Family — Meaning, Functions of Family, Theories of Origin of Family, Types of Family, Changing Patterns of Family

Hindu succession law, maintenance obligations, and the very idea of a ‘dependent’ in Indian statutes all assume a picture of the family — usually the joint family, several generations sharing property and obligations under one head. That picture is exactly what is shifting under law's feet as urban India moves toward smaller, nuclear households, and a lawyer drafting a will or arguing a maintenance claim needs to know which picture actually applies.

In two minutes

The family is the primary social institution organising reproduction, childrearing and early socialisation, existing historically as a joint or extended family and increasingly, in urban India, as a nuclear family, with law's assumptions about family obligation shifting alongside that change.

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