For centuries, the joint family was India’s default model for living, caregiving, and even economic security. It wasn’t just about cohabitation—it was an intricate system of shared labor, emotional interdependence, and a distributed approach to care. But something shifted. Today, nuclear families dominate urban landscapes, care is increasingly outsourced, and social capital—the invisible thread that held communities together—is fraying. The question is not just why this shift happened, but what we have failed to reimagine in its wake.

Beyond Nostalgia: Why Did Joint Families Work?

The romanticization of joint families often ignores their inherent hierarchies, gendered labor divisions, and internal frictions. Yet, they did something modern nuclear families struggle with: they made care a shared responsibility.

• Distributed Care: Raising children, caring for elders, and running a household wasn’t the burden of one or two people—it was a communal effort.
• Multi-Generational Learning: Storytelling from grandparents, skill-sharing between aunts and uncles, and peer learning among cousins created an ecosystem of knowledge transfer that no formal schooling could replicate.
• Resilience in Crisis: Illness, financial distress, or personal setbacks were cushioned by the presence of multiple adults who could step in and step up.

This wasn’t unique to India. Across much of the Global South—Kenya, Mexico, Bangladesh, and beyond—extended family caregiving was the backbone of societal stability. The African philosophy of Ubuntu (“I am because we are”) exemplifies the role of collective care in building resilience. Indigenous communities in Latin America practice minga (also spelt minka), a tradition of reciprocal labor, where caregiving is as much about community as it is about family.

But here’s the real question: If we know these models worked, why have we been so uncritical about what’s replacing them?

Nuclear Families: More Independence or More Isolation?

The transition to nuclear families in India was not organic—it was driven by urbanization, economic shifts, and evolving aspirations. Living with extended family became less feasible as people moved to cities, jobs demanded mobility, and personal space became a marker of progress. But the consequences have been staggering.

• Care is No Longer Distributed—It’s Outsourced: Without built-in family support, nuclear families rely on paid caregivers, daycares, and domestic workers—often underpaid, overworked, and under-recognized in economic frameworks (Rai, Hoskyns & Thomas, 2014).
• Emotional Load on Parents: The absence of intergenerational caregiving means parents, especially mothers, shoulder the full weight of childcare while managing work and household responsibilities. Studies show that over 90% of Indian women engage in unpaid care work and domestic duties, compared to 27% of men.
• Loss of Informal Learning Spaces: In the joint family system, children absorb knowledge through osmosis—watching, imitating, and engaging with multiple adults. Today, structured learning environments like schools and extracurriculars are expected to replace this, often at the cost of curiosity, autonomy, and real-world skills.

This shift mirrors patterns across the Global South. In South Korea, the rapid dissolution of extended families led to an explosion in private childcare services and “study rooms” for children as young as four. In Brazil, the nuclearization of families has coincided with a rise in elder loneliness, as older generations are increasingly separated from family networks.

Yet, these changes don’t have to signal decline—they should force us to rethink care altogether.

Beyond Joint vs. Nuclear: What Should the Future of Care Look Like?

Instead of lamenting the loss of joint families or accepting nuclear families as inevitable, what if we imagined new models of care that merge the best of both worlds?

1. Community-Based Care Models: Learning from Latin America and Africa

In Kenya, Community Health Volunteers provide a bridge between formal healthcare and familial care, ensuring families—especially those in single-parent or nuclear setups—have external support. In Brazil, Bolsa Família links cash transfers to school attendance and healthcare, reinforcing care as a systemic responsibility rather than an individual one.

Could India create similar hyperlocal care ecosystems? What would it look like if housing societies and neighborhoods functioned like micro-joint families, sharing child-rearing responsibilities? Could cooperative childcare become a norm rather than a privilege?

2. Rethinking Who We Call Caregivers

The dissolution of joint families has elevated paid caregiving, yet nannies, domestic workers, and daycare professionals remain invisible in policy conversations. The International Labour Organization reports that women in Asia and the Pacific perform 80% of all unpaid care work, significantly more than men, who contribute only 20%.. If care is now outsourced, shouldn’t we be asking: how do we value it? Should domestic workers receive social security benefits? Should paid caregivers be seen as co-educators rather than service providers?

3. Urban Design for Care: Cities That Work for Families

Cities have not been designed for caregiving. Public spaces don’t accommodate children, work schedules clash with school timings, and nuclear families are often physically isolated from social support. Scandinavian countries, with their walkable neighborhoods, childcare-integrated workplaces, and parental leave policies, offer an alternative vision. If nuclear families are the future, can we redesign urban spaces to function as extended care networks?

The Question We Must Ask: What Are We Willing to Change?

The problem isn’t that joint families disappeared. The problem is that we didn’t rethink care when they did. We have accepted nuclear families not just as a reality but as an inevitability—without questioning how to replace the support systems that were lost.

So here’s the challenge:

• If joint families ensured that care was shared, what new systems can ensure that today?
• If nuclear families require external caregiving, how do we ensure that care work is valued and protected?
• If urban living has fragmented social support, how do we rebuild care networks beyond the family unit?

These are not rhetorical questions. They demand radical imagination.

The future of caregiving doesn’t have to be a binary between joint and nuclear families. It has to be intentional, designed, and above all, shared. Because thriving childhoods—and thriving societies—don’t happen in isolation.

The real question isn’t whether we can afford to rethink care. It’s whether we can afford not to.