Fictive Kin, Families We Choose, and Voluntary Kin: What Does the Discourse Tell Us?
Abstract
Scholarship on fictive kinship has relied on many different terminologies. I argue for a new precision. I review existing discussions and draw on those to suggest a new, experimental typology. I suggest that the typology illuminates a variety of issues, including the aspects of family that are accomplished through fictive kin. I also discuss issues surrounding fictive kinship for which no information exists but about which the typology might help make predictions.
This is an article about discourse. It is about how for almost 50 years social scientists (mostly but not exclusively sociologists) have talked about the creation of “family‐like” relations out of individuals to whom someone is not related by the “usual” practices of blood, marriage, and adoption. It also seeks to clarify our language so that we might think more clearly about these relationships in the future.
The broadest term for this set of relationships, and the one used most frequently, is fictive kin. In 1994 Chatters, Taylor, and Jayakody wrote, “One of the major problems in the investigation of fictive kin concerns differences in the definition of what constitutes these relationships” (p. 299). Five years later, Colleen Johnson (1999) concurred: “The problems in investigating fictive kin lie in the absence of a fixed definition of what constitutes such relationships and the lack of consensus about the labels used to refer to them” (p. S370). These are problems indeed.
And they are problems complicated by the fact that social scientists constantly introduce new language to describe similar—if not the same kind of—relationships. The term fictive kin is widely used with respect to people marginalized with regard to age (Allen, Blieszner, & Roberto, 2011; Johnson, 1999), race (Chatters et al., 1994), family structure (Hertz & Ferguson, 1997; Johnson, 1988) and country of origin (Ebaugh & Curry, 2000). The term has been used less frequently, in recent years, to describe relationships within mainstream White populations than it was in the past (Ballweg, 1969; Ibsen & Klobus, 1972; Nelson, 2013).
A variety of other terms are used as well. Starting in 1991 with Kath Weston's Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays and Kinship, a new terminology appeared to describe kinlike relationships when they occur within the networks of gays and lesbians; this language of “choice” is modified in some references to LGBTQ populations, as when Muraco (2006) speaks about “intentional” families. In 2010, Braithwaite and her coauthors explained why they rejected the use of both the term fictive kin and that of choice:
The term fictive is fraught with problems for us. Rather than focusing on the deficit model, we wanted to understand how persons involved in these relationships understand them. We agree with Weston (1991)[,] who argued that the term fictive only adds to the stigmatization, suggesting that these are not “real” relationships. Based on Weston's work, we also considered the label chosen kin; however, this term is used in the literature to describe gay and lesbian families [and] we wanted to broaden our lens to all non‐blood and legal relationships. In addition, the term chosen positions members of these alternative families as objects of selection. (p. 390)
They explain as well why they selected a different term—that of voluntary kin—to describe the relationships they were discussing within a sample of respondents who were predominantly White. They suggest that that term gets at “mutuality of selection” (p. 390).
Some of the other terms in use are associated with specific populations: urban tribes for college‐educated urban youth (Watters, 2003); othermothers among African American women (P. H. Collins, 1995); compadrazgo among Latinos (Camacho, 2012; Gill‐Hopple & Brage‐Hudson, 2012). Other terms—like ritual kin (Ebaugh & Curry, 2000), friend‐keepers (Gallagher & Gerstel, 1993), kin‐keepers (Leach & Braithwaite, 1996), incorporative relationships (Barker, 2002), and nonkin conversion (Allen et al., 2011)—have emerged in the study of particular groups but need not be so closely identified with those populations. With whatever population they are used, all of these terms basically refer to similar phenomena—instances when an individual designates some nonkin individual (or individuals) in their social worlds as being “like” family or, even occasionally, as being “family.” In the discussion that follows I include scholarship using this entire array of terms even as I suggest some new ones. I do so to distinguish among different types of fictive kin relationships in a manner that allows scholars to build theory around, and conduct research about, each distinctive type.
The Problem of Different Terms and the Goals of This Article
The multiple studies using the concept of fictive kin and other related terms suggest that in a wide variety of situations and settings, individuals form “family‐like” relations with people to whom they are not “formally” related. However, the breadth of kinds of relationships, varied settings, and different populations conflated under a single term (or single set of terms) creates conceptual confusion. Indeed, it could be argued that the undifferentiated category is so broad as to distort social reality.
Of course, we need broad concepts to make sense of our complex social world. Social science makes progress in just this way—by identifying phenomena and then classifying, describing, and comparing them. At the same time, as is the case for other “broad” concepts, there are discursive consequences that result from combining different phenomena under one umbrella, as when a predominant form of phenomena might become a standard against which other forms are measured. Think, for example, about the critiques that have been made over the past quarter century about how “The Family” has come to imply a single appropriate form that has rarely been found in history (what Dorothy Smith [1993] calls the Standard North American Family) and how social scientists might do better to talk about families (Coontz, 1992; Thorne, 1992). Or we might consider how “religious studies” necessarily distorts the nature of people's lives when it calls a broad range of practices “religion” while denying that term to another set of practices (J. Z. Smith, 1998). In making this point, I am not suggesting that we separate out different kinds of fictive kinship by a variable such as the race/ethnicity or sexuality of participants. Such nomenclature would not distinguish among varieties of fictive kin along any criterion other than the characteristic of the population in which it has been studied.
I am, however, proposing a different form of precision. Indeed, it would seem especially important to be precise since scholarly talk does not intertwine directly with “native” talk. That is, the concept of family might be broad without being especially distorting because people on the street use that language to describe their own relationships. However, no one refers to someone as being “fictive kin.” They might say that person is “like” a member of their family, or that person is “family” to them. But none of the terms in use (with the exception, possibly, of families we choose) occurs in casual speech. In such a case, where social scientists have a monopoly on the definition of the term, they have to be especially cautious about its use.
To date, however, there has been no precision in nomenclature. Nor has there been a single theoretical perspective that lies beneath, or precipitates a concern with, the concept of fictive kinship. Some studies emerge from an interest in social capital (Ebaugh & Curry, 2000; McCarthy, Hagan, & Martin, 2002); some have used fictive kinship to explore exchange relationships and issues of reciprocity (Stack, 1974); others have drawn on evolutionary psychology to suggest that the use of kin terms is designed to induce altruism (Park & Ackerman, 2011; Quirko, 2011). Concerns with sexuality theory and an understanding of social support have also given rise to an interest in fictive kin (Barker, Herdt, & De Vries, 2006). In other studies, the concept itself is used to organize findings about relationships that are rich in intimacy—as well as other components, including exploitation (Dodson & Zincavage, 2007). Still others rely on a social constructionist perspective (Gubrium, 1975; Gubrium & Buckholdt, 1982). Braithwaite et al. (2010) argue a particular form of this perspective when they suggest that it is through discourse that individuals construct and define what they call voluntary kin relationships: “Because voluntary kin relationships are not based on the traditional criteria of association by blood or law, members of those fictive relationships experience them as potentially problematic, requiring discursive work to render them sensical and legitimate to others” (p. 403). It is from these very varied theoretical—and atheoretical—“uses” of the concept that conceptual confusion emerges: The same term is used to describe many different kinds of relationships even as different terms are used to describe very similar ones.
