Recently one of my friends shared his experience of not being able to secure a flat on rent because owners typically wanted to rent only to someone who is staying with a family. This brought into focus the prejudiced mindset of people and led me to think about the ‘family’ as a unit.
In a country such as ours one encounters a lot of prevalent biases simply by going out in search of a house. Some of the manifest biases are on the lines of caste, religion, food preferences and the ‘character’ of the person. Character is often decided on the basis of whether he/she has a ‘family’, meaning husband, wife and kids. Those who stay alone, be it a girl or a boy, who might or might not be having the stereotypical kind of family in the wake of such prejudices, often find it difficult to secure a house for themselves. Here one needs to ask whether conforming to the stereotypical image of the family is good enough evidence to prove character.
I had barely started giving it a thought than glimpses from my primary school social science textbooks, now called EVS, started rolling in front of my eyes. I recalled seeing images of a family and a home in the textbooks with the title ‘my home’ and ‘my family’. This image usually had a circle around it besides an encircled image in which there was a man figure, a woman figure, a girl and a boy. One may not find a direct relationship between the circle and the image under it, but undoubtedly it reinforces the stereotypical image of the family as the ‘ideal’, undermining the alternative structures of a family. Certainly this puts a lot of pressure on those who deviate from the stereotypical notions. Why are we obsessed with having ‘families’ of our own? Why do we make it a parameter to determine the character of a person? Are family units that sacred? Or does having a family correct the character of those in it? This needs a deconstruction.
Do we have enough evidence to believe that the family is a holy unit? Data on the rates of incest, honour killings, marital rape, domestic violence and dowry deaths have a different story to tell. Many such crimes originate within the structures of the family. According to a report from 2018 there were more than 300 reported cases of honour killings in the preceding three years. The National Family Health Survey 4 discloses that 31% of married women have experienced physical, sexual or emotional violence inflicted by their husbands. It also mentions that around 78.6% of never-married women in the 15-49 age group who faced sexual violence had never told anyone about it.
On domestic violence, the survey reports that one in every third woman above the age of 15 in India has experienced domestic violence.
Another report in 2016 maintains that every single day, 21 women are murdered for dowry in India. Similarly, a report released by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in 2007 notes that 52.91% of boys and 47.09% of girls were abused in the family environment, of which 88.6% were abused by their own parents. Further, 83% of half the children who reported having faced emotional abuse were victims at the hands of their own parents. These are instances of tangible violence in the form of reported cases, leaving out unreported cases. The full facts will certainly provide a grim picture. Most often, those who are subordinate to the head of the family are expected to behave obediently even if it means violation of their dreams, desires, dignity and rights. The suicide rate and the rate of mental health disorders would further reveal the kind of suppression and pressures one goes through while not being supported by their families.
The existing structure of families as such is an outcome of patriarchy, and the patriarchal rules and norms on which families run cannot be free from oppression and violence until we have alternative structures and get rid of patriarchal mindset.
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