Natal Family Research Articles

Developing Thirunangai Identity: An Exploration of Gender Minority Identity Formation in Chennai, India

This study investigates the developmental experiences of the Thirunangais, a gender-diverse community in South India, employing the gender minority stress and resilience (GMSR) model proposed by Testa et al. in 2015. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we conducted a secondary data analysis of 50 interviews that were undertaken with Thirunangai individuals between August 2013 and April 2014 in Chennai. We explore how Thirunangai individuals realize and adapt to their gender identity and expression amidst their familial responses, emotional experiences, and other outcomes of identity establishment. Our findings reveal pervasive gender-related discrimination and rejection (distal stressors) experienced by Thirunangai individuals from their natal families, resulting in a sense of internalized shame, loneliness, and negative expectations of the future (proximal stressors), particularly during their formative years. However, many find acceptance and support from communities outside their families, forming alternative kinship networks. Transitioning from their family homes to the Thirunangai community positively impacts their journey and offers alternative avenues for emotional and familial fulfillment, fostering resilience. We also identified culturally-specific resilience factors, such as commitment to authenticity and pride, enabling individuals to confront and endure stressors. Thirunangai experiences from our interviews underscore the need for greater awareness and acceptance of gender diversity within families. Our findings emphasize the need for interventions that recognize the significance of queer kinships and promote affirmation and acceptance for Thirunangais and other queer populations in India.

Who dominates? Multiple constructions of women's subjective social status and their cohort dynamics in transitional China

The way women construct their subjective social status has garnered significant attention. However, the roles of husbands and fathers in this process have been underexplored, with even less focus on how these roles have evolved across generations. This study aims to answer two important questions against the backdrop: First, which is the most dominant factor in shaping married women's subjective social status, their own objective class or those of their husband or father? Answers to this question reveal the impacts of assortative mating and intergenerational mobility. Second, how does the construction pattern change across birth cohorts? Cohort dynamics help reflect the evolution of gender roles and family values in China. Using pooled data from the Chinese General Social Survey in 2010–2017 and the diagonal reference model, our study finds that Chinese married women previously tended to construct their own social status based on the objective class of their husbands. However, this trend is reversed for younger cohorts. Father's objective class status carries roughly the same weight as women's own, but its impact becomes moderately stronger in younger cohorts. Taken together, the above findings reveal a unique pathway of family modernization in transitional China. Married women, although increasingly independent of their spouses, still remain closely connected with their natal families.

Of Queerness and Caregiving: Family, Emotional Labor and Livability in India

What does it mean to be queer, a care seeker and a caregiver in India? This article, an auto-ethnographic, self-reflexive account, thinks through this question, while charting the history of the emergence of a queer citizenship in India. Analyzing a contested, yet loving relationship between an aging and ailing mother and a queer AMAB (assigned male at birth) son, also the former’s primary caregiver, the article locates the nuances of being queer within a largely homophobic society, through a personal testimony spanning two decades, and ending with the COVID-19 pandemic. In the process, the article decodes the ever-changing ambivalent relationship of the queer citizen subject with the Indian nation-state, roughly from the time when the first petition for scrapping Sec. 377 of the India Penal Code was filed at the Delhi High Court. This ambivalent relationship continues to massively impact emotional lives and labor expended in the act of caregiving and cohabitation with the natal family, particularly, when the heteronormative family breaks down, as in the case of the author. The life story narrated, while foregrounding queer victimization makes way for optimism as well – significantly lacking within the Indian queer community – for a relatively livable life.

From Outsider to Insider: Women's Marital Names and Family Identity in Nineteenth-Century Taiwan

This article explores the naming customs of married women in Taiwan during the nineteenth century. By attempting to unveil the factors that caused women to prefix the husband's surname, it shows that the practice likely developed from legal and property documents. It also elaborates the convention's relationship with women's family identity, arguing that women were “dual outsiders” in both the natal and affinal family. However, this study finally demonstrates that prefixing the husband's surname did not connote their passivity or subjugation as married women, especially widows who could rely on it to call upon their rights within the family and society.

