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A matrifocal family structure is one where mothers head families and fathers play a less important role in the home and in bringing up children.
| Part of a series on the |
| Anthropology of kinship |
|---|
| |
| Social anthropology Cultural anthropology |
A matrifocal family structure is one where mothers head families and fathers play a less important role in the home and in bringing up children.
The concept of the matrifocal family was introduced to the study of Caribbean societies by Raymond T. Smith in 1956. He linked the emergence of matrifocal families with how households are formed in the region: "The household group tends to be matri-focal in the sense that a woman in the status of 'mother' is usually the de facto leader of the group, and conversely the husband-father, although de jure head of the household group (if present), is usually marginal to the complex of internal relationships of the group. By 'marginal' we mean that he associates relatively infrequently with the other members of the group, and is on the fringe of the effective ties which bind the group together". [1] Smith emphasises that a matrifocal family is not simply woman-centred, but rather mother-centred; women in their role as mothers become key to organising the family group; men tend to be marginal to this organisation and to the household (though they may have a more central role in other networks). Where matrifocal families are common, marriage is less common. [2] In later work, Smith tends to emphasise the household less, and to see matrifocality more in terms of how the family network forms with mothers as key nodes in the network. Throughout, Smith argues that matrifocal kinship should be seen as a subsystem in a larger stratified society and its cultural values. [3] He increasingly emphasises how the Afro-Caribbean matrifocal family is best understood within of a class-race hierarchy where marriage is connected to perceived status and prestige. [4]
"A family or domestic group is matrifocal when it is centred on a woman and her children. In this case the father(s) of these children are intermittently present in the life of the group and occupy a secondary place. The children's mother is not necessarily the wife of one of the children's fathers." [5] In general, according to Laura Hobson Herlihy citing P. Mohammed, women have "high status" if they are "the main wage earners", they "control ... the household economy", and males tend to be absent. [6] Men's absences are often of long durations. [7] One of R. T. Smith's contemporary critics, M. G. Smith, notes that while households may appear matrifocal taken by themselves, the linkages between households may be patrifocal. That is, a man in his role as father may be providing (particularly economic) support to a mother in one or more households whether he lives in that household or not. Both for men and for women having children with more than one partner is a common feature of this kind of system. [8]
Alternative terms for 'matrifocal' or 'matrifocality' include matricentric, matripotestal, and women-centered kinship networks. [9]
The matrifocal is distinguished from the matrilocal, the matrilineal, matrilateral and matriarchy (the last because matrifocality does not imply that women have power in the larger community).
According to anthropologist Maurice Godelier, matrifocality is "typical of Afro-Caribbean groups" and some African-American communities. [10] These include families in which a father has a wife and one or more mistresses; in a few cases, a mother may have more than one lover. [10] Matrifocality was also found, according to Rasmussen per Herlihy, among the Tuareg people in northern Africa; [11] according to Herlihy citing other authors, in some Mediterranean communities; [7] and, according to Herlihy quoting Scott, in urban Brazil. [12] In their study of family life in Bethnal Green, London, during the 1950s, Young and Willmott found both matrifocal and matrilineal elements at work: mothers were a focus for distributing economic resources through the family network; they were also active in passing down the rights to tenancies in matrilineal succession to their daughters. [13]
Herlihy found matrifocality among the Miskitu people, in the village of Kuri, on the Caribbean coast of northeastern Honduras in the late 1990s. [14] According to Herlihy, the "main power" [9] of Kuri women lies "in their ability to craft everyday social identities and kinship relations .... Their power lies beyond the scope of the Honduran state, which recognizes male surnames and males as legitimate heads of households." [9] Herlihy found in Kuri a trend toward matriliny [15] and a correlation with matrilineality, [16] while some patriarchal norms also existed. [16] Herlihy found that the "women knew more than most men about village histories, genealogies, and local folklore" [15] and that "men typically did not know local kinship relations, the proper terms of reference, or reciprocity obligations in their wife's family" [15] and concluded that Miskitu women "increasingly assume responsibility for the social reproduction of identities and ultimately for preserving worldwide cultural and linguistic diversity". [17] The Nair community in Kerala and the Bunt community in Tulunadu in South India are prime examples of matrifocality.[ citation needed ] This can be attributed to the fact that if males were largely warriors by profession, a community was bound to lose male members at youth, leading to a situation where the females assumed the role of running the family.[ citation needed ].
