SOCIOLOGY ASSIGNMENT 3

QUESTION: HOW HAS THIS COURSE ON FAMILY

AND INTIMACY TRANSFORMED YOUR IDEAS ABOUT
THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY AND
INTIMATE RELATIONS THEREIN? SUBSTANTIATE
YOUR ANSWER WITH ARGUMENTS YOU HAVE
ENCOUNTERED DURING THIS COURSE?

People related by blood or kin bounded by the feeling of love, concern

and share for one another make family is what I thought when I was
about 16.As I grew up and started reading I began understanding that
since people who are bonded over love and concern, friends can be
family, homosexual couples with their adopted children could well form
family too. Unmarried siblings or for that matter widows with their
siblings can be family too.

This was more to what I had known when I was 16, however my ideas
were highly finite and insufficient. This course on Family and Intimacy
has transformed my ideas about marriage, family and intimacy in
fundamental ways.
Family is often seen as something constant and incapable of change
over time. Family is seen as a natural community. Idea of family is
often talked about in biological sense and socio-cultural aspects are
often left out though family is relatively static and is a social creation
which can be a subject of historical study.Changes in family occurs
with social change and several factors have significantly influenced
change in family over time which includes separation of dwelling and
workplace, strengthening of relations between parents and children,
split between related and non-related members of the family,
emergence of households consisting only of members of the family in
modern sense of the term as initial households included servants and
others who were not related by birth, emergence of households based
on religious affiliations. Thus, to appeal to the natural order of the
family from the point of view of social history is an attempt to retain a
specific family structure. Certain factors which seem essential to the
society in due course of time would be taken over by another social
change including the patriarchal family structure emphasizing on
natural authority of husband over wife and children.

Family can also not be simply confined to parenthood, marriage and

social relations. There is no objective family and thus there is
ambiguity in term denoting familial relations as meaning of these terms
varies with time,space and person.Family or family like qualities can
exist with or without the intersection of marriage, parenthood,
residence or any of it.Specialised functions of family such as primary
socialization of children and stabilization of adults has many
alternatives now.Earlier,there wasn’t any restriction in choosing marital
partners such as bigamy,incest,age, religion and others in many
societies.Industrial labour market need socially mobile families which
leads to weakening of kinship ties and democratic individual households.
Patterns of experimentation like orphanages,kindergartens,old age
homes and reproduction through biological engineering will help
demystify family and accept variations over time and space.All over the
world there are still kinship system and marriage rules for which no
satisfactory interpretation has as yet been brought forward. It is
certain that to explain this and other set of rules,one will have to
proceed to interpret kinship system and marriage rules as embodying
the rule of that very special kind of game which consists, for
consanguineous group of men in exchanging women among themselves.

Womankind is often seen as a commodity and their question of justice

is also ignored in the institution of family. Philosophers have been of
the view that the governance of family is different from that of the
society and the head of the family thus need to be accountable to its
members, women can be denied their political rights and be well
subordinated for the larger good of the family. They argue that the
circumstances of justice do not prevail in family. It occurs where
interests are different and resources being distributed are scarce
which is not the condition with family as it is an intimate group which is
bounded by love and concern for its members and nature dictates
hierarchical order. They regard sexual division of labour as unjust but
necessary and grounded in nature. This however is not the case. Family
is not something very sacred. Enlarged affection is not the only thing
happening in the family.Since 1970s,there have been instances of
sexual abuse and fatal violence being reported from within families.
Most of the supperogation in the family occurs at women’s expense. All
social goods such as leisure, paid work and others are all unequally
distributed. Most of the contemporary families are not just but they
need to be if we claim families as the first school of moral
development. It can’t be unjust under the veil of generosity as lives of
millions of children and women are at stake.

As long as we continue to sentimentalize and idealize families, it would

be unjust. We need to understand that families have discrete persons
with conflicting aims and to secure justice to each of them is a
necessity which can’t be overlooked by sentimentalizing the family.

The conventional notion of family is largely heterosexual. It was only in

1980s that the discourse on gay families emerged challenging many
cultural representations and common practices that have effectively
denied lesbians and gay men access to kinship. In earlier decades gay
people also had fought custody battles, brought partners home to meet
their parents, filed suit against discriminatory insurance policies and
struggled to maintain ties with adoptive or blood relations, however the
discourse of 1980s was significantly different as its emphasis was on
the kinship character of ties gay people had forged to close friends
and lovers,its demand that those ties receive social and legal
recognition. In themselves, gay families comprise only a segment of
historical transformation sequence that mapped the contrast between
straight and gay first onto family/no family and then onto biological
families/families we choose. Gone are the days when embracing a
lesbian or gay identity seemed to require renunciation of kinship.The
symbolic groundwork for gay families laid during a period when coming
out to relatives witnessed a kind of institutionalization has made it
possible to claim a sexual identity not linked to procreation,face the
possibility of rejection by blood or adoptive relations and still conceive
of establishing a family of one’s own.
Families, marriages, love and intimacy exist in different cultures
differently. Among the pundits of rural Kashmir the customary ad usual
mode of recruitment to the household are being born, adopted or
married into.Pandits are well aware that sexual intercourse between a
physiologically normal couple is the material cause of conception but
supernatural and mystical forces are judges to be decisive in
determining conception and safe delivery.They attribute miscarriage to
supernatural interferences as well.There exist extreme restraints
characterizing the relations between adult men and women in Pandit
society.Pandits desire sons and regard them as auspicious as they will
immortalize them by continuing the line of descent. On the other hand
daughters are regarded as a responsibility. Having twin sons is
regarded as auspicious and lucky whereas twin daughters, a misfortune.
There is an elaborate ceremony associated with childbirth.Adoption,a
mode of recruitment to household is resorted to only in unusual
circumstances. Though the adopted son would do everything a son
should but he is seen as a poor substitute for natural son.Daugther may
only be adopted for a period of few months or week to be married in
exchange for daughter in law.Pandits regard marriage as one of the
most important events of their lives. Begetting sons, the gratification
of sexual desire, mutual love of spouses and the joy and comfort of
domestic life makes married life a highly desired state of existence
for a man.