturer in child development in a Mumbai college, commenting on children who have lost one parent to death.
Smita Gupta in her in-depth research (Mumbai University) A Psycho-Social Study of School Students Coming from Single-parent Homes in Relation to their Performance at School, laments the lack of research on the effects of parental break-up on the development of the child. “What little research has been done,” says she “is largely confined to self-selected, atypical groups, namely those seen in psychiatric wards and child-guidance clinics. We do not know for example, whether it damages the child the least to grow up in an unhappy home with both parents, or, alone, with one parent where there is no remarriage, or with one natural parent and a step-parent.”
The nuclear family has come to stay. One of the most visible indices of the rapidly changing face of the family in urban India has been the splintering of the three-generation family unit. The joint family had its merits. It taught its members human values like solidarity in joy, grief and crisis, reverence towards elders, loyalty and unquestioned obedience to the dictates of the patriarchal head, division of labour, and an equal sharing of the material benefits accruing to the family. The Naicher family of Vadaveeranickapatti village is still a role model for the joint family in the country. It comprises of 138 members or 34 sub-families living together to constitute India’s largest family.
The downfall in the joint family system was spurred because of (a) economy – rising costs vis-à-vis no corresponding rise in family income, (b) paucity of space in urban apartments, (c) lesser tolerance among the young to a single authoritarian head, (d) working wives, (e) rise in education among women and (f) lessening of a sense of responsibility towards senior family members such as ageing parents.
The nuclear family appeared to offer a better alternative to the extended family in urban metros. But it remained patriarchal and male-dominated. Everything within the family is seen as private and presumed to be in the best interests of those who were part of it. The women’s movement in the 1970s drew attention to another aspect of the family – the family as an institution that perpetuates violence. Newspaper reports speak volumes of the nature and extent of violence that takes place within the family.
In urban India, the situation is changing. The educated, working wife has a lower threshold of tolerance, which leads to early break-ups, separation, or divorce. What happens to the children? They are forced to grow up within a family with the parent who wins the custody of the children, forced to spend the weekend with the other parent who may have ‘visiting’ rights. The fragmentation of the family leads to the fragmentation and decimation of the child’s physical, emotional and psychological growth. Divorce and separation are subjects that have received considerable media attention. Little attention, if at all, has been focussed on the effects of the single-parent family on the children who grow up within it. Studies and reports have fleshed out suggestions and recommendations but the million rupee question remains – what about their execution?