Kinkeeping

Why is Kinkeeping Necessary?

In contemporary society, maintaining solidarity and continuity in families may become problematic as families experience disruption stemming from, for example, death, geographical and social mobility, immigration, and life-course transitions such as marriage and divorce. These and other factors may pose a challenge to maintaining kin relationships. If family members do not make an effort to keep in touch, kin ties may become attenuated. Kinkeeping in families seeks to ensure this does not happen.

Structure of Kinship in Adult Life

In North America and Europe, the basic family unit is the nuclear family, that is, parent(s) and children. Living arrangements reflect this emphasis in that most households consist of nuclear families (with some variation due to marital status, childlessness, sexual orientation, and ethnicity). Over time, as children grow up, marry, and have children of their own, several nuclear families result; these remain connected through social and emotional ties. This broader network, consisting of older parents and their adult children and grandchildren, has been characterized as a modified extended family. Although large family reunions involving the wider extended family may occur from time to time, the modified extended family, involving adult siblings and their parents and children, comprise the family ties that seem most important to individuals in our society. Much of the work of kinkeeping involves maintaining ties between members of the modified extended family.

The Work of Kinkeeping

Kinkeeping work may include activities such as hosting or arranging family gatherings; transmitting [Page 950]family news among family members; keeping in touch by phone, mail, or electronic means; creating and maintaining a family genealogy; and recognizing special occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries. Another kinkeeping activity is maintaining family harmony, for example, by acting as a mediator or peacemaker to resolve family disputes.

Some researchers have included preserving traditions as kinkeeping. These traditions may be religious, ethnocultural, or special ways of celebrating holidays that seem unique to a family's members. Preserving these traditions often provides a sense of family identity and gives meaning to family relationships. Preserving traditions may be particularly important to older family members who are immigrants, but assimilation of younger family members into the ways of the host country may result in the loss of traditions. Some research has pointed to the important role older immigrants play in preserving traditions, thereby enhancing feelings of family solidarity and continuity. Researchers have termed this symbolic kinkeeping, referring to activities that go beyond activities such as hosting or arranging family gatherings to include activities that reinforce a sense of meaning and importance of family. Examples of such activities include passing on ethnic culture, religious values, family stories, and special family recipes.

...