In a joint family, several generations of people live together. For instance, we can find parents, grandparents and children living together. In olden days, people lived in joint families and shared labour and expenses. But slowly we have developed a pattern of nuclear family where only married couple and their own children live together. Nuclear families have become the norm in cities as people like to limit their responsibilities to merely their own biological children. Both have their merits and demerits. In a joint family the labour is shared while in a nuclear family, every individual has to struggle to make himself self-sufficient.