The family may be regarded as an informal education agency. The society expects that the family should perform some educational duties for its children. For example, it is expected of parents that they should lead a happy life and should be careful about the bringing up of their children. It is hoped that the family will look after the welfare of all its members.
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The family is started with marriage between two adults and birth of children and it may end through death, divorce or quarrels. Home is the centre of the family. For fulfillment of various duties, necessary things are organized in the home.
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A family develops its own traditions, conventions and customs. The father has to shoulder the financial responsibility, the mother, generally, has to look after the domestic affairs and pay due attention to all the children along with her husband.
The child, as a member of the family, performs certain assigned duties. If the father or the mother neglects his or her duty, he or she has to face social censure, and in extreme cases, the State may also intervene to set things in proper order. Thus the family cannot neglect its traditional duties.
In the family, as an educational agency, great changes have taken place during the last hundred years. Multifarious scientific inventions have changed the mode of living of even an ordinary person.
As artificialities are overpowering man, responsibilities of the family are being gradually reduced. However, the family will have to arrange for the minimum upkeep of its members along with the necessary medical facilities and education of children.
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Family is a natural social group governed by some self-imposed moral laws since the very inception of human civilization. As a result, the various members of the family are knit together in emotional bonds.
Due to this emotional feature the family has become a unique centre for development of its children according to their varying interests, aptitudes and individual personalities.
The family provides emotional and social security’s to children which are necessary for their optimum development. It does so much for the child that the latter develops devotion for it, and even when he acquires self-dependence in various affairs of life, he feels duty-bound to do the needful in the interest of the family.
It is true that nowadays there are many families which evince lack of unity between their members. The lack of emotional bonds in them has led to their breaking up. However, this situation does not minimize the importance of family as an institution and an important agency of education of children.
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The family leaves an ever-abiding impact on children, even if it suffers from a lack of unity in its various members. No other institution except the family can provide the emotional and social security to children. So we have to protect the family as an institution in the interest of our children.