ABSTRACT
Bernard S. Cohn and Ralph W. Nicholas were among the first to attempt an anthropological interpretation of structural trends in the Indian family. A key phrase in Nicholas's study of the economics of family types is: "What creates the appearance that the joint family system is breaking down is that in each generation a number of joint families are partitioned". One of the first social scientists to oppose the notion that the Indian family was meeting the challenges of modernization by becoming nuclear was I. P. Desai. In Mitakshara succession, for example, the traditional legal system for adjudicating kinship matters over much of India, the "joint and undivided family" is spoken of as "the normal condition of Hindu society," according to Mulla. Naturally, each culture has an ideal family structure, either implicitly or explicitly expressed, toward which actual domestic organization is oriented so long as no radical process of change is introduced into the society.
