Family rights

This is the state of affairs in society outside the family. Do the individuals within the family unit also have identical fundamental natural rights the difference only lying in acquired rights? There is a lot of difference between a family which consists of wife and husband the father and mother and sons and daughters the brothers and sisters and society outside the family regards fundamental rights and the law of nature has set up family rights in a special pattern.

Here there are two different opinions. One view is that the fact of being a wife or a husband a father or a child a mother or a child like all other social relationships and like the cooperation between individuals in public or state institutions is not a reason in itself for some persons to have automatically a special status. Only required privileges can be a reason for some one of them for example to be the head and the other a subordinate one to be obeyed and others to obey him one to get more monthly pay and the other less. If a person is wife or a husband or a father or a mother or a son or a daughter this would not be in itself a reason for him to have a special status. Only acquired privileges can determine their position in relation to each other. The idea of the identicalness of the rights of men and women within the family to which they have wrongly given the name of equality of rights is based upon this very opinion. According to this idea a man and a woman with similar talents and needs who have an understanding of similar rights to which they are temperamentally disposed will get married. As a result it is necessary that family rights should be based upon equality identicalness and uniformity.

As opposed to this the other view is that their basic natural rights are also different. To be a husband in itself that is the fact of being a husband imposes certain obligations and signifies certain rights and to be a wife in itself imposes certain obligations and implies certain rights and likewise in the case of being a father or a mother or son or a daughter. Anyhow according to this view the family is different from all social partnerships and associations. The unidenticalness of the rights of men and women which Islam endorses is based upon this principle.

Now which of the two above opinions is valid and in what way can we understand which of the two is correct?