Family is the basic social unit

According to a recent study by an American Pew Research Centre, a majority of Indians completely or mostly agree with the notion that a wife must always obey her husband. The new report released on Wednesday looks into how Indians view gender roles at home and in society more generally. The report is based on a face-to-face survey of 29,999 Indian adults fielded between late 2019 and early 2020 before the Covid-19 pandemic broke out.

A home is where normally a man, his wife and their children live, and this makes a family. So, a family is a group of people intimately closed and they live together in a house where each member has to discharge his duties entrusted with for their own and their family's welfare.

In running such a family, one has to take the role of a guardian and such responsibility often falls on the head of the family i.e., father. Here, we see the responsibility being transferred to the head of the family, who is a male(father). So, traditionally, elder male in a home is respected and often obeyed. On the contrary, elder female in a home while an older male is alive is taken for granted.

At the same time, for a smooth functioning of a family, there should be harmonious, unanimous and synchronous working among family members. Otherwise, it will break down and will not function successfully making it a blot on society. A family is an essential and indispensable part of society. And family, being the basic factor (of course individual is the ultimate basic member) that makes the society, have to be run by a male at the helm.

Husband and wife are the primary members of a family and their children, born out of their wedlock later, also make the family more vibrant and meaningful. An ideal couple must be the basis of an ideal society. In order to maintain a happy family life, a wife is required to submit herself to her own husband.

This is well illustrated in the Bible in Ephesians 5:22-23(KJV)- "Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body." Such submission is a sine qua non in maintaining a peaceful and happy family. But at the same time, the husband is not spared without a rider.

In the same chapter 5:28- it is written- "So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. Moreover, chapter 5:25 says, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it."

T K Nandanan, Kochi