Protection or commodification of women? Discursive construction of bridewealth on Chinese social media

ABSTRACT Bridewealth, the long-standing practice of groom-to-bride monetary transfer, is now facing growing backlash in China. Researchers mostly approach bridewealth from the perspectives of anthropology and economics, highlighting its social impact yet leaving public opinions on it less heeded. To fill this niche, this study collected the most “liked” 5,000 posts from Sina Weibo, identified dominant themes of bridewealth supporters and detractors, and analyzed how these themes are (de)legitimatized. Drawing on feminist critical discourse analysis and van Leeuwen’s analytical toolkit, content analysis reveals that supporters mainly see bridewealth as a protection of women, an investment in the new families, and a worthy tradition to follow, whereas opponents associate it with the commodification of women, financial challenges to men’s natal families, and long-gone feudal shackles. These themes are enacted with strategies like rationalization, moralization, victimization, and authorization. This study stands out for situating bridewealth in media studies and illuminating the contested public discourse on it. More importantly, given that most supporters are women and they bear the brunt of the family-work balance, the study also gives voice to the much-silenced women’s marriage-related concerns in institutional media so that their welfare and self-actualization can be accommodated in future policy-making.

Factors associated with help-seeking by women facing intimate partner violence in India: findings from National Family Health Survey-5 (2019–2021)

BackgroundIntimate partner violence (IPV) against women has harmful effects on their psychological and physical health. However, help-seeking for IPV is significantly low among women in the Indian context. This study examines the different factors that influence help-seeking behaviour among women in India. It also studies associations of the type of IPV with the source of help.MethodsThe study analyses data from the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey that was conducted in India (2019–2021). Independent variables were categorized at individual, relationship-household and community levels. The Stata 14.2 software was used to calculate the prevalence ratios and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals. Variables with p-values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Poisson regression helped identify factors associated with help-seeking.ResultsResults indicate that among 72,320 women aged 18–49 years, 17,765 women ever-faced IPV. Of them, 14.2% of women who faced either physical and/or sexual IPV sought any help. Husband’s consumption of alcohol almost doubled the likelihood of help-seeking among women (19.91%), compared to women whose husbands did not drink alcohol (10.19%). Witnessing parental IPV also increased the odds (17.26%) of help-seeking. Women who were not empowered were more likely to seek help (14.11%) compared to women who were empowered (12.56%). The police were the predominant source where women went for formal help (6.94 to 8.43%), followed by doctors (1.84 to 2.71%). Close to 1 in 4 women (22.5%) sought help for sexual IPV, while 14.4% of women sought help for physical IPV. Around 95% of all women who faced IPV sought informal help, with 3 in 5 of them approaching their own families, and 3 in 10 approaching their in-laws or marital families.ConclusionsTwo significant factors that associate positively with help-seeking by women facing IPV are husbands’ alcohol consumption and witnessing parental IPV. Most women preferred informal help from the natal family, while among formal providers, the police were the foremost choice. Programmes and initiatives to build capacities of communities, and of police to respond to women seeking help for IPV, would enable more women to reach out for help.

Exploring Intervention with South Asian Women in the United States Experiencing Domestic Violence

ABSTRACT Purpose The current study reports intervention from the perspective of abused South Asian women in the United States (U.S.) aligning with the Center for Disease Control (CDC’s) ecological model. Material and Methods In-depth telephonic interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of 20 South Asian women in the U.S. The interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results Utilizing the CDC’s ecological model, the following themes emerged for prevention at the individual level: walk away the first-time abuse occurred; at the relationship level: pre-marital counseling and at the societal level: act on the red flags before the wedding, address the stringent gender roles, socialization, and blame. For protection, the following themes emerged at the individual level: self-determination and strength, protection of children, and financial independence. At the relationship level, the theme of marital counseling emerged and at the community level, the theme of community resources emerged. Discussion The South Asian natal family or family members in positions of power can recognize red flags, raise their voice, take constructive action to address misogyny, rigid patriarchal attitudes, and prevent abuse before it occurs. Conclusion There is an urgent need to recognize and work at both preventative and protective levels to address the abuse among South Asian women in the U.S.

