Contemporary family intervention programmes in India often import theoretical assumptions and practical frameworks from Euro-American contexts, promoting normative ideals of family life centred around nuclear families, individual responsibility, and standardized developmental goals. Such models, while well-intentioned, frequently fail to resonate with the lived realities of Indian families navigating diverse ecological conditions marked by economic precarity, extended kinship networks, intergenerational caregiving, and regional variation in parenting norms.
Despite important theoretical advancements in the social sciences, such interventions remain wedded to a circumscribed notion of family, society and childhood that continue to be treated as 'gold standards' of care. Drawing from research and fieldwork in Indian settings, this presentation critiques the universalizing tendencies of family intervention programmes and argues for a more context-sensitive approach. I propose that effective psychological interventions must account for the ecological embeddedness of families—their socio-cultural histories, community resources, and everyday moral worlds.