Impact of Urbanization, Industrialization and Feminist Movements on Family | Anthropology Optional for UPSC PDF Download

Urbanization

The Social Impacts Of Urbanization
It is now widely accepted that urbanization is as much a social process as it is an economic and territorial process. It transforms societal organizations, the role of the family, demographic structures, the nature of work, and the way we choose to live and with whom. It also modifies domestic roles and relations within the family, and redefines concepts of individual and social responsibility.
Fertility rates. Initially, the societal shift from rural to urban alters rates of natural population increase. There are no recorded examples of where this has not been true. Contrary to public perception, however, it first reduces the death rate, despite the often appalling living conditions in many cities, as in, for example, nineteenth-century Europe and North America and in present day cities in the developing world (Smith 1996). Only later does urbanization reduce the birth rate (i.e. the fertility rate). The time lag between declining death and birth rates initially means rapid urban population growth; subsequently, fertility rates drop sharply and the rate of growth of urban populations declines.
As a result, families become smaller relatively quickly, not only because parents have fewer children on average, but also because the extended family typical of rural settings is much less common in urban areas. Children are clearly less useful in urban settlements, as units of labor and producers, than in rural settings, and are more expensive to house and feed. In fact, fertility levels in developed countries have dropped so low that cities are seldom capable of reproducing their own populations. They grow, if at all, largely through in-migration from other cities or from rural areas—the latter is now a largely depleted source of population in Western countries—and increasingly through immigration.
Ironically, overpopulation in the Third World and historically low fertility levels in developed countries have combined to produce a massive immigration into those cities in the latter countries that serve as contemporary immigrant gateways or world cities (Sassen 2001; Castles and Miller 1998). Those cities, in turn, have been transformed, in social and ethno-cultural terms, as a result of this immigration (Polese and Stren 2000).
Families and living arrangements. The evolution to an urban society is also frequently equated with a decline in the status of the family, and with a proliferation of nontraditional family forms and new types of households. By nontraditional we mean those families without two parents and/or without children. This trend is in part a reflection of an increasing diversity in "choices of living arrangements." This concept is used in the scholarly literature to refer to the myriad of ways in which individuals in an urban society combine to form collective units (i.e., households). Those combinations may follow from marriage, the traditional arrangement, or from any other association of individuals within the housing system whether those individuals are related by marriage or blood, or are unrelated.
Historically, of course, living arrangements in the past or in rural areas were never as homogeneous or traditional as the literature would have us believe. Nevertheless, the last half century, notably in the Western countries, has witnessed an explosion in rates of household formation and a sharp increase in the diversity of household and family types. For most of the period since World War II, rates of household formation—that is, the propensity to establish a separate household—has been much higher (indeed 50% higher) than the rate of population growth, and the rate of nonfamily household formation (whose members are not related by blood or marriage) has been higher still. This proliferation has many causes, including rising incomes, higher divorce rates, lower marriage rates, and alternative life styles.

The highest propensities to form separate households, however, have been within two principal groups: the young and the elderly. The former includes single parents, the most rapidly growing household type in Western cities; the growth of the latter has been facilitated by increased longevity and improved health and social benefits. In previous generations, and in most rural societies, many of these individuals would have shared accommodation, often as part of extended family groupings. The result, again with respect to Western countries, is that average family size is now fewer than four persons, while average household size is fewer than three. In many older central cities, in fact, average household size is below two persons. This is in part a sign of success, reflecting improvements in housing and in our ability to afford to live alone, but it also reflects dramatic changes in how we choose to live and in our attitudes to marriage, family life, and social responsibility.
Links to labor markets. This diversity in living arrangements and family composition in urban societies is also closely linked to shifts in the world of work—in the urban economy and in occupations. Not only does urbanization involve obvious changes in employment and working life, it alters the relationships between households (the collective units of consumption) and labor markets (the production sector). Individuals work and earn wages, but it is households (and families) that spend those earnings. Thus, the composition of families and households influences the changing well-being of the individuals in those households as much as the occupational status of its members.
Two countervailing processes are at work here in reshaping the linkages between living arrangement and work. One is that over the last half century the proportion of the population in the labor force—that is, the participation rate—has increased, especially among married women. Historically, of course, women always had full-time jobs in pre-urban societies, but through the process of urbanization much of that work became marginalized as "domestic" (and unpaid) work. Second, the decline in average household size has tended to fragment the incomes of consuming units, usually meaning fewer wage earners per household. One rather obvious result of this intersection of changes in family composition and the labor market has been a deeper polarization in economic well-being among urban populations, which is especially marked between households with two or more workers and those with none.
Domestic relations. Such labor market changes are also interrelated, as cause and effect, with shifts in domestic relations inside the household and family. The impact of these changes have been most obvious for married women. Not only has their involvement in the formal (paid) labor market increased, but so too has their economic position within the family. This gives women more autonomy in decision making, but it has not been without drawbacks. For many women the challenge of balancing work, domestic responsibilities, and the imperatives of everyday urban life, have increased, not decreased. Smaller families, and the dispersion of extended families in contemporary urbanized societies, have in combination also reduced the level of kinship support systems available to these women.

