10 Main Advantages and Disadvantages of Joint Family!

Hey my reader friend, why do you want to know the advantages and disadvantages of joint family?

The nuclear family, and joint family, and their pros and cons are a few famous topics in the essay writing space. Unfortunately, these topics are too formalized and restricted to writing essays and giving talks on the stages on special occasions.

What if we simplify these concepts and see how they are related to our daily lives? Is there a possibility of eliminating the disadvantages of a big family?

Let us try to find answers to such basic questions in this blog post. Read till the end to avoid the possibility of missing some important points that may help you to get new insights.

How to Understand The Advantages and Disadvantages of Joint Family?

Before we directly jump into the pros and cons of big families, it’s important to know the contexts behind them. There are differences in interpreting a situation between an extremely suffering person, a casually bored one, a person who doesn’t want to leave the comfort zone at all, and another who wants to explore new possibilities, etc.

Hence, considering both the individual and family standpoints will help you to understand the merits and demerits of joint families in a better way.

Now we have set the foundation correctly, Let’s begin;

Advantages:

1. The Feeling of Security:

Our actions are naturally based on confidence when we feel secure. One way to feel secure is to be surrounded by people.

Especially, children are the one who needs such security at least in their early stage of life. The study “Children’s Security in the Context of Family Instability and Maternal Communications” has reported that;

” For children, the family is the primary source of protection and stability. When the family context is instead associated with chaos and unpredictability, children may be left with a lack of confidence in the family as able to provide a predictable, secure environment”.

As there are more members in a joint family, the possibility of being in a secure environment increases. This is also beneficial to those who feel lonely very often.

2. Availability of Helping Hands:

Mutually helping is a common activity in a friendly and healthy relationship.

Here are a few points on how the joint family is beneficial in terms of the availability of helping hands.

• Helping on health-related issues: If any of the family members have some health issues, there are people to show some care and concern. For instance- the help may be as simple as reminding and giving medicine to a bedridden family member.
• Helping in kitchen works: In big families, there is more kitchen-related work. So generally women do get help from other members of the family. Helping in washing the dishes, and chopping vegetables are a couple of tasks that could be named here. Of course, you can not ignore the fact that we can not find this kind of benefit in all joint families.
• Looking after the babies: living in a friendly joint family is one of the noticeable benefits to parents who have a small baby. The other experienced parents of the family help in calming down the baby while it cries or looking after it whenever there is a need.

3. Joint Family Helps to Understand The Value of Sharing:

True sharing is a way to feel happy. Because it prevents us from being unnecessarily selfish.

A large number of members and various situations provide opportunities to share in a joint family. Then what are those sharing items or opportunities?

• Food
• House/ space
• Wealth or equivalents
• Time and Energy
• Happiness

You can even say that “a joint family helps to learn the art of sacrificing”. The art here is to understand the difference between necessary and unnecessary sacrificing.

4. It’s a Good Emotional Support:

How to control emotions in relationships and family matters is a challenging question for almost everyone.

Here comes the advantage of collective families. Usually, there are at least one or two members who can deal with situations objectively. Such members help others to manage their emotions in situations like career losses, bad health, misunderstandings in relations, etc.

5. It Provides Good Learning Opportunities:

A joint family is a mini-society in itself. So it provides great learning opportunities under the same roof.

Let’s consider a few among them;

a. Relationship Management:

Generally, people and conflicts go together. There are various types of relationships and more members in a mutual family. There is a major difference in roles and responsibilities, needs, wants, and requirements of members. It demands good people skills to manage all relationships and the entire family in the right way.

b. Wealth Management:

The requirements and the movement of money in big families are high. Here the elder members are conscious of the difference between needs and wants. Identifying ways of wealth creation, prioritizing the order expenses and many other skills can be directly learned being in a joint family.

c. Leader vs Labour:

Giving and receiving orders/instructions is common in every family. The frequency and number of instructions are naturally high in big families. This helps you to understand yourself in terms of a leader, only labor or the possibility of a good combination of having both qualities.

d. The Value of Branding:

Irrespective of the scale of publicity of the family, it’s every member’s responsibility to manage if not grow the values, good qualities, the name, morals, and ethics of the joint family. Elder members are skilled in executing and monitoring these family branding-related matters.

