Family Environment in Urban India Its Predictors, their Implications and Suggestions

The Indian family is recognized all over the world for its joint/extended structure, cohesiveness and harmony. But, since the last few years, Indian families are witnessing significant disheartening changes in its structure & functioning viz. disintegration of joint family set up, divorce, spousal abuse, disturbed parent child relationship etc. These problems of the modern Indian families, if left unchecked, would hamper its ideology. This book provides an insight on how the crucial determinants of the family environment like marital relationship, parent-child relationship & woman's employment/ educational status influence its structure & functioning. The results would enable Indian families realize that family subsystems significantly affect the family environment and in turn are significantly determined by woman s education level and employment status. It would thus, encourage them to promote women's education & egalitarian gender-role ideologies among its members. The results would also help human development personnel formulate strategies for creating or maintaining conducive family environment & dealing with relationship crisis so as to prevent breakdown of family.