Whatever the language used or theoretical point being made, the phenomenon itself is referred to frequently in scholarly literature. Put the term fictive kin in a search engine and thousands of references show up. Many of these references are but glancing—a casual acknowledgment that much as individuals might recognize those related by blood, marriage, and adoption as “family,” they also might make a special place in their social worlds to take notice of “others” as being like family. Although relatively few of these scholarly references are substantial in the sense of working with the concept to discover who it is that adopts fictive kin and the circumstances under which they do so, it is these in‐depth investigations that provide much of the data for the analysis that follows.
This analysis has six sections and a conclusion. In the first section I examine existing definitions, understandings, and typologies of fictive kinship (on its own and in comparison to family and friendship) as these emerge from almost 50 years of scholarship. In the second section I draw on this information to propose an exploratory, descriptive typology of fictive kinship with three groups—what I call situational kin, ritual kin, and intentional kin. In the third section I demonstrate that this typology helps us consider the costs and benefits of family life that are re‐created through fictive kinship ties. In the fourth section I examine other dimensions of fictive kinship that may—and may not—be illuminated by the typology. The next, the fifth section, explores some remaining questions. In the last section I discuss fictive kinship in distinctive populations and suggest how different analyses about these issues might arise from different emphases on what type of fictive kinship is being studied. I conclude with a brief review and reflection.
Existing Definitions and Typologies
Definitional Issues
Various attempts have been made to characterize fictive kin relationships. In All Our Kin: Survival in a Black Community, Carol Stack (1974) explained that she was using the term fictive kin to refer to “non‐kin who . . . conduct their social relations within the idiom of kinship” (p. 40). Subsequent studies offer similar definitions. Kane (2000), for example, referred to “familial relationships with people who are not related by blood and who may or may not live with the nuclear family” (p. 693). Braithwaite et al. (2010) asked their respondents to talk about what they call voluntary kin, which they defined as “those people who you perceive and treat as extended family, yet are not related to you by blood or legal ties” (p. 390).
These definitions are all similar. Each defines fictive kin first in a negative way: “non‐kin,” “people who are not related by blood,” “people . . . not related to you by blood or legal ties.” Each further defines that negative phenomenon by relying on the language of family: “within the idiom of kinship,” “familial relationships,” “perceive and treat as extended family.” And each is a little vague: for how long do these social relations need to be conducted “within the idiom of kinship” to count as fictive kinship; what are the processes that shift relationships out of one category (e.g., friend, neighbor, or even cellmate) into another that is “family‐type,” “familial,” or like “extended family”?
A Measure of Positive Importance and Voluntarism
No matter which specific question is asked to elicit evidence of fictive kinship and no matter which precise term is used to designate that relationship, some components of its meaning remain constant. Indeed, for a wide range of situations, and among a wide variety of individuals, when scholars talk about how respondents of interviews and surveys describe nonkin as having attributes of “family,” the suggestion is that the respondents are signifying a relationship that is especially important (in a positive way) to them and, sometimes even more important than the relationships they have at that time with their own socially recognized kin.
Two examples illustrate how positive importance is ascribed to fictive kin relationships. For example, in a discussion of the elderly, Allen et al. (2011) quoted a 72‐year‐old African American widowed woman describing how one of her friends stands out as being of particular significance in comparison with her other friends and how that friend offers opportunities to speak openly about personal matters:
I have a friend who lives in Delaware who's very close to me. And we're very much like sisters. . . . And she's the only one that I really consider like family. I have some people here that [are] close friends, I say neighborly, you know, not real—not friends you'd confide with. (p. 12)
From a very different kind of setting, McCarthy et al. (2002) illustrated how street kids talk about those who count as “family” as the other kids who can be relied on to be there through thick and thin:
I guess a street family would be like, just, it's like basically a group of friends, but it's more… Some friends, you know you can't count on them but like a street family you can count on. If you get in trouble they'll be there for you, one way or another. (p. 848)
These characteristics of kinship are repeated by most scholars who write of fictive kinship as re‐creating such aspects of family as socioemotional attachment (including love, intimacy, and psychological support), ongoing belongingness (including the sharing of resources to provide material support and protection), and entitlement (involving both the rights and the responsibilities that are perceived as being components of family membership) (Garland, 2000; Nelson, 2011); others note that to be counted as family a relationship must not only involve such features as trust, strength, and closeness (Beeler, Rawls, Herdt, & Cohler, 1999; Muraco & Fredriksen‐Goldsen, 2011) but also must persist over time (Weston, 1991). Of course, the reason these connections are sought outside the blood or legal family vary (and I return to this issue below).
The assumption is thus that fictive kin play a constructive role in people's lives. In fact, scholars rarely describe how fictive kin relationships might also create the kinds of complications (of disappointment from unfulfilled responsibility, unwanted interference, and outright conflict) that routinely emerge in kin relations. There are exceptions. For instance, Barker (2002) wrote about how some of the nonkin relationships she observed “became extrafamilial or quasi‐kinlike, with all the ambivalence, obligation, exasperation, trouble, joy, and pleasure that kin relations entail” (p. S166). Stack (1974) also acknowledged that fictive kin relations carried with them complex obligations and could be at least somewhat coercive. These are also points I raise again below.
Some commentators suggest that consensus is key to fictive kinship. Unlike biological or legal kinship in which someone else's decision suddenly supplies you with a brother‐in‐law or makes you (gasp) a grandmother, fictive kinship, it is said, relies on mutual actions and mutual agreement. Stack (1974) explained: “Fictive kin relations are maintained by consensus between individuals, and in some contexts can last a lifetime” (pp. 58–59). Similarly, two decades later, Chatters et al. (1994) wrote that “unlike kinship, the fictive kin relationship is maintained by a consensus between the individuals involved and can be relinquished at any time” (p. 303). Even those who rely on a different terminology are likely to emphasize consensus. Weston (1991), who writes about families we choose among gays and lesbians, clearly considered using the term fictive kinship but ultimately rejected it. Even so, as her language indicates, she relied on a notion of free choice: “Families we choose . . . are constructed as individualistic affairs insofar as each and every ego was left to be the chooser” (p. 109). The emphasis here, as in other forms of fictive kinship, is the assigning of “family” on the basis of free will and inclination. And as noted earlier, Braithwaite et al. (2010), who rejected the term fictive kin and who also rejected Weston's term, emphasized the “mutuality of selection” (p. 390).
In short, regardless of the terminology employed, both early and recent scholars have emphasized voluntarism. This emphasis might lead one to conclude that these relationships would not persist beyond disappointment, anger, conflict, and ambivalence. It would also lead one to conclude that these relationships always represent a voluntary, intended action. Yet exceptions to this generalization occur in the description of fictive kinship by many other scholars (as well as in casual use). And these exceptions—the prisoner who coerces another to be his “wife,” the home health worker whose supervisor tells her to regard an elderly client as she would her own mother (Dodson & Zincavage, 2007), the street kids who need to create a “family” in order to be protected on the street (McCarthy et al., 2002), the gangs who demand allegiance from members (R. Collins, 2011)—are also described within the language of fictive kinship. Clearly, however, these relationships must have different dynamics from the relationships described by Stack (1974), Chatters et al. (1994), Weston (1991), and Braithwaite et al. (2010). It is the desire to represent adequately these different dynamics that underwrites the typology I propose.
