India: Family Structures are Mutable

Talk of “protecting family values,” so common in the American media, conveys a sense of threat, of barbarians at the gate seeking to destroy something precious. Such thinking is typical of cultures informed by Western and Abrahamic mythologies, where a static world is heroically defended against the meddlesome gods of Greek myth, or a determined prophet fights to uphold God’s commandments, as in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic texts.

These traditions inform India via its Christian and Muslim communities. They also influence Indian thought through its Constitution, which in structuring the relationship between the state and the citizenry acts as a secular surrogate for God’s commandments. But the fact is, India’s Constitution has been amended more than 80 times in the last 70 years. My country is comfortable, even obsessed, with dynamism. Our ancient, homegrown worldviews of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism encourage this way of thinking. In these mythologies, the world is infinite, eternal, and never static. Instead of clinging to a prescribed set of family values, we constantly adapt to changing times.

Sadly, many Indians sometimes doubt this approach to life because the global discourse privileges Western worldviews, which consider “traditional” values to be under assault. As a result, we have started to convince ourselves that a normative family structure once existed across our country’s vast history and geography.

But family structures in India are mutable, adapting in response to both opportunities and threats. Today, most families, at least those who live in cities, are nuclear. Many middle-class couples choose to have only one child. A few generations ago, however, most families lived under one roof with cousins, uncles, and aunts who raised children collectively. Monogamy was not legally enforced until the 19th century.

Hindu temples display images of deities with many wives. Hindu epics tell narratives of unmarried nymphs, single mothers and fathers, a commune of goddesses, and female-to-male transgender characters.

Family values in a Mumbai gated community are different from those in a Mumbai slum. During the day, the slums empty of single mothers who work as maids in opulent homes. Children are raised by other children and kindly neighbors, who offer support less by choice than obligation. For those living in poverty, helping others is a valuable currency, a kind of social debt. This informal, communal child-care system is entrenched in rural India, and child psychologists have begun to celebrate it, pointing to shortcomings of raising children in isolation, with their own private bedrooms, as is the norm in developed economies.

Yes, the world is dynamic. But the global village is not homogenous. And as our relationships with phone screens compete with human relationships, Indians need to adapt to newly emerging, diverse contexts, without feeling overwhelmed by Western notions of normality. Whether they will be the influenced, or also the influencers, remains to be seen.