Migration and making of non-heteronormative households and families: lived experiences of cisgender women partners of trans men in Bengaluru

Abstract The lived experiences of cisgender women partners of trans men are rarely a subject of concern, even for sexuality studies in India. This article looks into the lived experiences of cisgender-identified female partners of trans men who migrated to Bengaluru city from different parts of south India to live with their trans men partners. Despite constant opposition and threats from their natal families, these women decided to relocate to Bengaluru along with their trans men partners. Bengaluru-based Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) working on gender and sexual minorities helped them migrate and settle in Bengaluru. The queer and trans community in Bengaluru also helped them deal with the challenges post-migration. Post-migration, these women formed households and families along with their trans men partners. This study uses Pfeffer’s conceptualization of ‘normative resistance’ and ‘inventive pragmatism’ to elucidate how, post- migration, the women and their trans men partners strategically resisted and accessed social structure/institutions to receive social recognition and escape public stigma and violence. The study also shows that inegalitarian emotional and household division of labour exists between the women and their trans men partners. Even as the women try to naturalize them, they were not passive receptors and have learned to strategize their roles in the household realm. Simultaneously, the article also shows that the space created by the NGOs and trans-civic networks in the city has helped these women form a strong community consciousness and forge support system that gives them the confidence to live with their trans men partners.

Diligent Daughters: Women’s Educational Outperformance in Contemporary China

In post-reform China (1979–present), women have advanced rapidly in educational achievement, and now surpass men in undergraduate and postgraduate attendance. Scholars tend to attribute women’s outperformance to the one-child policy, which empowered urban singleton daughters. But around 40 percent of women undergraduate students are from rural areas, where multi-child families and son preference are common. Based on participant observation, ethnographic interviews, and longitudinal family case studies, this article addresses educated migrant women from a broad range of backgrounds in Fujian province. It argues that academically outperforming daughters combine self-development, filiality, and resistance to patriarchal norms to pursue the full subjecthood that is conventionally reserved for men—encompassing recognition for individual accomplishment, independence, and filial contribution. By navigating marriage pressures and economically contributing to their natal families, diligent daughters shift patricentric family dynamics toward more bilateral arrangements, eroding the patriarchal structures that undergird male-centered power even as many gendered norms remain intact.

Care, Violence, and More-Than-Human Reproductive Ecologies in North India

ABSTRACT This paper explores therapeutic interventions for subfertility as a domain where meanings and boundaries of care and violence are constituted. It centres around a fragment of one Rajasthani woman’s reproductive journey contextualised within marriage migration, upward social mobility, and affinal/natal kin relations. Grounded in 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Rajasthan, India, and ongoing conversations with the family, this paper investigates therapeutic interventions undertaken by affinal and natal families—biomedical interventions alongside engagements with a Hindu goddess Kali—and examines how ambivalent care practices are situated within relations between people, technologies, and spirits who ‘meddle’ with human affairs. It argues that the meanings of care are constituted relationally within more-than-human reproductive ecologies.

Social Consequence of Inter-caste Marriage: A Case Study of Itahari, Sunsari

Marriage is typically understood to be a sexual and financial relationship that is socially accepted, considered to be more or less permanent, and that implies rights and obligations for the married couple and any children they may have. The Eastern Development Region's urban area serves as the basis for this study. For this study, a total of 30 couples were purposefully chosen as respondents. Eight couples were asked to participate in a thorough study using the case study technique in order to obtain qualitative information about inter-caste marriage and its effects on the personal, professional, and social lives of couples. My research has demonstrated that non-Dalit families are more likely to accept a son-in-law than a daughter-in-law. Because of the family's weak familial network, exposure to the outside world, and the presence of power and status in a very important family, which could overshadow the violation of societal standards? Non-Dalit women who were not able to visit their birth homes on special events like Teej, Bhaitika, and Dasahin felt a loss of kinship relationship because hypogamous marriages are not approved by the natal family.

Towards an extended resource theory of marital power: parental education and household decision-making in rural China.

Existing literature on the resource theory of marital power has focused on the relative resources of spouses and overlooked the resource contributions of spouses' extended families. We propose an extended resource theory that considers how the comparative resources of a couple's natal families are directly associated with marital power, net of the comparative resources of the couple. Using data from the China Panel Family Studies, we examine how the relative education of a couple's respective parents affects the wife's decision-making power, net of the relative education of the couple. Results suggest that the higher the wife's parental education relative to her husband's parental education, the more likely she is to have the final say over household financial decisions. Our study underscores the importance of situating the study of marital power in the extended family context and highlights the significance of social origins and intergenerational exchanges for marital power.

