How do you assess the changing patterns in kinship relations in societies today? (2023, 2021)
Kinship is the socially recognised network of relationships based on descent (consanguinity) and marriage (affinity). Classical anthropology, from A. R. Radcliffe-Brown to Irawati Karve, treated it as a fixed structure of groups and rules. Today kinship is not dissolving. It is moving from ascribed structure to chosen, negotiated relatedness, and unevenly so.
Changing patterns
- From lineage to network. Clans, lineages and co-residential joint households have lost functions. William J. Goode (World Revolution and Family Patterns, 1963) predicted a worldwide drift to the conjugal family. Eugene Litwak’s modified extended family better captures what survives: dispersed kin who keep up support without living together. India’s average household size fell from 4.6 to 4.4 between NFHS-4 and NFHS-5 (2019–21). Yet record remittances of US$135.5 billion in 2024–25 (RBI) show kin obligation stretching across continents.
- Vertical over lateral ties. Falling fertility (India’s TFR is 2.0 in NFHS-6, 2023–24) and longer lives produce Julia Brannen’s beanpole family: more living generations, fewer siblings and cousins. Grandparent childcare and elder care gain weight.
- Individualisation. Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim (The Normal Chaos of Love, 1990) and Anthony Giddens (The Transformation of Intimacy, 1992) argue that relationships now rest on negotiation, not duty; Giddens calls this the pure relationship. Divorce, remarriage and step-families create binuclear kin webs.
- Gender and inheritance. In Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma (2020), the Supreme Court held daughters to be coparceners by birth, which dilutes the agnatic principle. NFHS-5 found 18% of households female-headed, up from 15%.
- Kinship beyond blood and law. Kath Weston (Families We Choose, 1991) documented queer “chosen families”. Janet Carsten (After Kinship, 2004) recast kinship as relatedness made through care and shared living. Surrogacy separates genetic, gestational and social parenthood, and India now regulates it under the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021. In Deepika Singh v. CAT (2022), the Supreme Court held that “atypical families” (unmarried partners, queer couples, single parents) deserve equal legal protection.
- New alliances. Skewed sex ratios drive cross-region marriages into Haryana, which breach caste and linguistic rules of alliance (Ravinder Kaur).
Assessment: change with continuity
- Contested, not linear. In Supriyo Chakraborty v. Union of India (2023), the Supreme Court declined to recognise same-sex marriage. Since January 2025, Uttarakhand’s Uniform Civil Code has required live-in couples to register. The state re-regulates intimacy rather than withdrawing.
- Resilient structures. Caste endogamy, arranged marriage and kin-based business and political networks persist. I. P. Desai showed functional jointness surviving separate residence. A. M. Shah showed that much apparent nuclearisation is a phase of the household’s developmental cycle.
- Feminist caution. “Negotiated” families still leave most care work to women, and chosen kin often arise from rejection by kin of origin.
- Eurocentrism. The decline thesis generalises from the West. Asian societies show adaptive jointness rather than convergence.
Conclusion
Kinship is best assessed as diversification and deinstitutionalisation, not decline. Rules of descent and alliance are giving way to practices of care, choice and legal recognition, while caste, property and state regulation keep older structures alive. The task has shifted from mapping kinship systems to studying how people do kinship, extending David Morgan’s idea of “family practices” to the wider kin universe.