Advantages of extended family for UPSC anthropology mains optional

The Advantages of the Extended Family :-

The extended family is clearly adaptive under certain economic and social conditions. Murdock’s survey indicated that the extended fam il у prevails in all types of predominantly culttvating societies. 

• economic; provide larger number of workers. food production and for producing handicrafts.  ownership of land becomes important; it is a source of pride, prestige, and power. A family becomes attached to the land, knows how to work it, and becomes reluctant to divide it, keeping land intact, which provides additional security for individuals in times of crisis. 
• This relationship between land and family type is supported by evidence from India showing that the higher castes, who own more land and other property, are more likely to have extended families than the lower castes. 
• There are also the values of companionship in the extended family as daily activities are carried out jointly by a number of kin working together. 
•  a sense of participation and dignity for the older person, who lives out his or her last years surrounded by respectful and affectionate kin. still, the life of individuals past their prime is not always enviable even in these societies. When sons begin to raise families of their own, extended families frequently split into parts. As the father loses his productive abilities, he is slowly divested of his former status and power. In a Fijian society studied by Sahlins (1957), the people say, "his time is up" - and an old man literally waits to die. Although the Fijian ideal is that an old father should be properly cared for by his brothers and sons, "actually he sinks into a pitiable position. In the old days, he might even be killed, today he is barely kept alive, his counsel is never sought and he is more often considered silly than wise".
•  nuclear family appears to be adapted to a modern industrialized society, many social scientists have predicted that the extended family will be modified in the direction of the independent nuclear family as modernization and industrialization spread. The corollary of this assumption is that, although the extended family has advantages among cultivators or economically marginal populations, these advantages become liabilities with urbanization and industrialization. Milton Singer (1968). an anthropologist who has studied the families of industrial leaders in the city of Madras,India disagrees. He points out that the patrilineal joint family as it exists in India is a flexible institution. The principles of mutual obligation of extended kin, joint ownership of property, and an authority structure in which the male household head takes responsibility for making decisions after consultation with junior members can easily be and have been successfully transferred to the management of modern corporations.