Breaking down the question

The command is analyse, which asks for more than description: the trends must be set out and their causes and significance explained. The phrase with examples is a direct instruction to illustrate each trend concretely, so an answer without examples cannot score well.

Contemporary trends points to how the family is changing under modernity — in structure, function, authority and diversity. The task is to identify the main directions of change and to relate them to broader social forces.

Threads to develop:

  • The structural trends — nucleation, smaller families and growing diversity.
  • The relational trends — changing gender roles and authority within the family.
  • The forces behind them — industrialisation, individualisation and modernity.

How to approach it

Open by noting that the family, far from being static, is undergoing rapid change everywhere, and that the dominant trends can be grouped as structural and relational. Anchor the discussion in the note on types and forms of family.

Then set out the trends one by one — nucleation, diversity, changing gender roles, later and fewer marriages — attaching a clear example to each. Explain the causes through industrialisation and individualisation, drawing on Parsons for structural fit and Giddens and Beck for the modern transformation of intimacy. Close with a balanced note on continuity amid change.

Model answer

The family is often imagined as timeless, yet it is among the most rapidly changing of social institutions, and several clear contemporary trends can be identified.

The first is the trend towards the nuclear family and smaller households. With industrialisation and urbanisation, the large joint or extended family has given way in much of the world to the compact unit of parents and children, better suited to a mobile, wage-earning economy. Talcott Parsons argued that the isolated nuclear family fits industrial society, which demands geographical and social mobility and separates work from home. In India, the classic joint family has increasingly fragmented, especially in cities, where nuclear households now predominate, though kin ties often persist.

A second, closely linked trend is growing family diversity. The single, dominant family form is being replaced by a plurality of arrangements — single-parent families, often headed by women after divorce or bereavement; reconstituted or step-families; dual-career households; and, increasingly, live-in relationships and same-sex partnerships that seek recognition. The rising rate of divorce and remarriage in many societies is a clear example of this pluralisation of family life.

A third trend concerns changing gender roles and authority within the family. The older patriarchal model, with a male breadwinner and a female homemaker, is giving way to more symmetrical arrangements as women enter paid work in large numbers and share in decision-making. Domestic authority has grown more negotiated and egalitarian, and relationships between spouses, and between parents and children, have become more companionate. Anthony Giddens describes a shift towards the pure relationship, sustained by emotional satisfaction rather than economic necessity or custom.

A fourth trend is the later and fewer marriage-and-childbearing pattern — rising age at marriage, smaller family size and, in many developed societies, more people living alone or choosing to remain childless. Declining fertility and the spread of the small family in urban India illustrate this shift.

These trends spring from common forces. Industrialisation and urbanisation separated home from work and rewarded mobility; the education and employment of women transformed gender roles; and what Ulrich Beck and Giddens call individualisation — the rise of personal choice, autonomy and self-fulfilment as guiding values — has loosened traditional obligations and made family bonds more a matter of negotiation than of ascription. The state, law and new reproductive and communication technologies have further reshaped family life.

At the same time, the analysis should note continuity amid change. The family has not disappeared; it remains the primary site of intimacy, socialisation and emotional support, and in India kinship networks retain great strength even within nuclear households. What we are witnessing is not the decline of the family but its transformation — a movement from a single, ascribed, patriarchal form towards a diverse, negotiated and more egalitarian set of arrangements.

Examiner's perspective

Examiners reward candidates who obey the instruction with examples, attaching a concrete illustration — the fragmenting Indian joint family, rising divorce and single-parent households, women's entry into work — to each trend. A purely abstract answer, however well-organised, forfeits marks.

The word analyse calls for causes as well as description, so the strongest scripts explain the trends through industrialisation, women's employment and individualisation, citing Parsons, Giddens or Beck to lend theoretical weight. A common weakness is to describe change as simple decline; the mature position stresses transformation and continuity, noting that the family persists in new forms. A balanced conclusion of this kind reads as sociologically confident within a 10-mark answer.