Major Changes that Occurred in the Family Patterns after Industrialization
The 18th and 19th century industrial revolution, which has been largely technical in nature (brought changes in technology), has also brought with it the spirit of materialism and hedonism. This spirit has greatly affected the society as a whole—its economic and social values and ideology. Any change in the society has some bearing on the system of family—a basic institution of society.
Today, the family is not the same as it was before industrialization. Industrialization has changed the concept of the family largely. About a half century back, Burgess and Lock, in their book, The Family (1953) said that the family is moving fast or slowly ‘from institution to companionship’. Its united not by work and external pressures but by shared interests and affections.

The direction of change is from the traditional family system—usually extended or joint family system to some form of conjugal family system (neo-local and nuclear form) of which the kinship network is not strong. Commenting on this new form of family, William J. Goode (1963) argued that this nuclear family pattern is in itself a world revolution.
As a part of the revolution, the nuclear family emphasizes the importance of the freedom of the individual to choose his/her own life and control his/her own destiny, released in good part from the one’s rigid controls of extended kinship structures.
At the same time, we are experiencing the shrinking ties among kinship groups and reduction of the sense of responsibility that family members used to have for one another. Such a family is moving in harmony with the rest of our institutions.
Everywhere in the world, the family is changing from its old pattern and adapting to the new emerging society in accordance with the time. It is changing in size or perceptions, norms and role structures also. In pre-industrial era, the (agrarian) family was necessarily the centre of life for the individual.
It possessed major economic functions as a production unit, organized by a division of labour mostly based on sex and age. It not only socialized the young, it provided much other training of the child as well. A boy learned his occupation by working with his father at a younger age. Furthermore, in an agrarian society the kinship group maintained the aged, nursed the sick, buried the dead and provided for the mentally ill or physically crippled. It also ensured support for widows and orphans and made a place for stray cases of unmarried men and women. As a result, kinship became a most binding and obligatory relationship, regardless of personal feelings, requiring that family interests take precedence over individual one.
The family is no longer the all-encompassing social group; it once was. It has lost its age-old valued functions of rearing and caring (child-raising) and education of the child. Such loss of function reduces the dependence of the young on the family at an early age. Thus, the family loses its authority and control over the young.
The major changes that have occurred in the family after industrialization can be summarized in the following points
1. Decline of Extended Family System
With the impact of technology and industrial change, there is a worldwide movement towards small, nuclear family maintaining a separate and independent household and breaking down of the traditional extended (joint) family system and other types of kin groups.
Their influence is declining in every field of life. A modified extended family structure is emerging in which individual nuclear families retain considerable autonomy and yet maintain connections with other nuclear families or so-called ‘joint family’.
The tradi­tional pattern, i.e., extended or joint family, rarely exists anywhere in its purest forms. Now, there is a trend towards smaller family, i.e., fewer uncles and aunts and other relatives. But it does not mean that the extended family is totally dead. Mutual support between generations at times of birth, marriage or death still exists in some or the other form but in a modified form. Fissioned families are increasing day by day which are generally formed after marriages. Newly married couples establish their own family either in the same house or in the same city or in some other city or village. But relations are not totally severed.

2. Changing Authority Pattern
There is a change in the division of labour and authority in the family. Male authority is declining in the modern family. The concepts of ‘symmetrical family- (Young and Willnott, 1973) and ‘egalitarian family’ are taking place of traditional patriarchal family.
The authority is slipping from the hands of family elders because of new economic and political opportunities. Young couples do not rely on family elders for job instructions or education of their children. Because of the dual-career marriages (husband and wife both working), there is a significant change in the attitude towards equality between married partners.

3. Changing Status of Women
The rights of women are becoming more recognized in respect to both initi­ation of marriage and decision-making in the family. The ‘quite revolution’ in women’s employment along with the feminist movements has changed the status of women in the family. Now, they are no more chattel or deaf and dumb like animals.
4. Changing Economic Functions
The modern family is no longer united by shared work on the farm. It is now a unit of consumption instead of a unit of production as it was in the agrarian society. It is now united by feelings of companionship, affection and recre­ation only.
5. Free Choice of Mate Selection
A new freedom of personal choice, of freer opportunities for romantic love and sexual intimacy has now entered the society. The individualism, which indus­trialism had created, permeated all spheres of social life, not just economic; it encouraged the ideal of romantic love and free choice of mate. Young people began to give more attention to their own feelings, and less to parental wishes.
They also started paying court to whom they liked rather than whom their parents thought best. Kin arranged marriages, thus, are becoming less common. Even in India, which is a traditional society, this trend is increasing day by day in urban areas due to free mixing opportunities available in educa­tional institutions and at workplaces.

