Globalization is a transnational phenomenon which allows the free exchange and movement of ideas, technology, labour, capital and goods encouraging nations, businesses and individuals to become integrated into the global market.
As individuals, families, communities, and societies increasingly become integrated into new complex globalized systems, their values, traditions, and relationships change and it directly and indirectly affects family life in the following ways:

• Size and structure: With globalization, the family size has shrunk into independent and smaller households with couples having one or two children away from the traditional bigger joint family system. The changes in the family structure have resulted in growing adoption of nuclear families.
  • Further, a modified extended family structure is emerging where individual nuclear families retain considerable autonomy while maintaining relations with other individuals and joint families.
• Empowered status of women: The increased influx of women into the formal and informal labour force and their rising educational levels have had profound implications for family life.
  • While there is rising family incomes and decreased dependence on men, it has also accompanied conflicts with traditional values about the roles of women and men resulting in rising divorce rates, increased age of marriage, etc.
• Changing demographics: Lower fertility rates correlated with the rising age of marriage in much of the industrialized and developing world including India threatens the rise of ageing population and redistribution of demographic composition of the country in near future.
• Growing individualism: The younger generation is investing in the primacy of their individual interests and freedom with respect to family interest, which is leading to individualism increasing even within the family structure.
• Changing definitions of Marriage: Marriage is changing in nature and there is emergence of new forms of relations, which are replacing traditional marriages. For instance, live-in relationships, same sex marriages etc.
• Weakening bonds: The fast-paced life, increased mobility and increased aspirations of young working couples has rendered physical distance and attention lag in their nurturing of children resulting in loose family bonding, deprived emotional connection between them and their children and elderly.
  • Most of the socializing functions like child raising, care for elderly, and education have been outsourced to agencies, crèches, training centres which were once done exclusively by the family.

While globalization has had positive and negative implications on family life, decisions about employment, migration, marriage, gender roles, and caretaking are still subject to family life and local culture.