 Dear students, in this module we are going to discuss family as an institution in history. Family has been an important social institution throughout the human history. But the form and function of families have varied widely across time and cultures. Family is a major institution that you can see in history, time and space, and in any time and space of the world. Historically, family was relatively simple. The domain of labour was not so much. The way we see the institution of family in modern societies today, maybe the family does not exist in traditional societies or prehistoric societies. But family has always been the institution of family. In pre-industrial era, families were often extended, multi-generational units that lived and worked together in small, rural communities. In pre-industrial society, especially agriculture societies and their heavy reliance on food production, families were extended. Relatives lived in the same house or in the same community. Many generations of them used to create the image of a family. In some communities, the institution of family had a different nature of relationships. For example, as we observe in today's society. With the rise of industrialization and urbanization, families became smaller and more nuclear-informed, with less reliance on extended kinship networks. After modernization or industrialization, families were moved from the standard to the nuclear. The main reason was that people had to move from one place to another for employment. So it was not possible for most people to live in the same house as a complete family. Because in urban areas, there were industrialized industries. In urban areas, housing structures were relatively small, in which single or nuclear families could live. As you can see in Pakistan, you can observe that the ratio of rural areas to urban areas, the housing structures are relatively smaller and the family patterns are also nuclear. Family structure was also closely linked to economic and social systems such as slavery and feudalism. In traditional societies, the structure of the family was not so efficient and specialized. All people were relatively multi-taskers and didn't base on specialized skills. In fact, most of them were gender-based. Women were responsible for the work in the house and men were responsible for the economic possibilities outside the house. Patriarchy was a common feature of many historical family systems with men holding most of the power and authority within the family unit. Because the responsibility of non-nurse was not in the traditional society, so the head of the household was also considered. The reason is that throughout the human history, Patriarchy has been a dominant family structure. Was this patriarch functional or counterproductive? There are many debatable aspects to this. When we look at it from a feminist point of view, it is definitely a critical gaze. But if we look at it from a different theoretical perspective, whether Patriarchy has always been counterproductive, then perhaps it is not so. Patriarchy was functionally functional in its own cultural context and today's gender equality seems to be functional in the modern society. In this unit of family, there have been many historical changes in which the head of the household, like the changes in the economic infrastructure, due to which the gender-based domain of labour has been changed, the responsibility of the education system has been taken by specialized institutions. Along with this, your housing pattern or housing infrastructure has also affected your family unit. Family life was often closely linked to religious and cultural traditions with marriage and child rearing viewed as sacred and socially necessary. In conventional or traditional families, the biggest goal or purpose of the family was to raise children and to marry them. Along with this, to create the possibility of survival for them. But today we see that the family may not have this purpose, but to create recreational opportunities for them, to give importance to education in their upbringing and to create possible opportunities to excel in the society has also included in the responsibilities of the family in today's society.