In the 14th century, in Jiangnan, South China, under Mongol rule by the Yuan dynasty, Kong Qi kept a diary of his view of some families as practicing gynarchy, not defined as it is in major dictionaries [18] [19] [20] [21] but defined by Paul J. Smith as "the creation of short-term family structures dominated by women" [22] and not as matrilineal or matriarchal. [22] The gynarchy possibly could be passed down through generations. [23] According to Paul J. Smith, it was to this kind of gynarchy that "Kong ascribed...the general collapse of society" [22] and Kong believed that men in Jiangnan tended to "forfeit...authority to women". [24]
Matrifocality arose, Godelier said, in some Afro-Caribbean and African American cultures as a consequence of enslavement of thousands. [10] Slaves were forbidden to marry and their children belonged to the slavemasters. [10] Women in slave families "often" sought impregnation by White masters so the children would have lighter skin color and be more successful in life, [10] lessening the role of Black husbands. Some societies, particularly Western European, allow women to enter the paid labor force or receive government aid and thus be able to afford to raise children alone, [10] while some other societies "oppose ... [women] living on their own." [10]
In feminist belief (more common in the 1970s than in the 1990s–2000s, and criticized within feminism and within archaeology, anthropology and theology as lacking a scholarly basis) there was a "matrifocal (if not matriarchal) Golden Age" before patriarchy. [25]
Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are held by women. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. While those definitions apply in general English, definitions specific to anthropology and feminism differ in some respects.
Matrilineality is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which each person is identified with their matriline, their mother's lineage, and which can involve the inheritance of property and titles. A matriline is a line of descent from a female ancestor to a descendant of either gender in which the individuals in all intervening generations are mothers. In a matrilineal descent system, an individual is considered to belong to the same descent group as their mother. This ancient matrilineal descent pattern is in contrast to the currently more popular pattern of patrilineal descent from which a family name is usually derived. The matriline of historical nobility was also called their enatic or uterine ancestry, corresponding to the patrilineal or "agnatic" ancestry.
A nuclear family is a family group consisting of parents and their children, typically living in one home residence. It is in contrast to a single-parent family, a larger extended family, or a family with more than two parents. Nuclear families typically center on a married couple which may have any number of children. There are differences in definition among observers. Some definitions allow only biological children who are full-blood siblings and consider adopted or half- and step-siblings a part of the immediate family, but others allow for a step-parent and any mix of dependent children, including stepchildren and adopted children. Some sociologists and anthropologists consider the extended family structure to be the most common family structure in most cultures and at most times, rather than the nuclear family.
The pater familias, also written as paterfamilias, was the head of a Roman family. The pater familias was the oldest living male in a household, and could legally exercise autocratic authority over his extended family. The term is Latin for "father of the family" or the "owner of the family estate". The form is archaic in Latin, preserving the old genitive ending in -ās, whereas in classical Latin the normal first declension genitive singular ending was -ae. The pater familias always had to be a Roman citizen.
The Mosuo, often called the Naxi, are a small ethnic group living in China's Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces. Consisting of a population of approximately 40,000, many of them live in the Yongning region, around Lugu Lake, in Labai, in Muli, and in Yanyuan.
An extended family is a family that extends beyond the nuclear family of parents and their children to include aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins or other relatives, all living nearby or in the same household. Particular forms include the stem and joint families.
In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that the study of kinship is the study of what humans do with these basic facts of life – mating, gestation, parenthood, socialization, siblingship etc. Human society is unique, he argues, in that we are "working with the same raw material as exists in the animal world, but [we] can conceptualize and categorize it to serve social ends." These social ends include the socialization of children and the formation of basic economic, political and religious groups.
In social anthropology, matrilocal residence or matrilocality is the societal system in which a married couple resides with or near the wife's parents.
The Miskitos are a native people in Central America. Their territory extends from Cape Camarón, Honduras, to Río Grande de Matagalpa, Nicaragua, along the Mosquito Coast, in the Western Caribbean zone. Their population was estimated in 2024 as 535,225, with 456,000 living in Nicaragua.
