Heart is Where the Home is

“A house with just brick and cement is a building; people with their love living in that house makes it a home” – goes the old saying. In our Indian society family has always held an important place and the head of the family, often a male member because of the patriarchal nature, has always been given due respect. The concept of family has always been attributed proper respect. Family in Indian society has always been seen as a joint family system unlike the family system of the developed countries, which is nuclear.

There is a social, cultural and ethical value, which is intermittent in the family system of India. Home is a place, which is supposed to be a sacred place where one can come back to in the time of distress. It is one of those immovable properties which one desires to have as soon as possible in life and it goes on from one generation to another. Today if we seen on the worldwide perspective, we can see that since the beginning the western countries have put foreword the benefit of nuclear families. But today even the nuclear families are breaking away. The children as soon as they reach adolescence move out to leave on their own. The concept of old age home where old parents are put, because their children can not take care of them is very much a western concept, but is slowly invisibly creeping into the Indian society. Not only this there is an increasing amount of divorce rate in these countries. The impact can be seen in the developing counties also but at a much slower pace. Marriages do not work, relationships tend to break, nobody relies on the other, and all these are nothing but the mirror image of low and un-nurtured family values. People give their most of the time in just increasing their bank balances but they are least interested in shaping up their personal relationships. We the Indians can be proud of this fact that since time immemorial we have given much more importance towards family and home rather than earning money. Though there are instances when the great mahabarata was fought for power, supremacy and kingdom, but it also shows that nothing is immortal, so why to fight against ones loved ones.

Family system have always been important in our system of agricultural economy where more hands means more help, but the population is on rise at an alarming rate and governments of different countries are urging people to adopt small family system. China has already adopted the one child norm. This being the world scenario there is an urgency for the betterment of the family system. There is a need for a nuclear family system because then the dependency ratio also decreases and since all of us know that savings of household sector is maximum, therefore the growth rate of GDP of the country. But in the way of adopting the governmental policies we should not for once forget about giving our next generation the value system of the Indian family system. They should imbibe this value since their childhood. Only they the saying, “home sweet home” can be fruitful.