In India, the land of culture and unity, culture and unity are well manifested in the structure of society, indeed in the smaller unit of a society i.e. family. A family is a set of human beings related to each other in a non-professional manner, giving rise to a concrete cohesion within the family. Love, care, and affection are the most prominent human values, which are responsible for maintaining these bonds of relationships within a family.

Typically, a nuclear family may be conceived as a unit consisting of a couple, children, and grandparents, and pets. In India however, there exists a special kind of family structure that really is quite vivid in the way it manages to handle and keep intact the human relations. This special kind of family structure is Joint Family System. A joint family is a collection of more than one, nuclear families that are interconnected by blood relations or marital relations. All the members, regardless of which particular nuclear family (within that joint family) they belong to, live together and share happiness, grief, and virtually every kind of problem and joy together. The joint family in itself simulates a typical view of our multi-cultural, multi-lingual, yet tightly intertwined Indian society. Indian president replies to a question related to spiritual strengths of India as

"One of our strengths is our joint family system. In this system a problem is no problem. In a nuclear family a problem can destroy a family. We have a number of religions. I find that religions are like orchards, but they need to be linked. Every religion preaches compassion and love. If we can transform religion into a spiritual force then we have arrived. By 2020 we should be a prosperous and happy nation without loosing our civilizational heritage...."

Looking more closely into the subject, one would find that there are certain duties which need to be carried out along with enjoying the benefits that a joint-family offers. These couplings of benefits and duties are:

• Love and Respect: Learn to love, to earn respect, is the key to have harmonious and never-ending relationships. Mutual respect and love are biggest values a joint family can offer. These values, however seek something in return, that something is again the love and respect. In many families, a person, usually father, grandfather, or grandmother, is responsible for taking decisions in virtually every field related to family. The quotation, With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, starts proving true in such a scenario. Being an elder, when someone chooses to make any important decision for someone else, say, a teenager child, in the family, he must ask himself/herself:

  • Is his/her decision going to make the child unhappy? If so, find out the reason and rethink over your decision if the reason is justifiable. Otherwise, the child requires counseling from none other than you or the person closest to the child.
  • Is your decision, just a claim of your authoritativeness? If so, you are somewhere wrong, and the decision deserves a careful thought.
  • Is that particular member ready, physically or mentally, to carry out the work or responsibility, you've decided for him/her? If not, again that particular member deserves some counseling.
• Honest Shares in Home-Economy: For many families, there is a single point of income, such as a common shop, a single earning hand, or some revenue periodically generated from fixed assets like rents and royalties. In such cases, eldest member (or the earner) is usually the one, who takes after the economic power and responsibility to manage home funds, divide the share of each nuclear family (within the joint family) rationally. Most of the times, his inability in doing so, becomes the reason for family-partitions. This inability however, may arise due to various factors, including:
  • Dishonesty of himself (or his own nuclear family) or some other family member
  • Inappropriate distribution of responsibilities and rights for each nuclear family, for expenditure. Share of each nuclear family within the joint family must be decided setting up the balance among the needs (education, clothing, and special preferences), number of dependents, contribution to funds, and the special eventual expenditures. This balance is really pivoted on a very sensitive fulcrum, which should be the result of a healthy exchange of honest thoughts of each responsible person in the joint family.
• Each Individual's Equal Recognition: is also very important factor for not allowing any inferiority or superiority complex to creep into anyone's mind. This particularly must be avoided at the level where, parents start expecting their child to be as bright as child (-ren) of other couple in the same joint family, for instance. This sometimes, gives rise to silent bitter feelings and these feelings may end up causing differences.

• Difference in Opinions: must be taken care of, by all the responsible members of the joint family in a matured fashion. The healthy brainstorming over the issue in question may give rise to an even healthier environment of living. The other way to conquering this problem is having a heated altercation, which makes conditions bad to worse, ultimately resulting in separations.

Concept of nuclear family is deemed to address all the problems often seen in joint families, but at the cost of all the advantages and relationships, which can be experienced only while being in a joint family. Nuclear family system has its own advantages, which exactly are not advantages but the ways out to the problems in joint family. The core strength of the nuclear family system lies in 'Fewer the members, lesser the problems.' The problems commonly found in joint family system are automatically eradicated because there is no one to produce those problems, in case of nuclear families. This solution is achieved but at the cost of an ironic set of factors that do count. This set of factors and the results of those factors include:

• Loneliness and Depression: On account of the busy urban lives of the family members. Very less frequency of the intra-family interactions even causes depression in housewives, grandparents, and even the children.

• Sharing Joys and Grieves: There are very less people to enjoy a particular delightful occasion, as well as to provide support at the time of family problems.

• Development of Children: Is usually more dependant on outsiders' viz. schools, crhe and various classes, as parents are not capable of coping up with the educational and recreational demands of the children, along with the burden of their own occupation. In a joint family, the scene may be the different because of a greater number of members. Sometimes, being a part of nuclear family may also allow parents to think and plan for their children's future without having to worry about anything except their very own problems, not at all related to anyone else.

  In many circumstances, only nuclear families are the ones which get an edge. I however, feel that the separation of joint-families, which are one of the cultural heritages of India, can be avoided if all the issues are tackled with healthy and proper communication among the family members. Most important of all, money must never be allowed to be the cause of all the mess.