Family Youth and Future - Family Resource or Liability

7/30/2019 Family Youth and Future - Family Resource or Liability

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Family: Resource or Liabilityfor Youth?Speech Delivered at National Seminar on Family Youth and Futures, ORGANISED BY THE Centre for Future Studies,Gandhigram Rural Institute Deemed University , on 7 Feb 2010

R. KUMARANAssistant Professor

Department of SociologyGandhigram Rural Institute Deemed University


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Centrality of Family

Family as occupied central stage in humanreflection for long time

Social Sciences such as Sociology andAnthropology have paid great deal of attentionto the origin and function of family

The form and structure of family hold mirror tothe wider society


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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


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Family as Stable Presence

Family, the only continuing and stable

institution/primary Group

Family is the meaning- framework forindividual

It is for and from family members chooselife-course, Values etc

Many youth find family as the stable non-

contractual Institution


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Paradigm Shift in Family Youth perception has been changing

Family is seen as repressive

It all started in

Industrial Revolution

Freudian Psychoanalysis Marxism


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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


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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


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The Irrelevance of Family:

Demographic Shift

Agrarian Society- All were at home

Industrial Society- Father Left Home forwork

Late-Industrial Society Mother andFather Left home for work home

Families became Week-end (orWeakened) Families

Soon Week-end families are replaced bySummer-Vacation Families


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Outside families

SimultaneouslyKind-Based friends and

relatives are replaced bytransitory relationships


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Challenges for Youth

Youth are now exposed to the vagaries of life without protection and comfort of families

Building and breaking relationships are to be

handled alone

So are the stresses and joys to be experiencedalone

Moral Frameworks and Values are negotiated byyouth all by themselves


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Attack from All Sides

Consumer industries that were wary offamilial ties, target the unguarded youth

The fast earning youth now becomes a target

for selling everything from objects toexperiences offered hitherto free by families

Now banks pay fees rather than fathers

TV and internet tells more about values thanparents


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Quest for Family Continues Differently Virtual Families

The very forces (technologies) that underminedfamilial ties are now offering scope forreestablishing ties

Now families though distanced can be accessed

selectively and virtually

Mobile phone, broadband internet, webcam, allkeep members of the family together virtually

But it i


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Family Inevitable?

The family as unconditional resource is nolonger 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


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Future?

This phase, may be viewed positively asheralding 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?

Family Youth and Future - Family Resource or Liability

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