Universality of the family

Murdock's hypothesis

In 1949 the American anthropologist George Peter Murdock published the results of a major survey of kinship and social organization in a worldwide sample of 250 societies. Murdock's starting point was the family, and on the basis of his survey he argued that the nuclear family is universal, at least as an idealized norm.

All of the societies in Murdock's sample exhibited some form of family organization. More specifically, although many societies were organized into polygamous families and extended families, even these had as their basis at least two nuclear families per polygamous or extended family household. The polygamous (compound) family was made up of two or more nuclear families affiliated through plural marriage, while the extended family consisted of two or more nuclear families joined together through parent–child ties. In Murdock's sample, 47 societies had only the nuclear family level, while 53 possessed polygamous but not extended families, 92 had some form of extended (including polygamous-extended) family organization, and the remainder proved impossible to categorize on the basis of information available at the time. Murdock's key point was that, even where complex forms of family organization occur, nuclear families are still found as the basis of the more complex forms.

Murdock argued further that the nuclear family is not only universal but also universally important. Earlier writers had argued that in many tribal societies the nuclear family is insignificant and serves no important functions in the lives of most people. Murdock, in denying this view, pointed out that the key functions of the nuclear family and its universal status are most apparent when viewed in reference to the relationships that make it up. The key functions include the sexual, economic, reproductive, and educational aspects of the family. The relationships include the bonds between husband and wife, father and son, father and daughter, mother and son, mother and daughter, brother and brother, sister and sister, and brother and sister. These eight relationships have come to be known as those of primary kinship, and they are normally the relationships through which all more distant ties of kinship are traced.

The Nāyar case

The Nāyar family evokes interest because it casts doubt on the universality of both the nuclear family and the institution of marriage. The Nāyars are a high-caste group in southwestern India. Modern Nāyar families are not appreciably different from those of other Hindu groups, but before around 1792, when the British assumed control over the area where they live, Nāyar family life was very different.

According to a number of scholars who studied 18th- and 19th-century reports on their social organization, marriage did not exist among the Nāyars, although certain customs that bear a resemblance to aspects of marriage did. In particular, these included the tali-tying ceremony and legitimate unions between a woman and a series of lovers or “husbands” known as sambandham partners.

A tali is a gold or silver emblem that, in other parts of India, is tied around a woman's neck by her husband during the wedding ceremony. Among the Nāyars it was tied instead by a man of equal or higher status, sometimes a non-Nāyar, on a Nāyar girl during a ceremony that otherwise resembled more an initiation rite than a marriage. Several girls received talis at the same time. Some Nāyar girls removed their talis soon after the ceremony (which would never be done elsewhere in India), and in no case did the Nāyar tali-tying ceremony imply an enduring sexual relationship between the girl and her tali-tier.

In contrast, the sambandham relationship involved no religious ceremony, but it did involve a sexual union. Each woman took a series of partners through her life. She could, in fact, be involved in more than one such relationship at a time. (The explanation for such an arrangement may lie in the fact that the Nāyars were traditionally a warrior caste, women being left alone to look after their households and children while the men went to war.) Apart from gifts to his partners, a man had no obligations within the sambandham relationship. His only strong ties were to the family in which he grew up, which included his mother and other relatives related through his mother, such as his sisters and brothers. The father was not socially important, and a man had no obligations toward his children. Nevertheless, he did have obligations, through his female relatives, to a kin group including his mother, mother's mother, mother's siblings, and sisters' children. His responsibilities were to his sisters' children, not his own, and his sisters' sambandham partners' responsibilities were to their sisters' children.

It is doubtful that the term nuclear family accurately applies to this arrangement. Some scholars use the term subnuclear family, which retains the notion of family organization, for such an arrangement, and indeed the traditional Nāyar subnuclear family bears some resemblance to the one-parent family in Western society. The Nāyar system can also be regarded as separating the two phases of Hindu marriage and two or more of the roles normally ascribed to a Hindu husband. Among other Hindus (and indeed among the Nāyars today), the tali-tier and the lover are the same person, whereas in the past the Nāyars held these two roles to be distinct.

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