Modern parenting has been reduced to emotional appeasement. We want our children to be comfortable, confident, and constantly affirmed. What we have forgotten is that comfort without character is social sabotage

I no longer see family breakdown as a private tragedy. I see it as a public warning. When families fracture, societies do not merely change, they weaken. What we are witnessing today in rising emotional instability, collapsing discipline, fragile relationships, and institutional disorder is not accidental. It is the cumulative outcome of what is happening inside our homes.

We have learned to talk endlessly about economic indicators, political stability, and technological progress. But we have stopped asking the most fundamental question, what is happening to the family as a functional unit. The family is not simply an emotional arrangement. It is the first institution of leadership, values, emotional regulation, and accountability. When that institution becomes dysfunctional, every other institution eventually pays the price.

Dysfunctional families are not created by lack of love. They are created by lack of structure. Modern society has become deeply uncomfortable with hierarchy, responsibility, and authority inside the home. We have mistaken freedom for absence of order and equality for absence of leadership. The result is fragmentation. A family without hierarchy is not progressive. It is unanchored. And when homes become unanchored, societies begin to drift into anarchy.

I strongly feel the below five distinctive drivers enable functional and structured family systems:

1. Clear hierarchy of authority

Every functioning system requires structure. A school has a principal. An organization has a leadership chain. A nation has a constitutional order. Yet we have convinced ourselves that the family can survive without hierarchy.

Children need leadership before they need liberty. They require emotional security that comes from knowing someone wiser is in charge. When parents abdicate authority to appease their children, the home does not become warmer. It becomes unstable.

Equality of dignity does not mean equality of decision-making. A family is not a parliament. It is a leadership structure where responsibility must be clearly defined and located. When rules are endlessly negotiated, when every instruction becomes a debate, when boundaries become optional, what disappears is not just obedience, it is emotional safety.

We must be honest enough to say that structure is not oppression. Hierarchy is not cruelty. It is emotional leadership. It tells the child, you are not alone, someone is carrying the weight of direction for you.

2. Defined roles and responsibilities

Dysfunction begins when roles blur into entitlement. Parents want children to behave like adults. Children want adult rights without adult responsibility. Spouses want partnership without accountability. No one wants to own the consequences. There are plenty of families which are this chaotic, as they reflect above conditions.

In a functional family, roles are not about superiority. They are about responsibility. Parents are not merely companions, they are providers, protectors, and moral anchors. Children are not just negotiators, they are learners in preparation for future responsibility. When this clarity disappears, resentment replaces respect.

We see the long-term effects everywhere. Individuals raised without role clarity struggle with authority in workplaces. They rebel against structure but cannot build it. They demand rights but evade duty. They interpret boundaries as injustice and discipline as hostility.

Role definition is not cultural rigidity. It is operational clarity. Without it, families drift into emotional chaos. And emotional chaos inside homes eventually manifests as institutional dysfunction outside them.

3. Value transmission over emotional comfort

Modern parenting has been reduced to emotional appeasement. We want our children to be comfortable, confident, and constantly affirmed. What we have forgotten is that comfort without character is social sabotage.

The family is the first school of discipline, ethics, restraint, and resilience. It is where children learn what is acceptable, what is honourable, what is non- negotiable. When parents outsource value education to schools, or society, children do not become independent thinkers. They become moral orphans.

Love without boundaries weakens resilience. Praise without standards produces fragility. Protection without challenge breeds entitlement.We are not preparing children for life. We are insulating them from it.

In my work on emotional intelligence, I have consistently argued that emotional strength is not inherited, it is trained. That training begins at home. Families that prioritize happiness, unrestricted freedom over discipline may feel compassionate in the moment, but they raise adults who collapse under pressure, avoid accountability, and expect the world to adapt to their emotions.

Values are not absorbed through lectures. They are transmitted through structure, consistency, and example. A family that does not consciously shape character does not remain neutral. It becomes an incubator for weakness.

4. Misinterpreted gender equality between spouses

One of the most significant and least discussed contributors to family dysfunction today is the way gender equality is being misunderstood within marriage.

Let me state this clearly. Equality between spouses is a moral principle. But when equality is interpreted as the absence of hierarchy, final responsibility, or leadership inside the family, it creates instability rather than empowerment.

A family cannot function when both spouses insist on equal command in every decision. Leadership does not mean domination. It means accountability. Someone must carry the final responsibility for direction, especially in moments of conflict, crisis, or discipline.

What we increasingly see instead is marriage turning into a negotiation table rather than a leadership unit. Every decision becomes a contest of ego. Authority is challenged in the name of independence. Partnership is mistaken for parallel sovereignty.

This has serious consequences for children. When spouses routinely counter each other’s authority in front of their children, they do not demonstrate empowerment. They model confusion. Children raised in such environments do not learn coherence. They learn to exploit gaps between authority figures. They learn that rules are negotiable, that discipline is optional, that values depend on which parent is currently winning the argument. Two equal partners do not weaken a family. Two competing authorities do.

Equality of worth does not require equality of command at all times. A household needs leadership, not rivalry. This does not mean one spouse is superior. It means that authority must be functional, contextual, and clearly respected. Without that, power becomes performative and responsibility disappears.

We must also confront the emotional cost of this confusion. Homes that operate as battlegrounds of control produce anxiety, not confusion. Children internalize instability. They grow up uncertain about boundaries, hesitant about authority, and resistant to structure.

5. Accountability and consequence

Dysfunctional families are allergic to accountability. Everyone is “expressing themselves.” No one is responsible for outcomes. Discipline has been caricatured as cruelty. In reality, discipline is training. It teaches cause and effect. It teaches restraint. It teaches that actions have consequences. When children face no consequence at home, society becomes their first harsh teacher. Shared power without shared responsibility does not create fairness. It creates evasion. In many modern homes, decisions are collective, but consequences are disowned. Authority is enjoyed. Accountability is avoided.

This is where private dysfunction becomes public disorder. Individuals raised without internal discipline struggle with law, with deadlines, with social norms, with ethical boundaries. They resent institutions not because those institutions are unjust, but because they never learned to live within structure. Societies do not suddenly become undisciplined. They are raised without it, a family by family.

Restoring structure is not regressive

The family is not merely a space of affection. It is the foundational institution of leadership, values, emotional discipline, and accountability. When that institution weakens, every other institution eventually follows.

We did not destabilize families because we loved our children too much. We destabilized them because we feared structure. We confused hierarchy with oppression, discipline with cruelty, and equality with absence of leadership.

A functional family does not eliminate authority. It humanizes it. It does not erase roles. It clarifies them. It does not avoid conflict. It resolves it within a framework of responsibility.

The crisis of dysfunctional families is not a cultural footnote. It is a civilizational warning. We can continue to celebrate emotional freedom while ignoring structural decay. Or we can rediscover a truth that every enduring society has understood, that strong families do not emerge from absence of hierarchy, but from disciplined love, accountable leadership, and values that are lived, not merely spoken. The future of society is being shaped, quietly and relentlessly, inside our homes.

(The Author is a BJP leader, Chairman for Nation Building Foundation, a Harvard Business School certified Strategist, an expert in Emotional Intelligence)