Modern Family is now Shrinking

Remember a few years ago when we were all sad because Modern Family (the show) was coming to an end. Some of us women saw Claire in us - we became as bold as her in going from Mom to Claire, the business owner. We grew old with Jay, and some of us took inspiration from Phil on how to be a soft, emotionally connected man. Some of us girls grew up with the kids of Modern Family. And all of us wanted to be like Gloria. Mitchell and Cameron with their unconventional family were also inspiring, but more importantly, they heralded the beginning of a new family kinda family era - the changing family.

But overall, they were the one big, unwieldy household — three interconnected units, a lot of bickering, the occasional identity crisis — but every episode landed on the same reassurance: whatever happens, blood holds. Family was the given. You didn't build it; you were born into it, and it showed up for you because that was simply what family did. And that was comforting for all of us. Even those of us who didn't have a happy family, we all connected to it and somehow thought of ourselves as part of the Pritchett-Tucker - Delgado - Dunphy family.

Now, many years later, I have similar feelings when I watch Shrinking. On the surface, it's a very different show; it's about a therapist grieving his wife, but the structure underneath is the same, I believe. This series is about a therapist who should have all the tools at his disposal to deal with the grief of losing his wife. But he can't use it; instead, his support system is his neighbour, his wife's best friend, his boss and his patients who become friends. These people are doing the caregiving, the school runs, the 2 a.m. check-ins, the sitting with you through a breakdown that are chosen, not inherited.  The support system isn't his extended family. And this is such a beautiful representation of how people these days describe family. Friendship has quietly absorbed the job description that used to belong to family.

The safety net used to come pre-installed.

What I am observing in my counselling sessions, and also around me and in my personal life, is that the family model or the definition of family has very much changed.

Previously, family meant you didn't have to design your support system — you simply inherited one. Care, decision-making, financial risk: all of it was distributed automatically across a structure that already existed before you needed it. However, nuclear families are now the norm, and households are getting smaller, later marriage and migration haven't erased the need for that safety net; they've simply switched off the automatic supply of it.

So, the urban Indians (and I guess even abroad) are actively constructing their support systems instead of being born into them.

I see this most clearly with clients living away from their parents' city. They're not asking "who is my family" — they're asking "who do I need to build this with?" That is fundamentally a different question than the one which the older generations were asking.

"Family" is becoming a description, not a bloodline

Ask any 28 - 35 year-old in urban India what family means, and I bet the answer you will hear is what I hear more often than not. Which is: family isn't what you're born into; it's chosen. I hear family as the word used for a flatmate who sat with someone through a panic attack, or a friend group that pooled money during a job loss — well before it's used for a cousin they see twice a year.

Now, before we Indians/Asians start getting worried about this and taking it too personally, let's be clear this isn't young people rejecting their parents or siblings; most still want closeness with their blood family but it's that the emotional centre of gravity has shifted toward whoever provides consistent, low-friction support in daily life therefore the term "sister from another mister" and "brother from another mother" has now become "friends like family".

Proximity and repetition build intimacy faster than bloodline does now. I've also watched what I'd call "family adoption" happen repeatedly — a single person in a new city becomes close to a friend's family, and that family simply absorbs them into the fold. Friendship becomes kinship.

This is the entire premise of the series Shrinking, essentially. Very different from Modern Family.

Where I think this is headed

Caregiving used to have a default assignee — a spouse, a parent, an adult child. Today I regularly see it distributed across a network of friends, so what we can call a community. So within that group of friends or community, a friend will do hospital runs, a colleague might cover work, a sibling might manage things remotely over video calls, a friend might send tiffins when you are busy with deadlines. It's less efficient than one clear caregiver, but often more resilient, because no single person absorbs the entire emotional and financial cost.

I don't think the family is disappearing — I think it's diversifying. The quality of the relationship is starting to matter more than structure.

Modern Family told us family is who you're stuck with, and that's the whole point - it holds anyway. Shrinking is telling us something that is happening more and more: family is who shows up, repeatedly, on ordinary days.