Ambilineality is a form of kinship affiliation of cognatic descent that relies on self-defined affiliation within a given social system, meaning individuals have the choice to be affiliated with their mother's or father's group. Common features of societies that practice ambilineality are a shared set of land, communal responsibilities, and collective ownership of some segments of wealth and debt in their societies. This system of descent is distinct from more common genealogical structures in that rather than determining affiliation and descent using the standard determinants of biological and genealogical relation, it instead relies heavily on voluntary affiliation with one's group, oftentimes being determined by factors including residence.
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan is an 1884 anthropological treatise by Friedrich Engels. It is partially based on notes by Karl Marx to Lewis H. Morgan's book Ancient Society (1877). The book is an early historical materialist work and is regarded as one of the first major works on family economics.
The Digo are a Bantu ethnic and linguistic group based near the Indian Ocean coast between Mombasa in southern Kenya and northern Tanga in Tanzania. In 1994 the Digo population was estimated to total 305,000, with 217,000 ethnic Digo living in Kenya and 88,000 in Tanzania. Digo people, nearly all Muslims, speak the Digo language, called Chidigo by speakers, a Bantu language.
Kinship terminology is the system used in languages to refer to the persons to whom an individual is related through kinship. Different societies classify kinship relations differently and therefore use different systems of kinship terminology; for example, some languages distinguish between consanguine and affinal uncles, whereas others have only one word to refer to both a father and his brothers. Kinship terminologies include the terms of address used in different languages or communities for different relatives and the terms of reference used to identify the relationship of these relatives to ego or to each other.
In anthropology, a lineage is a unilineal descent group that traces its ancestry to a demonstrably shared ancestor, known as the apical ancestor. Lineages are formed through relationships traced either exclusively through the maternal line (matrilineage), paternal line (patrilineage), or some combination of both (ambilineal). The cultural significance of matrilineal or patrilineal descent varies greatly, shaping social structures, inheritance patterns, and even rituals across societies.
Family is a group of people related either by consanguinity or affinity. It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictability, structure, and safety as members mature and learn to participate in the community. Historically, most human societies use family as the primary purpose of attachment, nurturance, and socialization.
The Tiwi people are one of the many Aboriginal groups of Australia. Nearly 2,000 Tiwi people live on Bathurst and Melville Islands, which make up the Tiwi Islands, lying about 48 kilometres (30 mi) from Darwin. The Tiwi language is a language isolate, with no apparent link to the languages of Arnhem Land on the Australian mainland. Their society is based on matrilineal descent, and marriage plays a very important part in many aspects of their lives. Art and music form an intrinsic part of their societal and spiritual rituals as the Tiwi people tend to follow a certain form of indigenous Animist belief system. The Stolen Generations saw many Indigenous people brought to the Tiwi Islands who were not of direct Tiwi descent.
Men's studies in the Caribbean is an emerging interdisciplinary field that has its roots in family studies programs of the 1950s and 60s, and in feminine studies programs of the 1970s and 80s. In the Caribbean, gender studies have concentrated primarily on "retrieving Caribbean women from historical 'invisibility'", but men's studies is also becoming increasingly popular.
A matriarchal religion is a religion that emphasizes a goddess or multiple goddesses as central figures of worship and spiritual authority. The term is most often used to refer to theories of prehistoric matriarchal religions that were proposed by scholars such as Johann Jakob Bachofen, Jane Ellen Harrison, and Marija Gimbutas, and later popularized by second-wave feminism. These scholars speculated that early human societies may have been organized around female deities and matrilineal social structures. In the 20th century, a movement to revive these practices resulted in the Goddess movement.
In modern Rabbinic Judaism, the traditional method of determining Jewishness relies on tracing one's maternal line. According to halakha, the recognition of someone as fully Jewish requires them to have been born to a Jewish mother. A person who is born to a non-Jewish mother and a Jewish father is regarded as Zera Yisrael and will only be accepted as ethnically Jewish and not as religiously Jewish. Thus, being Jewish through the paternal line typically necessitates conversion to Judaism to validate one's identity as a Jew in the fullest sense.
Family Structure refers to the composition of a family, including present members and important figures from the past, as well as the quality of relationships among them. It can be visualized using a genogram to depict the family's structure, composition, and relationships. A nuclear family consists of a pair of adults and their sociologically recognized biological chlldren.
The dictionary definition of matrifocal at Wiktionary The dictionary definition of matrifocality at Wiktionary
