Patrilineality, also known as male lineage or agnatic kinship, is a form of kinship system in which a person's family affiliation stems from his or her father's ancestry. This usually includes inheritance of property, rights, names or titles by persons related through male-line kinship.
The patrilineum ("paternal line") is the father of a person and additional ancestors that can be traced only through the male line. Thus, a person's patrilineality is a record of descent from a man, in which individuals in all subsequent generations are men. In cultural anthropology, patrilineality is a blood group of kinship between a man and a woman, each of whose members descends from a common ancestor through male ancestors.
Matrilineality is a form of kinship system in which a person's family affiliation stems from and is traced through his or her mother's ancestry.
An ethnographic example of a large family that had not yet lost the beginnings of primitive communal democracy was represented by the friends of the Southern Slavs, in which the supreme power belonged to the council of all adult men and women, who elected the housekeeper.
"Paired marriage is a form of marriage that existed under the primitive communal system, associated with the development of matriarchy. As society developed, marriage changed in the direction of narrowing the circle of those marrying; cohabitation in couples, which in the early stages of the primitive communal system, with group marriage was only very brief, during the heyday of the primitive communal system becomes the main form of marriage. Being already monogamous, the family in a couple marriage, however, was not an economic unit of society. Each member of the married couple continued to be strongly connected with their ancestral community. The married couple did not run a separate household, had no property. In this regard, this marriage was not stable, marital cohabitation was easily dissolved. The children were connected to the mother's ancestral community and remained in it in case of divorce. This was a pair marriage among the Australians, as well as among the Iroquois and many other Indian tribes back in the 18th and 19th centuries. Since pair marriage originated in a matriarchal tribal community in which women played a large role in production, the wife was equal to her husband and held a high position. The transition from paired marriage to monogamy with an intermediate form of patriarchal family is due to the beginning of the decomposition of the primitive community, the emergence of private property, which led to the separation of the family from the genus and the transformation of the family into an independent unit with the authority of the father of the family – the owner" (Tikhomirov A.E., The concept of matriarchy. "LitRes", Moscow, 2023, p. 2).
It can also relate to a social system in which each person is identified with their matrilineality – their mother's ancestry – and which may include inheritance of property and titles. A matriline is a line of descent from a female ancestor to a descendant in which individuals in all subsequent generations are mothers – in other words, the "maternal line".
In the matrilineal descent system, an individual is considered to belong to the same group of origin as he or her mother. This model of matrilineal descent differs from the more common model of patrilineal descent.
Bilateral descent is a form of kinship system in which a person's belonging to a family stems from both paternal and maternal lines. Maternal and paternal relatives are equally important for emotional connections or the transfer of property or wealth. This is a family agreement in which descent and inheritance are transmitted equally through both parents. Families that use this system track the lineage of both parents at the same time and recognize several ancestors, but unlike cognitive descent, it is not used to form groups of origin.
The growth of productive forces that led to the victory of the patriarchate, expressed in the rise of all branches of economic activity, the development of exchange, and the emergence of commodity production, caused the rapid disintegration of the primitive communal system. Along with the separate property of the family community, private property began to strengthen, the bearer of which became a separate (small, individual) family consisting only of parents and their children. The heads of individual families sought to become the sovereign stewards of their share in the common property, to stand out, to become independent. The disintegration of the patriarchal family, which freed private property from the communal and tribal ties that hindered its development, was at this stage an inevitable consequence of the law of mandatory conformity of industrial relations with the nature of productive forces. Having separated from the patriarchal family, the individual family became the main economy, the unit of society, and at the same time the first form of the family, which was based not on natural, but on economic conditions – namely, the victory of private property over the original, naturally grown common property. In the new family, the monogamous order found its further and final expression: the husband became the sole and uncontrolled ruler. In this form, the family as a unit of society enters into a class society – the slave-owning system.
It is traditionally found in some groups in West Africa, India, Australia, Indonesia, Melanesia, Malaysia and Polynesia. Anthropologists believe that a tribal structure based on two-way ancestry helps tribal members live in extreme conditions because it allows individuals to rely on two groups of families (phratries) scattered over a large area.
The concept of family
A family is a group of people connected either by consanguinity (recognized by birth) or intimacy (marriage or other relationships). It forms the basis of the social order. The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and society as a whole. Ideally, families provide predictability, structure, and security as their members mature and learn to participate in community life. Historically, most human societies have used the family as the primary place of attachment, upbringing, and socialization. Anthropologists classify most family organizations as matrilocal (mother and her children), patrilocal (father and his children), conjugal (a married couple with children, also called a nuclear family), paternal (a man, his sister and her children) or extended (in addition to parents and children, may include grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins).
The field of genealogy aims to trace the family's lineage throughout history. The family is also an important economic unit studied within the family economy. The word "family" can be used figuratively to create more inclusive categories such as communities, statehood, and the "global village".
One of the main functions of the family is to provide the basis for the production and reproduction of people biologically and socially. This can happen through sharing material goods (such as food); providing and receiving care and education (foster kinship); legal rights and responsibilities; and moral and sentimental bonds. Thus, a person's attitude towards his family changes over time. From the point of view of children, the family is an "orientation family": the family serves for the social placement of children and plays an important role in their inclusion in culture and socialization. From the point of view of the parent(s), the family is a "procreation family", the purpose of which is to produce, introduce culture and socialize children. However, the production of children is not the only function of the family; in societies with a sexual division of labor, marriage and the resulting relationship between two people, this is necessary for the formation of an economically productive household.