What if the Family Dies? Rethinking Gender, Autonomy, and Social Bonds in the Age of Individualism

Abstract (English)

This paper critically examines how dominant modern epistemologies—centered on autonomy, productivity, and individual freedom—have reshaped the meaning of family, caregiving, and gender in ways that often obscure relational forms of humanity. Drawing on findings from doctoral research involving 315 working women in a non-Western urban context, it interrogates the cultural elevation of individualism and its effects on how caregiving, motherhood, and kinship are experienced and valued. The study reveals a growing ambivalence among women who, though professionally successful, express tension and guilt around caregiving, often perceiving it as a burden rather than a source of dignity or identity. These findings point to a disjuncture between emancipatory narratives rooted in liberal feminism and the lived complexity of interdependence and care. They also expose the epistemic limitations of defining human flourishing purely through autonomy and economic participation. The paper argues for an urgent redefinition of gender and family not as static or oppressive categories but as evolving, relational practices that anchor social continuity and belonging. It challenges binary narratives of either freedom or tradition and proposes a framework that affirms caregiving and emotional labour as forms of situated knowledge and social resilience. By centering women’s narratives as epistemic resources, the work contributes to decolonial and feminist anthropologies that seek to unearth marginalised understandings of what it means to be human.
Theoretically grounded in the works of Anthony Giddens (on plastic sexuality), Carol Gilligan (on care ethics), and enriched through dialogue with global feminist and Southern epistemologies, the paper positions caregiving not as a backwards relic but as a critical site of knowledge production and human connection. It asks whether, in our pursuit of personal freedom, we have inadvertently undermined the relational fabric that sustains societies across generations. At a moment when youth alienation, declining birth rates, and rising loneliness signal deeper fractures in social life, this work calls for a critical revaluation of kinship, marriage, and family, not as regressive institutions but as contested and vital cultural resources. In doing so, it contributes to world anthropology seeking to redefine humanity not through detachment and control, but through embeddedness, care, and collective continuity.