Dynamics of Change in the Modern Hindu Family

DYNAMICS OF CHANGE IN THE MODERN HINDU FAMILY is a deep and interpretational, sociological study of the present contemporary Hindu Family in the urban areas undergoing a process of change during some past fifty years and specially after the Independence. The process of change has effected the roles and role obligations of the family members as well as their functional discharge. The present study, while assessing family change on a broad spectrum, specially analyses these changes in the roles and their functions. With this purpose in view the study was empirically carried in the selected urban areas of Bhopal in the three layers of the middle class ? the upper middle, the middle-middle and the lower middle, and among four caste folds of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Kayastha.
This empirical study, spread to some five years, has revealed some broad conclusions on the process of family change marked during recent years. It also analyses how role obligations, role expectations and role discharge undergoing a processional change under the influence of higher education and higher status and how joint Hindu family gets changed to small joint family and nuclear family.
The study is the most recent one in the area of family change and needs a special attention by the readers for its proper assessment.