Urban Living and Quality Time with Family: A Study of Delhi and Chandigarh

Abstract

It has often been hypothesized that the sanctity associated with family values in India is not far from perishing. This argument implicitly lays claims to the idea that with growing urbanization and industrialization, people spend increasingly less amounts of quality time with their families. In this context, this paper would attempt at unraveling the sustained significance of 'family time' in the lives of city dwellers. It would help in assessing the diverse meanings, which educated urbanites impute to the concept of 'family time', in the metropolitan cities of Delhi and Chandigarh. The study unveils how the trends of development, and modern work culture, have in fact created a situation whereby the family is becoming one of the major factors of stress relief in the busy and frenzied schedule of urban existence.