American Kinship

A Cultural Account

David M. Schneider

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780226227092
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

American Kinship is the first attempt to deal systematically with kinship as a system of symbols and meanings, and not simply as a network of functionally interrelated familial roles. Schneider argues that the study of a highly differentiated society such as our own may be more revealing of the nature of kinship than the study of anthropologically more familiar, but less differentiated societies. He goes to the heart of the ideology of relations among relatives in America by locating the underlying features of the definition of kinship—nature vs. law, substance vs. code. One of the most significant features of American Kinship, then, is the explicit development of a theory of culture on which the analysis is based, a theory that has since proved valuable in the analysis of other cultures. For this Phoenix edition, Schneider has written a substantial new chapter, responding to his critics and recounting the charges in his thought since the book was first published in 1968.

PART ONE

THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURES WHICH DEFINE THE PERSON AS A RELATIVE

CHAPTER TWO

Relatives

I.

What the anthropologist calls kinsmen are called “relatives,” “folks, “kinfolk,” “people,” or “family” by Americans; the possessive pronoun may precede these terms. In different regions and dialects various words may be used, but people from different parts of the country generally understand each other and share the same fundamental definitions even when they do not use the same names for the same cultural categories. I will use the American term “relative” as the very rough equivalent for the anthropologist’s term “kinsman,” but this is a very rough translation indeed.

The explicit definition which Americans readily provide is that a relative is a person who is related by blood or by marriage. Those related by marriage may be called “in-laws.” But the word relative can also be used by Americans in a more restricted sense for blood relatives alone and used in direct opposition to relative by marriage. Thus it may be said, “No, she is not a relative; my wife is an in-law.” Or it may equally properly be said, “Yes, she is a relative; she is my wife.”

One can begin to discover what a relative is in American culture by considering those terms which are the names for the kinds of relatives—among other things—and which mark the scheme for their classification.

American kinship terms can be divided into two groups. The first group can be called the basic terms, the second, derivative terms. Derivative terms are made up of a basic term plus a modifier.¹ “Cousin” is an example of a basic term, “second” a particular modifier. “Second cousin” is an example of a derivative term. “Father” is another example of a basic term, “-in-law” a modifier. “Father-in-law” is an example of a derivative term.

The basic terms are “father,” “mother,” “brother,” “sister,” “son,” “daughter,” “uncle,” “aunt,” “nephew,” “niece,” “cousin,” “husband,” and “wife.” The modifiers are “step-” “-in-law,” “foster,” “great,” “grand,” “first,” “second,” etc., “once,” “twice,” etc., “removed,” “half,” and “ex-.” The “removed” modifier is reserved to “cousin.” The “half” modifier is reserved to “brother” and “sister.” The “ex-” modifier is reserved to relatives by marriage. “Great” only modifies “father,” “mother,” “son,” and “daughter” when they have first been modified by “grand,” as in “great grandfather.” “Great” and “grand” do not modify “cousin,” “brother,” “sister,” “husband,” or “wife.” Otherwise modifiers can be used with any basic term.²

The modifiers in this system form two different sets with two different functions. One set of modifiers distinguishes true or blood relatives from those who are not. These are the “step-,” “-in-law,” and “foster” modifiers along with the “half” modifier which specifies less than a full blood sibling. Thus “father” is a blood relative, “foster brother” is not. “Daughter” is a blood relative, “step-daughter” is not.

The other set of modifiers define the range of the terms as infinite. These are the “great,” “grand,” “removed,” “first,” etc., and “ex-” modifiers. That is, the range or extent of the terms is without limit.

There are, therefore, two different kinds of modifiers. One kind, the restrictive, sharply divides blood relatives from those in comparable positions who are not blood relatives. The other kind of modifier, the unrestrictive, simply states the unrestricted or unlimited range of certain relatives.

One more important point should be noted about the modifiers. The unrestrictive modifiers mark distance, and they mark it in two ways. The first is by degrees of distance. Thus “first cousin” is closer than “second cousin,” “uncle” closer than “great uncle,” “great uncle” closer than “great great uncle,” and so on. The second way of marking distance is on a simple “in/out” basis. Husband is “in,” ex-husband is “out.” (But note that “first,” “second,” etc., as modifiers of “husband” and “wife” do not mark closeness but only succession in time.)

This structure states a substantial part of the definition of what is and what is not a relative. The first criterion, blood or marriage, is central. The two kinds of modifiers are united in their functions; one protects the integrity of the closest blood relatives. The other places relatives in calibrated degrees of distance if they are blood relatives, but either “in” or “out” if they are relatives by marriage.

II.

If a relative is a person related “by blood,” what does this mean in American culture?

