Write short note: Role of Family in Social Control. (2005)
Social control refers to the processes by which a society secures conformity to its norms (Edward A. Ross, Social Control, 1901). The family is the first and most pervasive agency of informal control. It shapes conduct through affection, example and sanction long before the school, the law or the state intervene.
Mechanisms of control
- Internalisation through socialisation. Talcott Parsons saw primary socialisation as the internalisation of society’s values, so that conformity becomes self-control. George Herbert Mead’s “significant others” and Charles Horton Cooley’s primary group place the family at the root of the social self and conscience.
- Social bonds. In Causes of Delinquency (1969), Travis Hirschi traced conformity to attachment, commitment, involvement and belief, with attachment to parents at the core. Weak family bonds predict delinquency. Later, with Michael Gottfredson (1990), he linked low self-control to ineffective parenting.
- Sanctions. Praise and affection reward conformity, while scolding, withdrawal of love, punishment and the threat of disinheritance penalise deviance.
- Regulation of sex, marriage and property. Families police mate choice, legitimacy and inheritance, which keeps kinship and property lines orderly.
The Indian family as an agency of control
- The joint family rests on the authority of the karta, the principles of seniority and sex, and the subordination of individual to collective interest. Family honour (izzat) is a powerful informal sanction.
- Uma Chakravarti (“Conceptualising Brahmanical Patriarchy”, 1993) shows that caste purity depends on controlling women’s sexuality. Families therefore enforce endogamy through women.
- Prem Chowdhry (Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples, 2007) documents how Haryana families, backed by caste khap panchayats, punish same-gotra and inter-caste marriages.
- In Shakti Vahini v. Union of India (2018), the Supreme Court held that choosing a partner is part of personal liberty under Article 21. It issued preventive and punitive guidelines against honour crimes, so the state now controls the family’s own excesses.
Critical perspectives
- Marxist: Louis Althusser placed the family among the ideological state apparatuses that reproduce obedient labour and capitalist relations.
- Feminist: control is gendered. Daughters face tighter surveillance than sons, and domestic violence is itself a form of control: 22.3% of ever-married women aged 18–49 reported spousal violence in NFHS-6 (2023–24).
- Jacques Donzelot (The Policing of Families, 1977) reversed the view. Modern states, doctors and social workers govern society through the family by regulating parenting and hygiene.
- Interactionist: children negotiate rules rather than simply absorbing them.
Changing role
Parental authority is diluted by schools, peers, mass media and smartphones, and by legal rights of the individual. Examples include the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007, under which the state now obliges children to support ageing parents. Nuclear and dual-earner households also offer less continuous supervision.
Conclusion
The family remains the primary and most intimate agency of social control, the place where norms become conscience. Its control, however, is not neutral: it can protect and integrate, or coerce and exclude, especially women and those who defy caste norms. Contemporary India shows a two-way shift: the family still disciplines individuals, and the constitutional state increasingly disciplines the family.