Now don’t get me wrong by saying “These are only commerce subjects, what about others?”

Cooking-related secrets, basic first aid skills, communication tricks, and many more subjects can be learned while living in collective families. Though these opportunities may exist in small families as well, the situation and its repetitiveness are different in big families.

Before we move on I would like to mention a quote published by The Hindu (thehindu.com) in “Famous quotes on education“, that is;

“Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain.”

John F. Kennedy

Disadvantages:

1. Noisy Family Environment:

If you’re a person who likes to spend time alone, then the joint family is disadvantageous to you. One, or the other topic keeps on wandering among a large number of members in such big families.

It becomes hard to differentiate the necessary and unnecessary topics in a collective family. The volume of various issues and the wide range of relationships make it difficult to handle easily.

This noisy environment leads to giving unnecessary suggestions and interfering in everyone’s personal space.

2. Dominance of Authority:

Yes! We can not deny the fact that it is challenging to manage a big group of people in a family. But when the elder members or people who handle the major responsibility of the family miss use the power, it turns into a disadvantage to others to live in such a family.

A few areas in which the authority reflects are;

• No freedom to ask questions about family culture, rules, and regulations. Irrespective of their relevancy, members must follow whatever parameters have been set by the elders or the previous generation.
• Following a particular dress code.
• Restrictions to maintain a particular food culture.
• Lack of freedom for young members to create and build their careers.

3. Difficulty of Solving Conflicts:

Every human being wishes to be in a conflict-free state of mind. Achieving this while living in a combined family is a great challenge.

Why?

Different needs, requirements, opposite opinions, and a lack of flexible mindset of members disturb the unitary movement of the family. This happens even in the micro family of just two persons. But complexity is greater in macro families because of the added number of members in it.

To name a few- conflicts of taste and preferences related to food, wealth distribution-related matters, and clashes between children which carryforwards to elder members. Conflicts may start on these occasions and reflect in a different way like in the above image. All these are the barriers to solving joint family problems.

4. Problem of Inequality:

The size and its complexity of issues make it difficult to bring equality in various aspects in a big family.

Here are some examples of situations where you can find inequality;

• Treating the family children unequally.
• Every member is not ready to take and handle the responsibility equally.
• Gender discrimination in terms of defined works.

Of course, I’m not talking about mathematical equality here. It is mostly impossible to achieve in any family for that matter. However, inequality by dominance and ignorance are the main factors that affect the growing children of the family as well.

5. Over-Rated Family Name:

There are downsides to living in well-known joint families. It feels a burden when a member of such a family wants to live as he/she wants to. It creates pressure to act in a defined way and prevents creativity.

On the other side, many known joint family members use their family names to play power games. I mean, to influence surrounding people in a wrong way or to mislead the public at large.

Again, though this issue can be seen even in a small family, the impact and the intensity are much greater in big families. That makes all the difference.

Is it Possible to Eliminate Disadvantages in a Joint Family?

It can not be answered as yes or no directly. Because the question is subject to the following factors;

• Who wants to eliminate the disadvantages- Young members of a joint family may not be able to do so due to the lack of decision-making ability and power.
• Inter-dependent nature of the disadvantages- For instance, the possibility of eliminating authoritative disadvantage is linked to the problem of inequality.
• Patience to work on long-term solutions- Finding ways to eliminate the disadvantages, requires a great deal of patience, interest, and intensity.

It’s easier said than done. A passionate person may eliminate the disadvantages to a large extent. Even if he/she fails to eliminate the drawbacks, he/she’ll succeed in managing them efficiently and effortlessly.

Conclusion:

The size of the family has a major impact on the advantages and disadvantages of a joint family. To keep it simple yet useful, I have considered only the main points in this blog post.

Benefits mentioned above such as the availability of helping hands, knowing the value of sharing, and learning opportunities are unique in themselves. Similarly, the noisy environment, the problem of inequality, and the difficulty of solving conflicts are the major drawbacks of living in a big family.

You and I have also tried to examine the possibility of the elimination of disadvantages where we find it is subject to a few conditions.

Is there anything else you would like to add? Comment your reply.

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