6. Decline in Family Size
Most married couples want to have children, but economic considerations force them to have smaller family with one or two children. Young people believe that reproduction is not the duty of all married couples. Today, a joint family often or more children living under one roof is rare to find. Children are no more economically necessary, unlike in an agrarian society. Neo-localism is devel­oping in which married couples live alone wherever they wish. Couples prefer to have a ‘car’ rather than a ‘child’ these days.
7. Changing Attitudes towards Sex and Marriage
There is a revolution in sexual attitudes and practices. Higher levels of sexual freedom (open expression of pre-marital and extra-marital sex) are developing in societies that were earlier very restrictive. For the young, sex has become as casual as having a cup of coffee together.
Pre-marital pregnancies have increased considerably in Western countries and America. There is an increase in male-female couples who choose to live together without marriage. This has given rise to the concepts of ‘living together,’ ‘living arrangements’ or ‘live-in relationships’.
Such couples engage in what is commonly called ‘cohabitation’. Because of these changes, some new forms of families have emerged such as families of unmarried couples, families of single or lone (single) parent and families of homosexuals.
8. Declining Trend in Non-essential Functions
The most of the socializing functions today, like child raising, education, occupational training, caring of elderly, etc., have been taken over by the outside agencies, such as creches, media, nursery schools, hospitals, occupational training centres, hospice institutions, funeral contractors, etc. These tasks were once exclusively performed by the family.
The protective functions of the family are on the verge of decline. For example, the function of providing help and shelter to the sick, aged and handicapped has been taken over by agencies like health institutions, old-age houses, deaf and dumb institutions, etc. However, these functions are still performed to some extent by the family in India because of the persistence of old traditions and values.
As the society is becoming more and more industrialized, parents can less and less transmit occupational succession to their children, especially in the case of the wage-earning working class and the salaried clerks and professionals. But where there is a family business, this is possible but that too is also changing because of specialized nature of many modern businesses. The affectionate and companionship functions have emerged as the most valued aspect of the modern conjugal family today. The tie between husband and wife is viewed as the most important bond holding the family together.
Though most of the other functions might have been taken over or being performed by other agencies, it is the only function which is still performed by the family. The other relationships like father/mother-in-law with daugh­ter-in-law have become subordinate relationships. These are interactional changes in the family.
Commenting over the family life in the modern space age in the 14th International Family Conference held at Rio de Janeiro, Christensen declared that family is, ‘little more than a “service station” for its members where they call in for sleep, food and other services, but in which they do not spend a lot of time and towards which they do not feel a great deal of loyalty’. 

Not surpris­ingly, it is widely perceived that a radical change is occurring in one of society’s key institutions. It is perceived by many that the institution of family is ‘in trouble’. New forces of change are gradually undermining the traditional system of family.
The old size of the family is giving way to the smallest unit (nuclear family) of human association, which is essential for the prime act of procreation, rearing and caring of the new-born child. Available evidence suggests that blood and marriage alone cannot bind families and communities together; some other adhesive is required, either common acceptance of gendered hierarchical relationship, or love and solidarity.
In the absence of both families tend to break down, renowned social philosopher Eric From once remarked about the declining trend of family: ‘We tend to love things more than people and to use people for personal advantage very much as we are things …. Frequently today people are valued for what they acquire or achieve more than for what they are.’ 

Commenting over the declining functions of the family, Talcott Parsons remarked that the family has shed some of its less necessary functions, such as economic, political, health, education, recreation, but it still performs the most important functions of socialization and ‘tension and emotional management’ which are keeping alive the institution of family in face of so many onslaughts on it.
Impact Of Feminist Movements On Family

1.  Feminist movements and the increased entry of women into the workplace beginning in the
   twentieth century has affected gender roles and the division of labor within the family.
2. Better education has resulted in greater financial independence and more career choices for women.
3. Women have begun to shun marriage. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2005, unmarried households became the majority of all U.S. households.
4. Even after they marry, many of today’s women put their careers above children, or put off having a family for several years.
5. The changing status of women has lead to a more equal division of household responsibilities.Husbands increased their participation by only a small amount and the wives reduced the number of hours they devote to various household tasks. The most pressing problem in a family as a result is that of child care. A majority of working mothers pay for child care, even if not on a daily basis.
6. It has resulted in children feeling deprived of mother’s attention. Many believe that this will effect children adversely leading to psychological problems and deviant behavior. But various studies have proved this notion as wrong.
7. It has affected the sex role attitudes of children. In general, when mothers work their children are more likely to approve of working women and of a more egalitarian division of domestic tasks.
8. The additional income of wives have improved the standards of families in which women work.
9. But some studies have reported that husbands of working wives experience less marital satisfaction with their marriages and a generally lower mental and physical well being than husbands whose wives stay at home.
10. With women becoming more independent and assertive, the divorce rates have shown an increasing trend.
11. The increased contribution of women to family income has given them a stronger voice in family decisions.
12. All these changes are substantial in some societies but insignificant in many.