New Delhi: On 15th May every year the world observes the International Day of Families. As the world battles the coronavirus pandemic and, in most countries, people are stuck in their homes due to lockdowns, there may be a renewed understanding of the importance of family. The family is central to Indian culture. Everything including much of our cinema revolves around the needs of the family. Over the years, especially as millennials are getting married and producing offspring the idea of a family has also changed over the years, and according to a report by United Nations, General Assembly Economic and Social Council family size are changing.

‘Families around the world are changing, many becoming smaller as the number of single-parent households grows. Currently, 65 percent of all families are made up of either couples living with children of any age (38 percent) or couples living with both children and extended family members, such as grandparents (27 percent). Single-parent households constitute 8 percent of the whole and are mostly composed of women with children (84 percent). In sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia, close to one-third of all households include extended family members, but that proportion is shrinking, owing to rural-to-urban migration, among other factors.’

As more women enter the workforce, traditional roles are changing in the family. It has become necessary for both partners to share household labour equally.

‘As an increasing number of women take part in the formal and informal labour force while continuing to assume a disproportionate burden of household work in comparison with men, work-family balance is more difficult to achieve. The imperative of ensuring gender equality in the family is, therefore, gaining more attention.’

With greater acceptance of LGBTQ issues and many countries such as Canada, the United States, South Africa among others legalising same-sex marriages, the family is no longer residing within the patriarchal norms of the man as the head of the family and the woman as a subordinate. India has yet to make this change for its LGBTQ community.

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