Between Friendship and Family in Existing Analyses
As the quotes above suggest, the term fictive kin is often applied to a relationship that involves something “more” than “mere” friendship or acquaintanceship; fictive kin may be treated as if they were family. Indeed, many scholars locate those relationships somewhere “between” family and friendship, and some scholars are very specific about how they do so. Piercy (2000), looking at relationships between caregivers and care recipients, characterized them as varying along a spectrum from “friendly” through “friendship” to being “like one of the family.” Implicitly, family members stand at the other extreme from mere friendliness. Similarly, Barker's (2002) research on the elderly, also in relation to caregivers, covered a range of kinds of relationships beyond the family and refers to “incorporative” relationships as containing “family‐like elements,” while other relationships—committed, bounded, and casual—had shorter durations, and narrower foci. Rubinstein, Alexander, Goodman, and Luborsky (1991) wrote about the relationships developed by never‐married, childless older women. They noted that the women had blood relationships (family) as well as a variety of “constructed ties” and what they call “friendships.” The “constructed ties” were of three types: affiliation with nonkin families, quasi‐parental relations, and companionate relationships.1
Finally, in a more detailed theoretical elaboration of the issues, Pahl and Spencer (2010) wrote about “fusing” two different sets of relationships—those that are clearly family and those that are clearly friendship. Pahl and Spencer argue that “fused” relationships (of friendship and family) challenge our common, everyday understanding of what personal relationships should be like:
It is central to our argument that idealized conceptions of personal relationships tend to refer to family and friends separately; the connections and clusters between such relationships are not necessarily articulated or conceptualized because most people are not given to an overreflexive approach to their everyday lives. (p. 200)
Moreover, they suggest that the “mismatch” between our “normal” conceptions of what relationships should be and our frequent experience of “fusion” evokes several different responses. One response they call the “deficit response” because the general public might well “view sets of family‐like relationships that deviate from some conventional image of the family as deficient in some way” (p. 201). This “deficit” response applies to those more conventionally included in “family”: An example may be the way the extended family noted among ethnic/racial minorities has been viewed as an inferior way to organize family life (Gerstel, 2011; Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2004). Alternatively, sounding much like Muraco (2006), Weston (1991), and Weeks, Donovan, and Hephy (2001), Pahl and Spencer suggested the “liberation response,” which recognizes “the emergence of what have been termed families of choice, unconstrained by what may have become or are perceived by the practitioners to be outmoded patterns and processes” (p. 201). Finally, they acknowledged the “functional response,” which recognizes that individuals “who play a family‐like role in people's lives, who behave like family, who consider themselves family, or who are treated as family should be defined as family” (p. 202).
Pahl and Spencer's typology is an interesting addition to our thoughts about relationships that “fuse” family and friendship. What is not entirely clear, however, is whose point of view is taken in defining such relationships as representing one or more of these responses. In fact, what some individuals may truly believe is a “liberatory” response to the constraints of daily judgment may be seen by others as being “deficit” (e.g., two gay men raising a child together). And different audiences and participants in the conversation might take different views (e.g., the neighbors, the local school, the legal system). Moreover, as Martha Minow (1998) noted, simply claiming that one fulfills the functions of a family member does not mean that others will accept that claim (e.g., in custody disputes between lesbians).
Thus, although the scholarship describing fictive kinship generally includes a range of different kinds of relationships, the scholarship also generally suggests that these relationships “stand” somewhere between “real” kin (by blood, marriage, or adoption) and friendship, a “fusion” in the language of Pahl and Spencer of two types of relationships that partake of elements of each without having all the characteristics of (or being) one or the other. This is not invariably the case, however, and an alternative to situating fictive kinship “between” family and friendship is taken by Allen et al. (2011), who identified five types of what they call “kin reinterpretation,” including kin promotion (non‐biolegal kin are “‘promoted’ to a closer relationship”), kin exchange (“biolegal ties are ‘exchanged’ in the kin hierarchy”); kin retention (“close kin ties are ‘retained’ despite divorce”); kin loss (“potential for relationship or reinterpretation is ‘lost’”); and nonkin conversion (“Friends and others are ‘converted’ to close kin'”) (p. 9). The last—the closest conceptually to fictive kin—is “between” kin loss and kin promotion on the circular wheel with which they illustrate these phenomena, but this location does not appear to suggest that the authors view it as closer in kind to these phenomena than to any of the others.
All of these typologies help differentiate family, friendship, fictive kinship, and other relationships. None of them talk about the different kinds of fictive kinship that might exist or the characteristics associated with those different kinds. And, indeed, it is quite possible that some forms of fictive kinship barely resemble friendship at all, so much as they do tactical allegiances and obligatory bonds (R. Collins, 2011).
Two Typologies of Fictive Kinship
In some cases, the absence of distinctions among types of fictive kinship results from a focus on a particular population. Two exceptions to this general statement stand out. In one of the most significant studies, Chatters et al. (1994) first reviewed the findings about fictive kinship among different populations: “historical evidence of fictive kinship ties among Black Americans” (p. 297) and “contemporaneous evidence of fictive kin in Anglo, Puerto Rican, and Black Families” (p. 298). As they turned to the last population, they suggest that among this group (relying on data from the National Survey of Black Americans) two categories of fictive kin existed: “one type involves fictive kinships that develop among a group of unrelated individuals (i.e., street corner men, peer groups), while the other concerns the incorporation of one or two unrelated individual in an extended family network” (p. 300).
More recently, Braithwaite et al. (2010) introduced a more complex typology that they say relies on the “native talk” of the respondents they interviewed. They described four main types of voluntary kin relationships. One type is similar to that discussed by Chatters et al. (1994): a set of relationships that existed when blood or legal kin “may have been emotionally fulfilling, but were absent temporally or spatially.” Braithwaite et al. (2010) referred to this as “voluntary kin as convenience family” (p. 396). In addition, they describe three other kinds of voluntary kin: voluntary kin as substitute family when “voluntary kin were constructed as replacements for blood and legal family” (p. 396); voluntary kin as supplemental family, when “a voluntary kin member was positioned to function as a supplement to, rather than a substitute for, the blood or legal family” (p. 397); and voluntary kin as extended family in “a relationship that integrated both voluntary kin and blood and legal families” (p. 402).2
These two sets of scholars thus suggest that the kind of fictive kinship that occurs in the temporal or spatial absence of “blood or legal kin” may be quite different from the fictive kinship that occurs along side of, or as substitutes or supplements to, blood or legal family. But neither explains why this distinction is important and how it relates to the reasons for, and the dynamics of, fictive kin relationships. In what follows, I show why such distinctions have significance for how we can understand the ways in which fictive kinship is enacted.
