Family Health

      Every individual is born from the womb of his/her mother, grows in the shadow of his/her parents and develops a group relation called a family. Family is the most important primary group. It is a small

Social group consisting ordinarily of a father, mother, and one or more children. We may say that family comprises of parents and children living under one roof and dining in one kitchen. It is a group of persons related by blood, marriage, or adoption and residing together. All such persons are considered as members of one family. We can, thus, define family as “the smallest unit of the society

living together in a house with common objectives.”

        Family is a place where a child grows and learns social behaviour. It provides an environment where a child can develop physically, mentally, socially and spiritually. Modern social students have described two main types of families: single or nuclear and join family on the basis of their structure.

a  nuclear family is on which consists of the husband, wife and their children whereas a joint family may include an old man and his wife, their son , the son’s wife and son’s children. Joint family may include the parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and  relatives residing in a single house or cluster of houses. The size of single or nuclear family is generally small and the parents arrange for the expenditure by earnings. The needs, desires, ambitions and wills can be fulfilled more and easily in a single family. Likewise, more love, affection, friendship and liberty of quick decision have been observed in a single family. But in such a family less security, difficulty in the time dispute and casualty, lack of supervision during the absence of parents, lack of values of old generation and lack of feelings and love for others are the negative aspects. Another negative aspect of a single family is that the couple engaged in services outside home find difficulty in bringing up the children.

         In a joint family, more than one couple and one generation live together in a single house. In order to support such a family it needs more money. It will be very difficult to fulfil the needs and desires of the family members. Decline in the standard of basis needs such as food, nutrition, clothing, education, health and housing are the negative aspects of a joint family. But such families have more economic, social and emotional security and have the chances of better discipline, cooperation, social values, cultural heritage, and selfless service from their senior family members. Besides that, a joint

family works like an insurance in difficult times for older family members.

        In fact, the type of family is not a problem. The problem is the size of the family. There may be five or six children in a single family which may create all sorts of hazards in a joint family. Nowdays, Small family size is getting more priority in both types of family structure. Thus, ‘small family is a happy family’ is the slogan of the 21^st century. Hence, for qualitative, balanced and happy family, every couple should be careful regarding the size of their family; it must be small.

                                                 Factors affecting family health

        

The health of an individual is influenced by the health of a family. A family health includes various elements and aspects of health such as personal hygiene, home and environmental sanitation, planning of family, reproductive health, parental responsibility, care of elders, family relationship, food and food habits. The health of a family is the  basis of community health because community is considered as a group of families. Thus, health family is a productive unit of a progressive nation. The health of a family depends the health of individual family members . all the members of the family have common feeling. The members look after each other. In sucha a place ill health, tention, or other health  problems easily affect and disturb the behaviour of other family members. The ill health of a members makes other anxious. Illness at a home is often a real personal problem. A healthy family may earn more, and work efficiently which significantly affects the living standard, health and other social aspects os the family.

  Thus, every individual of a family should be well aware of personal hygiene, and knowledge and practices of health rules.