The blood relationship, as it is defined in American kinship, is formulated in concrete, biogenetic terms. Conception follows a single act of sexual intercourse between a man, as genitor, and a woman, as genetrix. At conception, one-half of the biogenetic substance of which the child is made is contributed by the genetrix, and one-half by the genitor. Thus each person has 100 per cent of this material, but 50 per cent comes from his mother and 50 per cent from his father at the time of his conception, and thereby is his “by birth.”

Although a child takes part of the mother’s makeup and part of the father’s, neither mother nor father shares that makeup with each other. Since a woman is not “made up of” biogenetic material from her husband, she is not his blood relative. But she is the blood relative of her child precisely because the mother and child are both “made up of,” in part, the very same material. So, too, are the father and child.

It is believed, in American kinship, that both mother and father give substantially the same kinds and amounts of material to the child, and that the child’s whole biogenetic identity or any part of it comes half from the mother, half from the father. It is not believed that the father provides the bone, the mother the flesh, for instance, or that the father provides the intelligence, the mother the appearance.

In American cultural conception, kinship is defined as biogenetic. This definition says that kinship is whatever the biogenetic relationship is. If science discovers new facts about biogenetic relationship, then that is what kinship is and was all along, although it may not have been known at the time.

Hence the real, true, verifiable facts of nature are what the cultural formulation is. And the real, true, objective facts of science (these are the facts of nature too, of course) are that each parent provides one-half of his child’s biogenetic constitution.³

The relationship which is “real” or “true” or “blood” or “by birth” can never be severed, whatever its legal position. Legal rights may be lost, but the blood relationship cannot be lost. It is culturally defined as being an objective fact of nature, of fundamental significance and capable of having profound effects, and its nature cannot be terminated or changed. It follows that it is never possible to have an ex-father or an ex-mother, an ex-sister or an ex-brother, an ex-son or an ex-daughter. An ex-husband or ex-wife is possible, and so is an ex-mother-in-law. But an ex-mother is not.

It is significant that one may disown a son or a daughter, or one may try to disinherit a child (within the limits set by the laws of the various states). The relationship between parent and child, or between siblings, may be such that the two never see each other, never mention each other’s name, never communicate in any way, each acting as if unaware of the other’s existence. But to those directly concerned, as to all others who know the facts, the two remain parent and child or sibling to each other. Nothing can really terminate or change the biological relationship which exists between them, and so they remain blood relatives. It is this which makes them parent and child or sibling to each other in American culture.

Two blood relatives are “related” by the fact that they share in some degree the stuff of a particular heredity. Each has a portion of the natural, genetic substance. Their kinship consists in this common possession. If they need to prove their kinship, or to explain it to someone, they may name the intervening blood relatives and locate the ascendent whose blood they have in common. It is said that they can trace their blood through certain relatives, that they have “Smith blood in their veins.” But their kinship to each other does not depend on intervening relatives, but only on the fact that each has some of the heredity that the other has and both got theirs from a single source.

Because blood is a “thing” and because it is subdivided with each reproductive step away from a given ancestor, the precise degree to which two persons share common heredity can be calculated, and “distance” can thus be stated in specific quantitative terms.

The unalterable nature of the blood relationship has one more aspect of significance. A blood relationship is a relationship of identity. People who are blood relatives share a common identity, they believe. This is expressed as “being of the same flesh and blood.” It is a belief in common biological constitution, and aspects like temperament, build, physiognomy, and habits are noted as signs of this shared biological makeup, this special identity of relatives with each other. Children are said to look like their parents, or to “take after” one or another parent or grandparent; these are confirming signs of the common biological identity. A parent, particularly a mother, may speak of a child as “a part of me.”

In sum, the definition of a relative as someone related by blood or marriage is quite explicit in American culture. People speak of it in just those terms, and do so readily when asked. The conception of a child occurs during an act of sexual intercourse, at which time one-half of the biogenetic substance of which the child is formed is contributed by the father, its genitor, and one-half by the mother, its genetrix. The blood relationship is thus a relationship of substance, of shared biogenetic material. The degree to which such material is shared can be measured and is called distance. The fact that the relationship of blood cannot be ended or altered and that it is a state of almost mystical commonality and identity is also quite explicit in American culture.

III.

“Relative by marriage” is defined with reference to “relative by blood” in American kinship. The fundamental element which defines a relative by blood is, of course, blood, a substance, a material thing. Its constitution is whatever it is that really is in nature. It is a natural entity. It endures; it cannot be terminated.

Marriage is not a material thing in the same sense as biogenetic heredity is. It is not a “natural thing” in the sense of a material object found in nature. As a state of affairs it is, of course, natural; it has natural concomitants or aspects, but it is not in itself a natural object. It is terminable by death or divorce.