An Overview of an Exploratory Typology of Fictive Kin
I draw on the distinction introduced by Braithwaite et al. (2010) and Chatters et al. (1994) to separate out (four types of) fictive kinships that represent “situational” relationships; each occurs within a special set of circumstances and is unlikely to involve the blood or legal family. These situational kin I differentiate from two types of fictive kinships that occur in less clearly delineated circumstances. One type is what has been called “ritual kin” (Ebaugh & Curry, 2000): Some of these emerge from a set of religious practices (as in compadrazgo); others constitute named systems of fictive kinship that are separate from religious practices (e.g., the relationships Ebaugh and Curry report among Vietnamese immigrants). The last type, what I call “intentional” kin (opting for the language used by Muraco [2006]) refers to fictive kinship that exists outside of special circumstances and makes no reference to a formal naming ritual. These distinctions are depicted in Table 1. In my discussion of each type of relationship I describe the context or setting in which it is most likely to be found and the types of individuals most likely to be engaged in that form of relationship. (In the following two sections I turn to other characteristics associated with each of these types of fictive kinship.) This is an exploratory typology; ultimately its value will be found in the degree to which other scholars find it of use.
| Situational Kin (Relations That Emerge in Discrete Situations) | Ritual Kin (Relations That Emerge as Part of Customary Practice) | Intentional Kin (Relations That Emerge From Choice and Intention) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Convenience Kin (Relations That Emerge in Marginal Settings) | Institutional Kin (Relations That Emerge in Total Institutions) | Organizational Kin (Relations That Emerge in Voluntary Organizations) | Caregiving Kin (Relations That Emerge in Paid Care) | |||
| Identified settings | Streets (vs. homes); shelters; neighborhoods | Institutions (e.g., prisons; rehabilitation hospitals; group homes) | Voluntary groups (e.g., fraternities; sororities; masons); workplaces; religious organizations | Workplace for caregiver; home or institutions of care for recipient | No special setting: family (homes); daily life; ritual occasions | No special setting: family (homes); daily life |
| Type of individuals | People who are “down and out”; marginal groups; homeless; street kids, street women; immigrants | Institutionalized populations | No distinctive type of individual | Care recipients range broadly; care providers usually women; poor; non‐White | Hispanics (compradazago); Christians (godparents) | No distinctive type of individual (though commentary about specific groups such as African Americans; gays and lesbians; elderly populations) |
| Accomplishments of “family”: benefits/costs | Adaptation; protection; shared resources; material support; respect; community / social control; enforcement of the code of the street | Adaptation; protection; shared resources; respect; community / Social control; enforcement of group norms | Group loyalty; adaptation; shared resources; respect; community / Enforcement of group norms; social control; exploitation | Attachment / exploitation | Shared resources; cultural continuity; socioemotional support / enforcement of norms | Shared resources; socioemotional support / obligations of reciprocity |
| Associated characteristics | ||||||
| Range of options or voluntary choice | Limited options (possibility of making choice within those options) | Limited options (possibility of making choice within those options) | Limited options; entire group constitutes “family” (possibility of making choice within those options) | Limited options (possible choice of attachment among “clients”) | Somewhat limited options (need to share religious or cultural orientation) | Limitless (in practice ends up being narrow range) |
| Mutuality of selection | Possibility of coercion | Coercion might occur depending on type of institution | Group membership creates obligation | Attachment may not be mutual; one party may claim kin relation | May be mutual or not; one person may ask another to strengthen relationship; recipient (e.g., godchild) has no choice in the relationship | Likely to be mutual selection |
| Relation to legal or blood kin | Separate | Separate | Separate | Separate | Embedded | Separate or alongside |
| Structure and shape of fictive kinship | Peers; family | Peers and generative relationships; pairs | Peers; family | Generative; pairs | Generative; pairs | Full range—peers generative and nongenerative; pairs and family |
| Exemplary studies | Anderson (1978); Liebow (1967); McCarthy et al. (2002) | Giallombardo (1966); Gubrium (1975); Heffernan (1972); Heslin et al. (2011); Ward and Kassebaum (1965) | Kim (2009, 2012); McAdoo (2007); Sanday (2007) | Dodson and Zincavage (2007); Karner (1998); Lan (2002); Piercy (2000) | Di Leonardo (1984); Ebaugh and Curry (2000) | Braithwaite et al. (2010); Chatters et al. (1994) |
Situational Kin
Situational kin can broadly be defined as those kinship relations that occur when the blood or legal family is spatially or temporally absent, or when the blood or legal family is not relevant to the relationship for at least one of the two parties involved. This type of fictive kinship can be subdivided by the particular type of circumstance in which it is found.
Convenience kin emerge in situations of marginality that are similar to those described by Chatters et al. (1994) in their reference to the street corner men described by Liebow (1967) and the men who gathered at Jelly's Bar as described by E. Anderson (1978).3
Institutional kin, as the name implies, emerge within total institutions. Inclusion in many (but not all) of these institutions indicates “trouble” in an individual's life (e.g., imprisonment). This kind of trouble is not unique to any given race/ethnicity, social class, age, or gender (even if there are racial/ethnic and social class patterns for incarceration and age‐related patterns for nursing homes). Many studies of institutional settings find evidence of fictive kinship: sober living homes (Heslin, Hamilton, Singzon, Smith, & Anderson, 2011), rehabilitation hospitals and old age homes (Gubrium, 1975), prisons (Giallombardo, 1966; Heffernan, 1972; Ward & Kassebaum, 1965), and shelters for women who have experienced domestic violence (Few, 2005).
Organizational kin, as that name implies, emerge within voluntary organizations, including churches, educational institutions, and workplaces; all kinds of individuals might find themselves in a context where the organization engenders kinlike relationships.
Church communities acting as “family” have been reported by various scholars (Gallagher, 2007), particularly with respect to the Black church in the United States; familial language is often employed so that other church members are sisters and brothers (Chatters, Taylor, Lincoln, & Schroepfer, 2002; Johnson, 1999; McAdoo, 2007). In educational institutions kinlike relations (replete with familial terms such as brother or cousin) have been reported as occurring among “students of color” in college science classes; the data suggest that such relationships promote success (Konstantinos, Jones, & Rodriguez, 2011; Olitsky, 2011). Jackson (2012) reported on the “bonds of brotherhood” that emerge among college Black men on a predominantly White college campus as a way to help the men survive and succeed. Of course, it is not only students of color who form these bonds in colleges and universities: fraternities and sororities have long relied on kin language to signify closeness and loyalty (Kiesling, 2005; Sanday, 2007). Nor is it only collegiate institutions that promote such bonds: Prins, Willson Toso, and Schafft (2009) reported on how an adult literacy class operated “like family” to provide strong social support for its members.
Work organizations can also provide participants with fictive kinships. Kim (2009, 2012) described the family that formed among immigrant workers in a restaurant; in a quite different setting, Hamilton (2011) reported on the close and supportive relationships that emerge among a group of secretaries. Gibson and Zellmer‐Bruhn (2001) reported that the analogy to family “may serve as a form of cognitive priming that provides a structure and guide for employees' ‘semantic, behavioral and affective responses’” (p. 278); given these consequences, some organizations (including Disney) attempt to employ this analogy as a means of avoiding unionization (Boje, 2000). Still others might seek to prevent such identification from occurring in a workplace because they fear that family‐like relationships will result in family‐like disputes.
A fourth category, caregiving kin, emerges in the context of a workplace but is different because it involves not relations between people in similar circumstances (as would be the case for convenience, institutional, and organizational kin) but the inequality of position represented by paid care. Because it can take place in a range of locations—total institutions, voluntary organizations, and individual homes—it has its own heading under “situational kin.” Many of the recent studies about this type of kinship (Dodson & Zincavage, 2007; Karner, 1998; Lin & Belanger, 2012; Piercy, 2000; Rodriguez, 2011; White‐Means, 1993) explicitly examined the relationships between the elderly and paid caregivers. The elderly vary in terms of race/ethnicity and gender. Caregivers, however, are predominantly from minority and female populations (Duffy, 2011); in some countries, caregivers are from a foreign or immigrant population (Lan, 2006; Lin & Belanger, 2012). Studies looking at child‐care (and other household) workers also examined how employers often refer to them as “one of the family” (B. Anderson, 2012; MacDonald, 1998; Nelson, 1990; Romero, 1992; Wrigley, 1995).
