Modernity and Matrifocality: The Feminization of Kinship?

Abstract

The extensive analytical focus on how gender relations in working lives, employment, education, political engagement and public life change under modernity needs extension into a consideration of the ways in which kinship and relatedness have also been changing. This article argues that relatedness under modernity tends towards matrifocality. This is explored through looking at broad patterns of social change in kinship practices across a range of societies experiencing transitions towards modernities over the past fifty years, and at how state and NGO development and social protection programmes contribute to this matrifocal turn.Development and Change 46(1): 1-24.

North American Women’s Marital Surname Change: Practices, Law, and Patrilineal Descent Reckoning

“…This section is included for background, as well as to show the administrative cost entailed for women undergoing marital surname change. Third, the posited decrease in patrilineal descent reckoning in response to greater equalization of the sexes' reproductive success variances (Ellison 1994;Jackson 2014) and decreased hypergamy (the marrying of women to better-resourced men: Jackson 2014) will be described. Fourth, grandparental discriminative solicitude, or the greater solicitousness of classes of grandparents with greater assurance of relatedness to the grandchild (Smith 1988b), will be described in relationship to women's marital surname retention/ change practice.…”

“…Ellison (1994) and Jackson (2014) both comment relevantly on the potential demise of patrilineal descent reckoning in the modern West. Ellison's analysis is based in part on the advantage, in cultures with relatively high male compared with female reproductive success (usually calculated by tallying one's number of offspring or offspring surviving to adulthood: Brown et al 2009) variance, of patrilineal over bilateral descent reckoning.…”

“…(p. 163) Stanton (2006) and Jackson (2014) also note that less power and fewer resources are directly or indirectly inherited or otherwise bestowed on those of one's lineage under modern conditions. Jackson goes on to relate this to a rise in, among other things, bilateral descent reckoning.…”

“…Under hypergamy, assuming resources are inherited or largely inherited, it behooves children to seek the favor of their wealthier father's family over that of their poorer mother. This may, in turn, lead to or strengthen the importance and salience of patrilineal descent (Jackson 2014).…”

Gendered Emotional Support and Women’s Well-Being in a Low-Income Urban African Setting

“…Emotional support for single mothers in sub-Saharan Africa may be expected to come primarily from women given the tenuous link between single mothers and their children’s fathers, the continuing importance of extended matrifocal living arrangements (Jackson 2015), strong consanguinal ties to sisters and mothers (Oyewumi 2002; Sudarska 1998), and the persistence of gendered expectations of men as financial rather than emotional providers (Smith 2017). At the same time, however, limited job prospects for both men and women (Hunter 2006; Tsikata and Razavi 2009) and rapidly changing gender norms and perceptions of kinship obligations may be altering expectations and the receipt of emotional support from both women and men.…”