Matrifocal family

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

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. 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.

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.

Characteristics

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". 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. 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. 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.

"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." 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. Men's absences are often of long durations. 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.

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

According to anthropologist Maurice Godelier, matrifocality is "typical of Afro-Caribbean groups" and some African-American communities. Matrifocality had also appeared in Russia following The Second World War. It was found among the Tuareg people in northern Africa; in some Mediterranean communities; in urban Brazil. and among the Miskitu people in the village of Kuri on the Caribbean coast of northeastern Honduras. The Nair community in Kerala and the Bunt community in Tulunadu in South India are prime examples of matrifocality, as well as the Mosuo in China.

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

See also

• Androcracy
• Lahu people

References

Bibliography

• 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.

External links

• The dictionary definition of matrifocal at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of matrifocality at Wiktionary