Ritual Kin
Ritual kin refers to those kinship relationships that emerge as part of customary practice, as when an individual is asked to be a godparent to a child. Theoretically ritual kin may be of any (adult) age, any social class, and any gender, but not all groups create ritual kin relations.
Camacho (2012) traces the pattern of compadrazgo—or co‐parents—to Europe and suggests that it was brought to the Americas by the Spanish; she argues that the compadres assume a co‐parenting role (with special responsibility for the Catholic upbringing of the child) and that a shared experience can strengthen the relationship between two families, producing strong socioeconomic bonds. The presence of this pattern within Latino populations has been noted by many (Gill‐Hopple & Brage‐Hudson, 2012; Keefe, 1984; Zavella, 1985). More than a decade ago, for example, Lopez (1999) found “the fictive kin system of compadrazgo, or coparenthood . . . encourages the sharing of child‐rearing responsibilities among parents and acquired godparents” (p. 24). And in her study of foster parents, Swartz (2004) noted that “many Latino families subscribed to a communal ideal of families that included ‘fictive kin’” (p. 576).
Of course, ritual kin are not unique to, or found only among, the Hispanic population or even, more broadly, only among Christians. Ebaugh and Curry (2000) noted similar practices among the practitioners of the Yoruba religion, who “have an elaborate form of ritual kinship that is organized into structures called houses” (p. 197). Ebaugh and Curry also found ritual kin among Asian immigrant groups: “Although differences in fictive kinship systems exist among the various Asian immigrant groups (e.g., Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, and Indians), there are striking similarities. Most obvious is the profound respect demanded of younger people for elders, a tradition strongly rooted in Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucianist religious doctrines” (p. 198). More specifically, Oxfeld (2004) described the Chinese tradition of “dry daughters” and “dry sons” (p. 976). According to Oxfeld (2004), these “are individuals who are ‘adopted’ for ritual purposes or to establish a link between families [who] remain with their natal families and have none of the responsibilities or rights of actual descendants” (p. 976).
Intentional Kin
The last category, what I call intentional kin, refers to those relationships developed by individuals when others in their social worlds come to be regarded as being like a member of their family. The word intention is carefully chosen (intended) here over both the alternatives of voluntary (Braithwaite et al., 2010) and chosen (Weston, 1991). The word is meant to imply that these relationships do not happen by chance or at random; the word also implies that because these relationships may persist over time, they may develop complexities so that they feel neither voluntary nor chosen at particular moments (even though individuals are clearly free to leave them); and finally, the word implies that these relationships do not merely exist (as does formal kinship) but are sustained through action.
Indications of such relationships emerge among participants in studies, like those interviewed by Braithwaite et al. (2010). Many such individuals may play roles similar to that identified as ritual kin, such as sharing responsibility for the well‐being of a minor with the parents. But my own ongoing research suggests that individuals engaged in intentional kin relationships find the absence of a particular term to define that relationship (they are not godparents or relatives) to be an issue in representing themselves to others both within, and especially outside of, the relationship. Therefore, I believe it to be vital to distinguish between “named” and “unnamed” categories of fictive kinship. Moreover, as I show further below, ritual kin and intentional kin differ on other basic characteristics.
The type of individual who engages in intentional kinship relations is least distinctive. Although this phenomenon has been reported to occur more frequently among some groups (e.g., African Americans; gays and lesbians; the elderly) than among others (e.g., straight, White people), it may well be that scholars have looked for it more in some places than they have done in others (Nelson, 2013).
Accomplishing “Family” Through Fictive Kin
The utility of this typology can be tested against how it further differentiates among types of fictive kinship along a range of significant variables. The most important of these is the components of family life—both the benefits and the costs—that fictive kinship aims to accomplish for its participants. In the next section I look also at additional features of fictive kinship that the typology can predict.
In describing relationships as being family‐like, individuals in every type of fictive kin relationship ascribe special importance to those relationships. Some elements of belonging, attachment, and entitlement are likely to be found across the board. But if there is commonality across the typology there are also distinctive costs and benefits.
Situational Kin
Scholars have isolated specific reasons for forming fictive kinship in specific situations. For example, with respect to convenience families, as Chatters et al. (1994) noted, “marginal men gained a sense of both personal and primary group identity” (p. 301). Perhaps equally important is the material support that convenience kin provide, especially in those situations that are deemed difficult or dangerous (Ebaugh & Curry, 2000; McCarthy et al., 2002). The sharing of knowledge and resources that help individuals adapt to new and complex situations (e.g., living in a nursing home or a prison) is a primary reason these relationships emerge in total institutions (Gubrium & Buckholdt, 1982). Individuals who do not have access to a rich array of emotional, social, and material resources from a blood or legal family can obtain some of these through the formation of a newly constructed family.4
But benefits do not stand by themselves or come without responsibilities. In fact, the entitlement to this new set of resources often brings with it obligations to the group. Convenience kin enforce the “code of the streets” (E. Anderson, 1990); institutional kin also punish rule violators (e.g., prison stooges); organizational kin enforce the informal norms of the work group (e.g., about slowdowns) or that of a voluntary group (e.g., a fraternal organization; Sanday, 2007). Quite possibly, many forms of situational kin not only engage in social control on a regular basis but also ensure loyalty through complex hazing processes (e.g., in street gangs and collegiate fraternities).
In work organizations the creation of a sense of responsibility to the group can serve the interests of employers as well as employees. For example, much as Kim (2009) saw the family that forms among undocumented immigrant restaurant workers at Mama's, a Korean‐Japanese restaurant, as inhibiting “feelings of loneliness and frustration” (p. 499), she recognized as well that “considering one another ‘family’ allows them to work through long hours for little pay” (p. 508) Indeed, Kim (2012) noted that “Mama” “adopted this familial title to suggest intimacy and create a sense of fictive kinship with her workers” (p. 107). Kim continues, “Mrs. Kwon expects a similar kind of loyalty from her employees as from her children, a guilt‐driven effort to be obedient and serve their kin” (p. 107). A similar point was made by Molland (2011) about those who control the daily lives of sex workers. In short the relationships of fictive kinship can be promoted, enhanced, and manipulated to ensure that members of fictive kin groupings fulfill their responsibilities to group survival and group norms as well as exercising their rights to shared benefits of socioemotional and material support. The balance between costs and benefits may shift from one situation to another and from one type of relationship to another, but all such relationships are likely to entail some accounting from their participants.
