Families are a source of love, solace and comfort. They are also a source of drudgery, exploitation and inequality.

So what is family? Perhaps your conception of family is husband, wife and children. This is the nuclear family. You are also likely to understand the idea of a joint family: that is husband, wife, children, grandparents, perhaps paternal uncle and aunt and their kids. Such families are called heterosexual families.

Have you seen or heard of homosexual families? In the contemporary world there are homosexual families as well. Homosexual marriages are recognised as legitimate in many countries. So there are five kinds of families based on sexual relationships. Heterosexual families, lesbian families, gay families, bisexual families and transgender families. There are also single-parent families.

In all these families, the family can be a source of love, solace and comfort. Husband and wife love each other. They love their children. They nurture and support each other, (yes, adults too need nurturing!) Parents seek to provide all manner of necessities and comforts to the children. Family members provide both financial and emotional help if their relatives fall ill or meet with an accident or suffer from a serious disease – and this support could extend even to members of joint or extended families. If any outsiders trouble any members of a family, the family may take a firm stand for the member against the outsiders.

It is quite natural for parents and siblings to love and understand each other, to provide anchorage in several different ways. It is all this that makes many of us feel comfortable and happy and seek solace in the family. Thus, family members feel emotionally attached to each other and turn to each other in their hour of need.

But I would like to attract your attention toward the drudgery, exploitation and profound inequality that takes place in the family.

We are children sitting here. Some of us are on the verge of adulthood. So, how many of us are heard in our families? How many of us have been ignored and scolded harshly, abused and battered? I had been battered till the age of 10. So although I didn't face drudgery, I didn't have to do fatiguing work, in some sense I was abused or exploited.

The children of my neighbour have to do a lot of work. They go to the field, cut grass and fodder and bring these home for their buffaloes. They also take buffaloes to the field at noon and bring them back home in the evening. From noon to sunset, they have to stay in the field under the scorching sun. They also have to clean all the excreta of their buffaloes. Here the children, at times very young, have to face drudgery.

If the children refuse to work, they are beaten up by their parents. They are not sent to school, not even to the government school. Here the children are exploited. There is obviously a power imbalance between the children and their parents. Parents control children, some lord over them. So there is inequality as well. Many aspects of the inequality between the adults and the children cannot be removed. But if the adults have the right perspective, it can be addressed and dealt with. Parents can learn to listen to their kids and mitigate inherent inequalities.

On the whole, for the children, their family could be a source of drudgery, exploitation and inequality and many a time this is the case.

Women are another category who are suppressed and repressed by family members such as father, brother, husband, father-in-law and mother-in-law, at times even by the son!

Women have to do all the household chores and look after the children. The domestic division of labour between the sexes is extremely unequal the world over. And women are not paid for domestic work. So to become financially independent, if women pick up a job, they have to face the double burden of having to work outside as well as within the home. On average, women enjoy less leisure time than men. In several jobs, women are paid less than men. Furthermore, their income is controlled by a male member of the family.

Let us look at a telling example. Keeping in mind that women tend not to get property from their families, the Government of India, in the aftermath of the Kargil War, decided that financial compensation for the death of Indian soldiers should go to their widows, not to other relatives, and the government did so.

You know what this led to? It led to many forced marriages of the widow with her brother-in- law so that a male of the family can control the money that the widow got from the government.

Women do not have financial independence in many families. Women become dependent on their husbands and fathers for their needs. They cannot make decisions. Women are controlled financially and otherwise by the men. They are controlled physically as well. Husbands batter their wives. They have sex with their wife without her consent. This is called marital rape. If dowry is demanded by the husband’s family and if it is not fully paid by the natal family of the women, the women have to face considerable physical and mental torture. It is clearly visible that there is male dominance in the family. Women are exploited by men. Men and women are not equal. There is profound inequality in the family.

Despite facing all the problems that I have spoken of -- double burden, financial dependency, physical violence and marital rape, women perform several care-giving activities in traditional homes. Women look after the elderly and the sick – at times for years together. They do all the cleaning and childcare work.

So the amount of work that women do is really huge. Yet they are neither paid nor respected. So for women, families are a source of drudgery, exploitation and inequality, especially in patriarchal societies. This kind of family where drudgery, exploitation and inequality are self-evident should be altered. Alternatively, the state should provide enough protection to children and women so that their families cannot trouble them. Also women have to be educated – and educated in a truly liberating sense -- and aware of their rights so that they can stand against male dominance and inequality in both the domestic and public spheres.