Therefore, where blood is both material and natural, marriage is neither. Where blood endures, marriage is terminable. And since there is no such “thing” as blood of which marriage consists, and since there is no such material which exists free in nature, persons related by marriage are not related “in nature.”

If relatives “by marriage” are not related “in nature,” how are they related?

Consider the step-, -in-law, and foster relatives. The fundamental fact about these relatives is that they have the role of close relatives without, as informants put it, being “real or blood relatives.” A step-mother is a mother who is not a “real” mother, but the person who is now the father’s wife. A father-in-law is a father who is not Ego’s own father, but his spouse’s father. And a foster son is not one’s own or real son, but someone whom one is caring for as a son.

It is possible to describe a foster-child’s relationship to his foster parents, or a step-child’s relationship (and this is the word which informants themselves use) to his step-parent. This is, in its main outline, a parent—child relationship in the sense that it is a pattern for how interpersonal relations should proceed.

The natural and material basis for the relationship is absent, but relatives of this kind have a relationship in the sense of following a pattern for behavior, a code for conduct.

The classic tragedy of a step-child in Western European folklore, Cinderella for instance, states exactly the nature and also the problem of this relationship. A woman’s relationship to her own child is one in which she has an abiding love and loyalty for it; her relationship to her husband’s child by his earlier marriage is one in which that child is someone else’s child, not hers. What she does for her step-child she does because of her husband’s claim on her. Hence, if her husband does not protect his child, she may be cruel to it and favor her own child. This is seen as tragic because a child should have a mother who will mother it, and the parent-child relationship is quite distinct from the blood-tie which underlies it. The cruel step-mother of folklore should rise above the literal definition of her relationship to her step-child, and have the kind of relationship—affection, concern, care, and so forth—which a mother has for a child.

When a person is related to a blood relative he is related first by common biogenetic heredity, a natural substance, and second, by a relationship, a pattern for behavior or a code for conduct. The spouse, on one hand, and the step-, -in-law, and foster-relatives, on the other hand, are related by a relationship alone; there is no natural substance aspect to the relationship.

The distinctive feature which defines the order of blood relatives, then, is blood, a natural substance; blood relatives are thus “related by nature.” This, I suggest, is a special instance of the natural order of things in American culture. The natural order is the way things are in nature. It consists in objects found free in nature. It is “the facts of life” as they really exist.

The feature which alone distinguishes relatives by marriage is their relationship, their pattern for behavior, the code for their conduct. I suggest, this is a special instance of the other general order in American culture, the order of law. The order of law is imposed by man and consists of rules and regulations, customs and traditions. It is law in its special sense, where a foster-parent who fails to care properly for a child can be brought to court, and it is law in its most general sense: law and order, custom, the rule of order, the government of action by morality and the self-restraint of human reason. It is a relationship in the sense of being a code or pattern for how action should proceed.

All of the step-, -in-law, and foster relatives fall under the order of law. It is in this sense that a mother-in-law is not a “real” or “true” mother—not a genetrix, that is—but is in the relationship of mother—child to her child’s spouse. It is in this sense that a step-mother is not a “real” mother, not the genetrix, but is in a mother—child relationship to her husband’s child. The crux of the Cinderella story is precisely that where the “real mother” is related to her child both by law and by nature, the stepmother lacks the “natural” basis for the relationship, and lacking this natural substance she “feels” no love except toward her “own” child and is thus able to cruelly exploit the child related to her in law alone.

If there is a relationship in law without a relationship in nature, as in the case of the spouse, step-, -in-law, and foster relatives, can there be a relationship in nature without a relationship in law? Indeed there can and there is. What is called a “natural child” is an example. He is a child born out of wedlock, a child, that is, whose mother and father are not married. He is a “natural child” because in his case his relationship to his parents is by nature alone and not by law as well; he is an “illegitimate” child. Similarly, the “real mother” of a child adopted in infancy, whether legitimate or not, is a relative in nature alone and not in law, and so is the genitor of such a child. Although the child is adopted and has every right and every duty of the blood child, in American belief it remains related to its “true” mother and father, its genitor and genetrix, in nature though not in law.

IV.

In sum, the cultural universe of relatives in American kinship is constructed of elements from two major cultural orders, the order of nature and the order of law. Relatives in nature share heredity. Relatives in law are bound only by law or custom, by the code for conduct, by the pattern for behavior. They are relatives by virtue of their relationship, not their biogenetic attributes.

Three classes of relatives are constructed from these two elements. First there is the special class of relatives in nature alone. This class contains the natural or illegitimate child, the genitor or genetrix who is not the adoptive father or mother, and so on. The second class consists of relatives in law alone. This class m...