Caregiving kin offer especially complex mixtures of costs and benefits. Karner (1998), for example, notes that when home care workers are “adopted” as fictive kin, the elder might find comfort from the sense that he or she is receiving care from “family” (p. 69). But Karner (1998) noted as well that thinking of the homecare worker in this way “enables the elder to place kin expectation levels on the homecare worker, which can go well beyond the ‘assigned’ duties of a respite employee [even as such relationships appear] to provide the homecare worker with a positive feeling and a sense of meaning in her work” (p. 69). Dodson and Zincavage (2007) were even more skeptical about the balance of costs and benefits: They argued that the “family ideology” that “promotes good care of residents” in nursing homes, and is valued by care workers, may also be “used to exploit these low‐income careworkers,” especially insofar as it reflects a “subordinate and racialized version of being ‘part of the family’” (p. 905).5
Ritual Kin
A very different set of costs and benefits are part and parcel of ritual kin relationships. Godparents are, by definition, in a position designed to enforce correct (ritual) behavior on the part of the godchild, an intrusion into family life that would not be acceptable from other outsiders. Ritual kin also have other rights and responsibilities. Although naming another as godparent to one's child may be a way to demonstrate affection among adults, it may also be a way to create belonging and ensure that the godparent carries out responsibilities with respect to that child (Lopez, 1999). Any affection that emerges between the godparent and the child does so as a benefit of—but may not be the primary reason for—the relationship. Ebaugh and Curry (2000) view ritual kin as social capital, providing participants with both material support and socioemotional connection. Oxfeld (2004) described how “dry daughters” and “dry sons,” even though they do not have responsibilities to care for adoptive parents while they are alive, “can be included as principal mourners in funeral rites and therefore have responsibilities toward these parents after death” (p. 976).
Intentional Kin
In claiming that voluntary kin serve as “substitutes” for, are “supplemental” to, and act as components of extended family (a relation “that integrated both voluntary kin and blood and legal families”), Braithwaite et al. (2010) did not explicitly indicate which aspects of family life are deficient, absent, or complemented by voluntary kin. As noted earlier, the implication from many of the examples of quotes from respondents is that attachment (i.e., intimacy, closeness) is central to these relationships. If attachment is important, at least one respondent in Braithwaite et al.'s study indicated that a party to a fictive kin relationship could not assume the rights and responsibilities associated with blood or legal kin:
Their blooded grandparents are one set in Hawaii and the other set in Illinois, so there are no grandparents, you know official like, bloodline grandparents present, so we spend a lot of time with those kids and we would end up doing a lot of things that would be grandparental but they are not our grandkids in that sense and I'm very conscious of that and so we wouldn't invade someone else's relationship with those children so you know. (p. 400)
The addition of material support may be a by‐product of intentional kin relationships; it may also, on occasion, be the reason for forming these relationships in the first place (see the discussion of Stack [1974] later in this article). Some discussions of intentional kin suggest that this might be a type of “pure relationship” formed without “ulterior” purpose except the pleasure derived from association (Giddens, 1992; Jamieson, 1999). But “pure” or not, one would assume that fictive kin relationships of the voluntary kind require some kind of reciprocity, even if returns may sometimes be stretched thin (Nelson, 2000).
From the “outside,” intentional kin has been characterized as having other functions, insofar as these types of relationships might expand everyday notions of what it is to be a member of a family. For example, Muraco (2006) argued that the bonds that form across boundaries of sexual orientation (what she calls “cross gender, different sexual orientation friends” [p. 1313]) can have both normative and liberatory effects. Like Muraco, Pahl and Spenser (2010) argued that intentional kin relationships may be perceived as a challenge to traditional notions of what it means to be a family member or a friend.
In short, unlike Braithwaite et al. (2010) who characterize fictive kin from the inside, Muraco and Pahl and Spenser all view intentional relationships from a perspective that extends outward from what happens within the relationship itself to how it is perceived by others and whether that perception is critical (what is called a “deficit” response by Pahl and Spencer), simply acknowledges necessity (a “functional” response according to Pahl and Spencer), or accepts the relationship as representing some change from the usual way of doing business (the “liberation” response according to Pahl and Spenser and Muraco).
Employing the Typology to Explore Features of Fictive Kinship
The three categories of fictive kinship created by the typology are useful for exploring several features of fictive kin relationships (beyond costs and benefits) including the range of options for membership in the fictive kin relationship, the mutuality of selection of members, the connections that exist between blood or legal kin and fictive kin, and the structure and shape of fictive kin relationships.
Breadth of Range of Options for Choosing Fictive Kin
The proposed typology suggests that fictive kin vary in the breadth of the range of individuals available to choose among for forming a fictive kin relationship. Almost by definition, situational kin emerge from within a limited group of individuals—those who share the same circumstances of marginality, institutional living space, or organizational membership. (Of course, within those circumstances, individuals may choose a particular tie, preferring one person to another, as when an individual, for example, becomes closer to one sorority sister than to some others). Individuals charged with caregiving and the recipients of that care are also limited to each other (which is not to say that fictive kinship will always emerge); caregivers with multiple clients (and care recipients with multiple caregivers) may be selective about whom they count as kin.
Ritual kin may be chosen from among the broad range of individuals with whom one associates (e.g., at work, at home, during leisure activities), provided that those individuals share the cultural background that would make them eligible for designation to a role like godparent or “dry daughter.”
Intentional kin relationships may have had their origins within a distinctive situation and may have previously been, presently are, or have reason to become in the future ritual kin; what makes them intentional at a given moment is that they transcend that setting or the rituals associated with a particular role (Braithwaite et al., 2010). Theoretically, intentional kin can emerge within the relationships of any people regardless of shared culture. However, as Weston (1991) noted, in practice among the gays and lesbians she studied, “the particular choices made yielded families that were far from randomly selected, much less demographically representative” (p. 109).
In short, although choice is always constrained to some degree, limited options are part and parcel of situational kin (because other people's membership is outside of a specific individual's control), even if within those options one might move toward one or another distinctive individual. By way of contrast for what I call ritual kin, the array of individuals from who one might choose is likely to be broader. It is broader still for intentional kin.
Mutuality of Selection
Scholars such as Chatters et al. (1994) and Stack (1974) made consensus a linchpin of fictive kinship. But consensus is not invariable among either situational kin or ritual kin (and it might be, occasionally, stretched thin in intentional kin relationships).
Studies of marginal peoples and institutional populations report occasions of coercion in what may appear as a kind of fictive kinship relationship. For example, members of gangs are often coerced into that membership; within both men's and women's prisons individuals may be taken as a “wife” whether or not they want to be in that relationship. Of course, individuals can choose the voluntary organizations in which to participate, and within those organizations they may also choose the type of individual with whom they want to associate; many such organizations, however, may create the obligations of seeing others as members of one's family or as sisters/brothers. Whereas attachment may be mutual between caregivers and care recipients, a kin relation may be claimed by one party which the other does not recognize.
Even in the ritual form the relationship may emerge as the choice of one party rather than as a mutual decision to be close or to have responsibilities toward each other. For example, naming someone as ritual kin may be a way to strengthen a weak or flagging relationship rather than representing preexisting warmth. It is among intentional kin that we are most likely to find a “mutuality of selection” so that those doing the choosing and those chosen are more likely to be in agreement about the nature of their relationship.
The Relevance of Blood or Legal Kin
Within each of the situational groups—individuals living marginal lives, individuals living in institutions, individuals engaged in voluntary organizations (including employment), and individuals hired to provide care for someone else—people create fictive kinship regardless of what types of blood or legal kin relations they have and whether, or how well, those relationships are maintained outside of those settings. Hence an individual might have a “street family” and a biological one seen rarely, if ever; an individual might have a “wife” in an institution and another one at home; an individual might refer to other group members as part of a “family” using kinship terms of brother and sister even as she talks daily with her blood sibling; and a caregiver might spend her days caring for someone she thinks of as being “like her own mother” while returning each day to her own family. (Or, to reverse the relationship, a care recipient may view the individual who cares for her as being “like a daughter,” while maintaining relationships, and receiving care from her “real” daughters.) Situational kin relationships exist separately from blood or kin relationships. In the case of caregiving relationships, this separation may only be on the side of the caregiver: for example, in the case of a nanny or au pair brought into a household, the relationship is between a single individual (separated from her blood or legal kin) and an entire family.6
By way of contrast, ritual kin might need to be acknowledged in an institutional setting (e.g., a church) and might have emerged elsewhere (e.g., in a neighborhood or workplace; Zavella, 1985), but the relationship itself is embedded in blood or legal kinship insofar as the parents choose a godparent for a child, or someone selects a “dry daughter,” who can unite two sets of kin.