Gender Bargaining Within Matriliny in Kerala

This article presents ethnographic evidence to illustrate how Nayar women in Kerala from three different generations encounter the interplay of changed gender and property relations and seek to balance their relationships, expectations and entitlements within their natal and affinal families. Directly experiencing the dynamic intersection of property, gender and culture as well as legal and socio-cultural change, these women are seen to bargain, often quite consciously, over power and resources, including property, within patterns of matriliny that exist in a wider society influenced by dominant patriarchal norms. The article suggests that this is not as unique to Kerala as is often claimed. It makes a case, therefore, for further research on how South Asian women in the twenty-first century remain torn between matriliny and patriliny, the natal family and the husband’s family, and have to engage in multiple balancing acts to secure their rights.

How does domestic violence stigma manifest in women’s lives in Afghanistan? A study of survivors’ lived experiences of help-seeking across three provinces.

ABSTRACT Afghanistan has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the world, with an estimated 46% women reporting lifetime violence. Survivors of domestic violence experience significant stigma from their families and communities, often in the form of blame, shame, gossip, and dismissal. While the manifestations of stigma are often the same across cultural settings, the drivers may be different. We conducted sixty semi-structured interviews with survivors of domestic violence in three provinces of Afghanistan. Data were analysed using thematic network analysis. Our analysis highlights stigma as a structural phenomenon in Afghanistan underpinned by mutually reinforcing structural elements (including community, government authorities, marital and natal families, other survivors and the self). In a country with a deeply patriarchal social structure, the main manifestation of stigma was the silencing of survivors of violence, as domestic violence was considered a private affair. Notions of honour were paramount in fuelling stigma against survivors of violence, as any action to report or leave violent relationships was considered dishonourable. Our findings have implications for the design of services to help survivors of violence seek help for the violence they experience, especially at a time when such services are increasingly constricted for women in Afghanistan.

Respecting the Manning Family: Jane Manning James and Her Family in Wilton, Connecticut

Respecting the Manning Family: Jane Manning James and Her Family in Wilton, Connecticut

Single women recreating family: An exploration of the role of the collective in empowering women.

A study of single women; separated, divorced or deserted by their husbands, mostly mothers, belonging to the economically weaker sections of the society was conducted in states of North India. The women, under study, are members of non-government organisations working for rights of single women. The primary aim of this study is to analyse how women from the economically weaker sections of society rebuild their lives after their marriage breaks down, and to understand how they create new relations, and the meaning they assign to family. The focus is to understand the challenges faced by women post marital discord and whether being a part of the organisation empowers them through collective struggle. The data was collected using the methodologies of semi-structured interviews and informal conversations using their life narratives. Depending on the comfort of the respondents, their life stories are recorded or notes have been taken. The method of the narratives is used to encompass the stories of the individuals through their experiences. It was found that single women were forced into poverty as a direct consequence of their marital breakdown, and the women becoming „single‟. They seldom find support from the natal family, any kind of state support or an income they can depend upon.1 Having become a part of the organisation, these women seek to redress their rights collectively, and motivate other women in similar situations to join the social movement. Single women, not related by kinship, form a „sisterhood,‟ sharing a relationship of mutual interdependence and respect. Some single women have created women-centric families with fluid boundaries. The agency accorded to them through the strength of the collective, enables them to get rid of their stigmatised identities of „vulnerable‟ and from „broken homes‟ and empowers them to challenge patriarchal structures. The study concludes that „single women,‟ as a collective, are giving a new meaning to relationships and family, as they carve a new identity for themselves, which is not subsumed within the structure of a patriarchal family. Rethinking the family from the point of single women provides a new vantage point in the critical analysis of the family and opens possibilities of forging other family forms and relationships outside the mainstream, thus expanding the sociological theorisation of the family.

