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Matrifocal family

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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.

Definition

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Matrifocal families are often defined as a household core consisting of a woman, her mother, and her children. Other extended relatives may be present. Synonymous with the term matrifocality is the consanguine household.[1] Matrifocality as a cultural complex tends to accompany duolocal residence, where partners live apart, which is distinct from patrilocal, matrilocal, or neolocal residence where partners tend to co-reside.[citation needed]

Causes of widespread matrifocal families are often attributed to extremely gendered divisions of labour, rapid societal change, and a skewed female-to-male ratio of the population.[citation needed]

Characteristics

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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".[2] 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.[1] 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]

Herlihy found matrifocality among the Miskitu people, in the village of Kuri, on the Caribbean coast of northeastern Honduras in the late 1990s.[9] According to Herlihy, the "main power"[10] 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."[10] Herlihy found in Kuri a trend toward matriliny[11] and a correlation with matrilineality,[12] while some patriarchal norms also existed.[12] Herlihy found that the "women knew more than most men about village histories, genealogies, and local folklore"[11] and that "men typically did not know local kinship relations, the proper terms of reference, or reciprocity obligations in their wife's family"[11] and concluded that Miskitu women "increasingly assume responsibility for the social reproduction of identities and ultimately for preserving worldwide cultural and linguistic diversity".[13] .

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[14][15][16][17] but defined by Paul J. Smith as "the creation of short-term family structures dominated by women"[18] and not as matrilineal or matriarchal.[18] The gynarchy possibly could be passed down through generations.[19] According to Paul J. Smith, it was to this kind of gynarchy that "Kong ascribed...the general collapse of society"[18] and Kong believed that men in Jiangnan tended to "forfeit...authority to women".[20]

Altenative terms for 'matrifocal' and 'matrifocality' are matripotestal, matricentric and woman-centered kinship networks. [10] 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).

Distribution and History

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According to anthropologist Maurice Godelier, matrifocality is "typical of Afro-Caribbean groups" and some African-American communities.[21] Matrifocality had also appeared in Russia following The Second World War.[citation needed] It was found among the Tuareg people in northern Africa,[22] in several Mediterranean communities, in urban Brazil,[23] among the Miskitu people in the village of Kuri at northeastern Honduras,[24] in the Nair and the Bunt community in South India, the Mosuo in China, and the Akan of Ghana.[citation needed]

Researchers have characterized different ways to define "single-parent" households in relation to matrifocality. According to the Pew Research center, the US (at 23%), the UK (21%), Russia (at 18%), and Kenya (at 16%) dominate in terms of households with a parent and no other present adult, either as a relative or partner.[25]

In feminist belief (more common in the 1970s than in the 1990s–2000s) there was a "matrifocal (if not matriarchal) Golden Age" before patriarchy.[26]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Smith (1956)[page needed]
  2. ^ Smith (1956), p. 223
  3. ^ Smith (1956), p. 253
  4. ^ Smith (1996)
  5. ^ Godelier (2011), p. 568 (Glossary, entry matrifocal)
  6. ^ Three quotations: Mohammed (1986), cited in Herlihy (2007), p. 134
  7. ^ Herlihy (2007), p. 137
  8. ^ Smith (1962)
  9. ^ Herlihy (2007), pp. 133–134 & passim
  10. ^ a b c Herlihy (2007), p. 134
  11. ^ a b c Herlihy (2007), p. 141
  12. ^ a b Herlihy (2007), p. 145.
  13. ^ Herlihy (2007), p. 146
  14. ^ The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, [4th] ed. 1993, ISBN 0-19-861271-0.
  15. ^ Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged. G. & C. Merriam (Merriam-Webster), 1966.
  16. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 3d ed. 1992, ISBN 0-395-44895-6.
  17. ^ Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. New York: Random House, 2d ed. 2001, ISBN 0-375-42566-7.
  18. ^ a b c Smith (1998), p. 45 and see pp. 1 (abstract), 2–3, 46, 63, 65, 69–70, 72–73 & 81[page range too broad]
  19. ^ Smith (1998), pp. 76–77
  20. ^ Smith (1998), p. 78
  21. ^ Godelier (2011), p. 457
  22. ^ Rasmussen (1996), cited in Herlihy (2007), p. 137
  23. ^ Scott (1995), cited in Herlihy (2007), p. 141
  24. ^ Herlihy (2007), pp. 133–134 & passim
  25. ^ Kramer, Stephanie (2019-12-12). "U.S. has world's highest rate of children living in single-parent households". Pew Research Center. Retrieved 2024-10-09.
  26. ^ Rountree (2001), pp. 5–9 & passim & quotation at p. 6

Bibliography

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  • Godelier, Maurice (2011) [2004]. The Metamorphoses of Kinship. Translated by Nora Scott. London: Verso. ISBN 978-1-84467-746-7.
  • Herlihy, Laura Hobson (2007). "Matrifocality and women's power on the Miskito Coast". Ethnology. 46 (2): 133–150. hdl:1808/11801.
  • Mohammed, P. (1986). "The Caribbean family revisited". In Patricia Mohammed; Caroline Shepherd (eds.). Gender in Caribbean Development: Papers Presented at the Inaugural Seminar of the University of the West Indies, Women and Development Studies Project. Kingston, Jamaica: Canoe Press University of the West Indies. pp. 164–175. ISBN 978-976-8125-55-2.
  • Rasmussen, S. (1996). "Tent as cultural symbol and field site: social and symbolic space, "topos", and authority in a Tuareg community". Anthropological Quarterly. 69 (1): 14–26. doi:10.2307/3317136. JSTOR 3317136.
  • Rountree, Kathryn (2001). "The past is a foreigners' country: goddess feminists, archaeologists, and the appropriation of prehistory". Journal of Contemporary Religion. 16 (1): 5–27. doi:10.1080/13537900123321. S2CID 144309885.
  • Scott, P. (1995). "Matrifocal males: gender, perception, and experience of the domestic domain in Brazil". In Mary Jo Maynes; Ann Waltner; Birgitte Soland; Ulrike Strasser (eds.). Gender, Kinship, Power: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary History. New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-91298-3.
  • Smith, Michael G. (1962). West Indian Family Structure. Washington, DC: Washington University Press.
  • Smith, Raymond T. (1956). The Negro Family in British Guiana: Family Structure and Social Status in the Villages. London: Routledge.
  • Smith, Raymond T. (1996). The Matrifocal Family: Power, Pluralism and Politics. New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-91215-6.
  • Smith, Paul J. (1998). "Fear of gynarchy in an age of chaos: Kong Qi's reflections on life in South China under Mongol rule". Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. 41 (1): 1–95. doi:10.1163/1568520982601412. JSTOR 3632774.
  • Young, Michael; Willmott, Peter (1957). Family and Kinship in East London. Harmondsworth: Pelican.
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