Breaking down the question
Again the question is in two parts. The first asks for definitions — what do you mean by marriage and family — and expects clear, sociologically grounded conceptions rather than everyday descriptions. The second, weightier part asks you to discuss the structural and functional changes in family in modern society. The word discuss invites a rounded, evidenced treatment, and the twin terms structural and functional provide the organising framework.
The trap is to define marriage and family loosely and then drift into a vague lament about the "breakdown" of the family. A disciplined script keeps two distinctions sharp: structure refers to the form and composition of the family — its size, membership, residence and authority pattern — while function refers to what the family does — the tasks it performs for its members and for society. Modern society has transformed both, and the changes are best read as reorganisation rather than simple decline.
Anchor the definitional half in the note on types and forms of family, which supplies the classificatory vocabulary the answer needs.
How to approach it
Devote the opening to tight definitions of marriage and family, noting the range of forms each can take. Then structure the body cleanly into two blocks — structural changes and functional changes — so the examiner can see you have addressed both terms in the question.
Under structure, treat the shift from joint or extended households towards the nuclear form, changing residence and authority patterns, smaller size and the rise of new family types. Under function, use the classic idea of the loss or transfer of functions to specialised institutions, balanced against the intensification of the remaining core functions. Close with a judgement: the modern family is not disappearing but adapting. Cite Murdock, Parsons and Goode to lend theoretical weight, and use Indian illustrations where possible.
Model answer
Marriage may be defined as a socially approved and relatively enduring union between individuals which establishes rights and obligations between them, regulates sexual relations, and legitimises the children born of it. It is a social institution that varies widely across societies in its forms — monogamy and polygamy, endogamy and exogamy — but everywhere it creates recognised kinship ties. Family, in George Murdock's influential formulation, is a social group characterised by common residence, economic co-operation and reproduction, including adults of both sexes and their children. It is the primary unit of socialisation and the basic building block of kinship. Families too take many forms — nuclear and joint, patrilineal and matrilineal, patrilocal and matrilocal — but all organise reproduction, nurture and the transmission of culture.
In modern society, the forces of industrialisation, urbanisation, education, market employment and the spread of individualist and egalitarian values have reshaped both the structure and the functions of the family.
Structural changes. The most visible change is the movement from large joint or extended households towards the smaller nuclear family of parents and children. Talcott Parsons argued that industrial society favours the isolated nuclear family because it fits the demands of geographical and social mobility, and William J. Goode observed a worldwide trend towards the conjugal family accompanying industrialisation. Household size has shrunk with declining fertility. Residence patterns have loosened as employment draws couples away from the ancestral home, and neolocal residence has become common. Authority has shifted from the patriarch of the joint family towards a more egalitarian and conjugal pattern in which the husband–wife bond, rather than the wider lineage, forms the family's core. Alongside these trends new forms have multiplied — dual-earner households, single-parent families, and, in Western societies, cohabitation and same-sex partnerships — widening the very definition of family. In India these changes are uneven: the joint family persists as a sentiment and as a network of obligation even where households have become nuclear in form.
Functional changes. Classical sociology described a loss or transfer of functions, as institutions once performed within the family passed to specialised agencies. Production has moved from the household to the factory and office, so the family is now a unit of consumption rather than production. Education has largely passed to schools and colleges; health care to hospitals; the care of the aged and the destitute increasingly to the state and the market; recreation to commercial providers. Religious and protective functions have similarly weakened. Parsons summarised this as the family losing its peripheral functions while retaining and intensifying its basic ones: the primary socialisation of children and the stabilisation of adult personalities. The emotional and psychological role of the family has thus deepened even as its economic and educational roles have contracted; the modern family is increasingly a haven of intimacy and companionship, held together by affection rather than economic necessity.
These changes must be read with care. The language of "breakdown" is misleading. What has occurred is a structural differentiation — a reorganisation in which the family specialises in what it does best while other institutions take over the rest. New strains have certainly appeared: the isolated nuclear family can be fragile, individualism weakens obligation, and the erosion of joint-family support has left the elderly and the vulnerable more exposed, which is why strengthened social support mechanisms have become a policy concern. Yet the family remains a near-universal institution because its core functions of reproduction, nurture and emotional security are not easily replaced.
In sum, marriage and family are enduring institutions that regulate reproduction and organise kinship, but their form and tasks are historically variable. Modern society has narrowed the family's structure towards the nuclear and egalitarian, and has narrowed its functions towards the emotional and socialising core, transferring the rest to specialised institutions. The result is not the disappearance of the family but its continual adaptation to a changing social order.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners look for the two halves of the question to be answered in proportion, with definitions that are sociological — invoking Murdock's criteria for the family, for instance — rather than commonsensical. The high-scoring scripts keep the structural and functional threads explicitly separated, because that is the framework the question itself supplies.
The commonest weakness is the nostalgic "the family is breaking down" essay, which asserts decline without analysis. Strong answers reframe the changes as reorganisation and differentiation, drawing on Parsons and Goode, and balance loss of functions against the intensification of socialisation and emotional support. Indian illustration — the resilience of the joint family as sentiment and network — and a measured concluding judgement mark out the best responses.