UPSC MAINS SOCIOLOGY SYALLABUS – Paper 1 – Chapter 9 – Systems of Kinship
(a) Family, household, marriage.
(b) Types and forms of family.
(c) Lineage and descent
(d) Patriarchy and sexual division of labour
(e) Contemporary trends.
THE CONCEPT OF HOUSEHOLD
- A household is where one individual or a group of people live together at one address and share living space.
- Individuals that live together when sharing university accommodation would be considered a household rather than a family unit.
- The individuals will share the space within the household meaningfully to connect with one another.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FAMILY AND HOUSEHOLD
- Family is a social unit based on kinship, household is a brick and mortar dwelling unit.
- Households and families are basic units of analyzing demography.
- ‘Family’ has no particular definition. It could mean all the generations after a common ancestor (an entire family tree) or parents and children living together as a single unit.
- A household is typically a group of people who live under one roof, irrespective of their blood or kinship relations. They are mostly families, though. But a significant lot could be students who are flatmates, people who have moved out of home and are living independently or people living in homes for migrant workers as such.
- Emotional attachment is core feature of family, while commensality is core feature of
household.
CHANGING HOUSEHOLDS
- A household may also go several changes with time from nuclear to joint etc.
- In India, such transformation has been studied by Shah in Gujarat villages in his ‘Household Dimension of Family in India, 1973’.
- A household may experience progression and/or regression or both on the basis of birth, adoption and in- and out-marriage, and death, divorce and separation of members over a period of time.
- A household in itself is neither joint nor nuclear, but becomes either of these by virtue of its being under progression and regression in the process of its developmental phases. For example, a married son’s moving out of his father’s house in a patrilineal society makes the son’s house a nuclear one, or rather a separate one.
- This act may or may not simultaneously make his father’s household a nuclear or simple one.