Menstrual kinship: Bonds of Intimacy and Care Work of Women in Central Kerala

ABSTRACT This paper explores menstruation as a domain of kinship within and across three generations of women in central Kerala, India. Based on fieldwork, it shows that certain gendered practices of intimacy and care work in the context of menstruation produce kinship bonds among them, which the authors enunciate as ‘menstrual kinship.’ In the past, it was shared chiefly among consanguineal and affinal kinswomen and same-caste women, and became conspicuous only during public menarche rites and the separation of menstruating women. Presently, menstrual kinship extends to women outside the natal and marital family, often overturns the traditional perspectives of menstruation and actively contributes to maintaining the contemporary ‘invisibility’ of menstrual phenomena. The paper posits that regardless of its gendered nature and time-tethered transformations, ‘menstrual kinship’ has always existed as a realm that can release menstruation from conventional discourses of patriarchy and caste and aid in retrieving women’s phenomenological experiences and voices.

'Those whom I have to talk to, I can't talk to': Perceived social isolation in the context of anxiety symptoms among pregnant women in Pakistan.

Anxiety during pregnancy is highly prevalent in low- and middle-income countries. The relative importance of different sources and types of perceived support in the Pakistani context is unknown. We explored social support during pregnancy and the role of social isolation in Pakistani women's experiences of antenatal anxiety. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 pregnant women with symptoms of anxiety and 10 female healthcare providers at a public urban hospital. We used inductive and deductive thematic coding to analyse the data. Many pregnant women reported feelings of physical and social isolation, even when living in joint families with larger social networks. Often fearing censure by their in-laws and peers for sharing or seeking help with pregnancy-related anxieties, women reported relying on husbands or natal family members. Normative expectations around pregnancy such as male gender preference, perceived immutability of wives' domestic responsibilities and expectations of accompanied travel by women may serve as sources of disconnectedness in the antenatal period. Providers viewed social isolation and deficits in social support during pregnancy as contributing to worseanxiety symptoms, reduced access to care and poorer health behaviours. One limitation is that the hospital setting for this study may have resulted in underreporting of abuse or neglect and limited inclusion of pregnant women who do not utilise facility-based antenatal care. In conclusion, husbands and natal families were key in reducing social isolation in pregnancy and mitigating anxiety, while in-laws did not always confer support. Targeted strategies should enhance existing support and strengthen in-law family relationships in pregnancy.

Social support correlates with glucocorticoid concentrations in wild African elephant orphans

Social relationships have physiological impacts. Here, we investigate whether loss of the mother/offspring relationship has lasting effects on fecal glucocorticoid metabolite (fGCM) concentrations in wild African elephant orphans several years following their mothers’ deaths. We find no difference in fGCM concentrations between orphans and nonorphans, but find lower fGCM concentrations in elephants with more age mates in their family. We also unexpectedly identify lower concentrations in orphans without their natal family versus nonorphans and natal orphans, which we speculate may be due to the development of hypocortisolism following a prolonged period without familial support. An index of plant productivity (i.e. food) shows the largest correlation with fGCM concentrations. Our findings indicate no lasting differences in glucocorticoid concentrations of surviving orphan elephants who are with their family, suggest the presence of age mates may reduce glucocorticoid concentrations in elephants, and emphasize that basic survival needs are the primary regulators of the stress response.

A Struggle for Legitimacy: Christian Virgins in China from the Late Ming Dynasty to 1860

Abstract Christian virgins were frequently targeted in official crackdowns by Ming and Qing governments on church activities, during which officials taking a Confucianist stance placed pressure on Christian virgins by scandalizing and criminalizing their motivations for practicing celibacy as their refusal to marry was regarded as a violation of Confucian morals. The legitimacy of Christian virgins depended on whether they were able to portray themselves as an “acceptable” type of celibate women within the Confucian patriarchal framework and the legal system of the Ming and Qing governments. During their interactions with the authorities, Christian virgins invoked pre-existing categories of chaste women that were accepted in the Confucian discourse on family order, such as “virgin widows” and “filial virgins,” to justify their way of life against attempts to criminalize their behavior. They also reaffirmed their affiliation to their patriarchal families through their everyday activities, constructing a positive self-image of themselves in stark contrast to the negative image presented by the anti-Christian literati. By adopting this strategy, they were more able to avoid external interference from the government in their religious life while remaining under the patronage of their natal family; however, the protection of their patriarchal family lost its efficacy once their acts were perceived as a direct political threat.