Browsing by Subject "Middleclass Family"

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    Daughters in patriarchal social order: A study on girl child in middle class families in Siliguri
    (University of North Bengal, 2022) Karmakar, Priyanka; Roy, Sanjoy Kumar
    The title of my PhD thesis is "Daughters in a Patriarchal Social Order: A Study on Girl Child in Middle-class Families in Siliguri". Girl child in India has always been subjected to discrimination and negligence due to the overarching patriarchal ideals that value boychild over girl child. The social mechanisms for gender discrimination are reproduced in the family, in the peer groups, in the community, in language, consumption, at work place and in all other social institutions. The larger forces like globalisation, the market economy and consumerism have compelled urban middle-class parents to rationalise their family size and imbibe hedonism. Demographers have asserted that rationalisation of family size culminates to masculinisation of family, thereby reinforcing unwantedness of daughters. A counter-reality to this phe:1omenon of unwantedness of daughters is that alongside rationalization of family size by restricting reproduction to one child or two children, the educated urban middleclass, who are regarded as the intellectual class and harbinger of social change, seem to be freeing themselves, at least partially, of male-child bias and appear to be content with one daughter or even two daughters. They are repudiating the practice of daughter aversion and are welcoming them in the family. The focal point of this study is to reconstruct the understanding of the changing position of daughter/ daughters in the family, be it a single-daughter family or a family with two daughters or family with a son and a daughter and its implications on the girl child/children and for the gender relation at the larger societal level. The study focuses on reconstructing the praxis of 'acceptance' of and 'preference' for the daughters and the socially shHred perceptions behind such practices. The study is empirical in nature. Data pertaining to the research has been collected singlehandedly. The sample for the study, which comprises of urban middle-class families of Siliguri is categorised as (l) families with single daughter, (2) families having two daughters (3) families having one daughter and a son, and ( 4) families having more than one sons and (or) daughters. The rational of this sampling is that I wanted to compare the attitudes of the parents towards single daughters or two daughters and towards the son and daughters and examine how the elements of patriarchy and gender preference work in the micro locale of the interpersonal relations in family. The study exclusively covered the Bengali middle-class families who form the dominant ethnic community of Siliguri. I studied 120 Bengali households, selecting 30 respondents from each of the four categories mentioned above. A total number of 60 households from the Marwari community have also been incorporated in the study with a purpose to grasp the comparative perspectives in attitude towards daughters at the cross-cultural level. The thesis has been arrnngc