Finally, intentional kin relationships might emerge in any of a number of settings, but they exist outside of those settings and quite probably alongside (spatially and temporally) kin relations. Indeed, these are most likely to be “separate” from legal or blood ties in cases of conflict (e.g., as among the gays and lesbians discussed by Weston [1991] and Muraco [2006] whose sexual orientation was not accepted in their families of origin). However, we might note that Braithwaite et al. (2010) suggested that most people they interviewed describe some deficit or deficiency in (and not just separation from) the blood or legal family that makes what they call voluntary kinship more likely.
The Structure and Shape of Fictive Kinship
Some fictive kin relations occur as paired relationships; others occur less as distinctive pairs of individuals than they do as entire, ready‐made families. Another distinction can be made between those that occur as same‐age or peer relationships within families (e.g., brother, sister, cousin, spouse) and those that resemble cross‐generational relationships (e.g., parent, aunt or uncle, grandparent). Here again, the typology suggests some distinctions.
Convenience kin relationships are represented more as “families” than as distinctive pair groupings; they appear to take the form of peers (cousins, sisters, and brothers are all common terms) and cross‐generational roles are uncommon. With institutional kin both pairs and “families” occur. Indeed, there may well be a hierarchy developed among the relationships in these fictive families (Heffernan, 1972; Heslin et al., 2011), and some of the studies about these relationships have uncovered complex networks (Giallombardo, 1966; Heffernan, 1972). Both peer and cross‐generational relationships have been noted. Organizational kin relationships are generally represented as “family” with “peers” (e.g., the brotherhood in a fraternity or the sisterhood in a sorority; Kiesling, 2005; Yeung, Stombler, & Wharton, 2006). Caregiving kin are often pairs and not families (though the recipients may be an entire family), and they may be either peer relationships or cross‐generational ones.
The most commonly described form of ritual kin in the United States, compadrazgo, is distinctive as pairs that cross generations. In contrast, intentional kin appear to have no distinctive types but take the form of the full range of relationships—pair groupings and families, peer groups and cross‐generational relationships.
Remaining Questions
For all the scholarship about fictive kinship, it turns out that there is a lot we don't yet know about this phenomenon, no matter what type of relationship we examine. In what follows, I suggest some additional variables that might characterize fictive kinship. In some cases I hypothesize how the typology might predict these variables would fall.
Process
Because much of the scholarship about fictive kin is based on data drawn at a single point in time (and usually based on questions asking about current relationships that feel like “family”), most studies do not explore the process whereby a relationship achieves that designation. Few ask questions such as, “How long had you known the individual before he or she began to feel ‘like family’?” or “What were the immediate circumstances under which this person became ‘like family to you’?”7
But we might well believe that the process would vary across the range of types of fictive kinship. Indeed, we might find ready‐made families in the situational examples at one extreme and a slower process of the formation of intentional kin at the other; somewhere in between, ritual kin (like caregiving kin) might be initiated at one moment, whereas the socioemotional components of the relationships themselves may take time to develop.Fictive Kinship Relationship Boundaries
Scholars suggest (almost by definition) that situational kinships are delimited by the circumstances in which they emerge. Of course, this is not invariably the case, and it is “spilling over” the edges that McAdoo (2007) might be describing when she suggests the multiple “functions” of the African American church. Other cases of transcendence may be found as individuals choose to maintain relationships formed in a particular setting beyond its initial location. As Braithwaite et al. (2010) acknowledged, the life course can influence these relationships so that a fraternity brother may, down the line, become a godfather to one's child. Similarly, following incarceration, a cellmate might turn out to be like an aunt to one's children. Or a colleague from one's employment could become one's fictive kin even long after one or the other leaves the workplace. And individuals may remain in the relevant situations for a long time. We might ask, then, about the origin of intentional kin relations (how many began as some other type of fictive kinship), the continuity (or conversion into different forms) of both situational and ritual kin, and the length of time characteristic of each type of relationship.
We might also ask about the range of kinds of activities shared by the members of a fictive kin relationship and how these are altered as fictive kin move from one location to another. For example, a godparent might originally be seen only on ritual occasions; if strong bonds form between godparent and godchild, the two might get together for a broad variety of activities and events. And while intentional kin might be included in a broad range of activities, two women who feel “like sisters” might meet only occasionally or only speak on the phone every once in a while.
Benefits and Constraints
We also don't know the degree to which any fictive kin relationship (much less each distinct kind) truly carries with it the benefits (rights) and constraints (responsibilities and obligations) of kinship and the degree to which it ignores those benefits or is free from those constraints.8
Where Are the “Real” Kin?
Finally, most studies of fictive kinship look at dyads or “families” composed of otherwise isolated individuals; in these case, the depth and complexity of everyday lives recede. And although Braithwaite et al. (2010) talked about voluntary kinship relationships that are enmeshed in extended family (where the voluntary kin become part of the “real” kin), a full understanding of how fictive kinship operates in the context of other family relationships is relatively rare. Muraco (2006), in her study of relationships between “cross‐gender, different sexual orientation friends” acknowledged this point and expressed it well: “it is difficult to know the degree to which the participants were integrated into each other's family structures and also to assess how welcome each individual felt in the wider family context” (p. 1323).
Complexities of Kinship in Specific Populations
In addition to what we don't yet know, we could explore what appear to be different descriptions of the reasons for, and meaning of, fictive kinship within specific groups. The typology suggests that these differences may be attributed to similar relationships being described as different types of fictive kinship. I explore several of these: fictive kinship within African American, LGBTQ, and elderly populations.
African Americans
By suggesting that the African American family has its roots in West African traditional patterns, Sudarkasa (1998) implicitly argued that fictive kinship emerges from cultural (almost ritual) forces rather than simple intention. By way of contrast, Stack (1974), in writing about the poor, African American residents of the area she called the “Flats,” strongly suggests that it is a more recent, economically marginal situation that promotes the development of fictive kin relations; moreover, although she describes these fictive kin relations as developing on the basis of consensus, she also suggests that naming someone fictive kin was a way to ensure that they would be willing to share resources (i.e., that each side would recognize the rights and obligations of kinship). In both ways, Stack comes close to conceiving of fictive kin as convenience kin. Whether the African American extended family structure is best understood within a cultural or material framework is a matter of long debate (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2004). That debate has significance for our understanding of the claim by some (e.g., Johnson, 2000) that fictive kinship is both more common within (and maybe even distinctive to) the African American community: If it emerges from a cultural form, it is more likely to be “distinctive” in some way and more common there than elsewhere; if it emerges as a result of material need, it might resemble other forms of convenience kin and unlikely to be found when African Americans become more middle class (as Chatters et al. [1994] suggested); if it is simply an intentional tying together of interpersonal bonds of friendship into something more “reliable,” fictive kinship among African Americans may be no more or less common than it is among other groups.
