The extended family is regarded as the ideal arrangement among rural members of our community. Although the nuclear family is actually more common in the urban areas, and there are occasional instances of joint family arrangements.

Nuclear or joint, the family does not live in isolation, as it is always embedded in the larger kin group. Since the collectiveness of the kin group is the prime value in the community, family sovereignty and privacy are never its concerns.

All related families are held together by a sense of mutuality and complementarity. Such interdependence is seen on occasions of births, weddings, fairs, and festivals. The urban Lingayat Family is primarily nuclear but it too maintains its ties with their extended by providing shelter, hospitality, and employment opportunities, when needed.

Often children born in a nuclear family are left alone with siblings. This trend is popular in many families for the sake of life in urban grounds.

The most important lesson kids learn living with siblings, is how to develop social values such as cooperation, honesty, kindness, and tolerance.

Learning such important social skills usually takes a lot of time, but they are imbibed much faster while living with brothers and sisters. Children with siblings learn how to share and resolve conflicts quite easily. Children with siblings learn to share, wait their turn, and perhaps take care of younger siblings, all of which are useful skills. Sibling relationship is the most enduring one that any kid will experience. It is potentially longest relationship we will ever have.

Children who have brothers and sisters usually have more perspective of life than the only children. The sibling relationship can bring to children the differences between the views of live not just only from parents but it is also from their brothers and sisters. The first thing that children who have brothers and sisters can learn is how to share with others. Although sometimes children just want to keep something for their own, they have to think about their siblings before doing that every time. It is just like a conception of sharing.

Maybe it's time to rethink about a happier family; just one more person would sure make a lot of difference!