LGTBQ Populations
“Families we choose” among the gay and lesbian population, as described by Weston (1991), are marked by extremely fluid boundaries, consist of varied membership that crosses household lines, and are constructed as individualistic affairs. Muraco (2006) noted that these relationships—which she described with the language of intention rather than that of choice—can include heterosexuals as well as gays and lesbians. She argued, however, that for heterosexual people, these family‐like relationships represent one option out of many, whereas for gays and lesbians, these relationships emerge because of a lack of alternatives. Situating gays and lesbians as individuals who have “lost” traditional kinship ties, Muraco (2006) focused on the constructed nature of their networks and their origins in insufficiency (as is true of convenience kin). Dewaele, Cox, Van Den Berche, and Vincke (2011) made a similar point about the LGB Flemish community, noting that while the average Fleming primarily relies on family for confidant support, “LGBs seem to rely primarily on friends” (p. 312). Others, too, have noted the emphasis on friends as part of one's chosen family within the LGBTQ populations (Barker et al., 2006; Dewaele et al., 2011; Irizarry, 2011).
Much as Stack does for African Americans, then, these authors suggest that marginality gives rise to a need to form other kinds of kin relations that might be thought of as convenience kin as much as intentional kin. Interestingly, however, when describing these relationships, they do not speak of situation or convenience but of intention and choice. Of course, fictive kin among LGBTQ folk may also emerge for reasons other than marginality or as compensations for the absence of supportive family ties: These relationships may emerge as a political act or expression of resistance (Weeks et al., 2001) and as a direct challenge to heteronormative cultural norms as the terminology of “family” serves as a recognition for sexual diversity (Weeks, Donovan, & Heaphy, 1999).
The Elderly
A number of scholars have written about the elderly as developing kinlike ties to ensure support in their old age. Hazel Mac Rae's (1992) interviews with 142 elderly women living in Nova Scotia (ranging in age from 65 to 98) revealed that two‐fifths had at least one fictive family member, and Johnson's (1999) interviews with 122 Black elderly people, 85 years and older, found that 45% of respondents reported that they had such a relationship. Relying on a “situational” sample of 114 caregivers and care recipients, Barker (2002) found that more than half the sample “used kin terms to characterize their relationship” (p. S158). And Allen et al. (2011), after conducting interviews with individuals “aged 55 years or older with at least one living grandchild … aged 16 years or older,” found frequent reference to what they called “nonkin conversion” (“Friends and others are ‘converted’ to close kin'”) (p. 9). In addition, as noted earlier, a number of studies (Dodson & Zincavage, 2007; Karner, 1998; Piercy, 2000; White‐Means, 1993) explicitly examined the relationships between the elderly and (paid) caregivers and have demonstrated that these often involve some form of fictive kinship.
As is the case for other groups, fictive kinship among the elderly appears to be created to expand the available socioemotional and material resources. For example, Johnson's (1999) research on elderly African Americans found that here, as with the nonelderly, “the boundaries of family were defined flexibly so as to include fictive kin. Through this (and other redefinitional processes), the elderly were able to expand the size of the network on which they relied” (p. 368). Similarly Mac Rae (1992), suggested that fictive kin among the elderly could be explained according to a “substitution principle, or the notion that individuals who have no kin tend to substitute for missing relatives by converting close friends into quasi‐kin” (p. 227).
Elusive Examples
The fictive kin among African Americans, the families we choose within the LGBTQ populations, and the fictive kin among the elderly are thus described by some as intentional kin (relationship sought for their pleasure), by others as families of convenience sought for the resources they can provide, and by still others as a combination of the two. We might consider whether the line between intentionality and convenience is crossed when individual circumstances “require” the expansion of resources (whether these are material or socio‐emotional) through the creation of relationships outside of blood or legal kin.
The suggested typology cannot itself locate all examples of fictive kinship; it lies with individual authors to account for the emergence and dynamics of fictive kinship within a particular group. That is, in proposing the typology, I do not mean to argue that every example of fictive kinship can fit neatly into one slot or another. Rather, I mean to suggest that conceiving of a given example as a particular type will help highlight certain features of the relationship under investigation.
Conclusion
Up to this point, much of the scholarship about fictive kinship has studied that phenomenon within distinctive settings and groups rather than looking across a range of populations and situations to examine fictive kinship broadly. As a result, quite different kinds of relationships have been referred to by the same name while quite similar ones have been given quite different names. These naming practices have impeded both theory construction (our hypotheses about when, where, and why people from these relationships) and analysis (our understanding of comparisons among different kinds of relationships).
In this article I offered an alternative to these usual practices, with the development of a typology that differentiates among forms of fictive kinship first on the basis of whether or not it emerges in a distinctive setting and then on the basis of whether or not it is mired in ritual practices. The names—situational kin, ritual kin, and intentional kin—might be as confusing and superfluous as the range of names that already exist. Even so, I would hope that these names (and more important, precision about the kinds of relationships to which they refer) help us distinguish among sets of relationships with quite different characteristics.
Situational kin emerge within distinctive circumstances and possible kin are drawn from limited options. The relationships may be nonconsensual, take place outside of blood or kin relationships, and exist as both peers and cross‐generational relationships, as well as both pairs and entire families. A strict accounting of responsibilities and benefits seems key to many of these relationships; among those that link those with unequal statuses, exploitation may go hand in hand with the socioemotional attachments and the provision of material resources.
Ritual kin emerge out of religious or cultural practices of naming another as kin (most often for one's child) and draw from a population with the same cultural characteristics. These relationships rely on at least a facade of consensus, are embedded in blood or legal family relationships, frequently exert social control, and assume most commonly the form of cross‐generational pairs.
Finally, intentional kin emerge among all types of individuals who seek (intend) relationships outside of the blood or legal family. These relationships occur without restriction as to type of individual; operate almost exclusively as mutual selection (and through consensus); may well exist alongside, and in conjunction with, other kin relationships; and provide a full range of kinds of support, depending on the needs and desires of the participants. The responsibility to reciprocate may be less explicit than among situational kin; even so, these relationships would be unlikely to persist in the absence of satisfactions on both sides. These relationships may operate as pair groups and as families, and they may exist among peers and across the generations.
My goal here has been to describe these relationships less as a comparison to blood or legal family (and friendship) than as phenomena in their own right. Moreover, my goal has been to demonstrate that they are as variable as are blood or legal families (and friendships) and that their full variety needs both theoretical development and further analysis. One of the ironies of most discussions of fictive kinship is that they almost inevitably reify “real” kin. Indeed, the word fictive is especially likely to do so—by drawing a distinction between the made up and the real—but other terms (e.g., chosen, voluntary, constructed, intended) can do the same. Indeed, this is often the way individual respondents talk: As Braithwaite et al. (2010) stated, among their respondents what they call “voluntary” kinship is often “justified on the basis of some sort of deficit in the blood and legal family and . . . legitimated against that family type” (p. 396). But for all this justification or reification (or maybe because of this justification and reification), discussions of fictive kinship tell us nothing about blood or legal families. Rather, perhaps, they tell us how people would like to see blood or legal families operate—as sites of affection and belonging, where people easily claim their rights from, and fulfill their obligations to, others. The use of family as metaphor or explicit simile (“like a brother”) may also tell us as much about how individuals want to see themselves (as people who act in a loving and conscientious way towards others) as it does about how people actually act in their daily lives.
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