Beyond The Pattern of Heaven: Gender, Kinship, and the Family in China

1. Patrineal Kinship another uniting factor.

1.1. Surnames connect individual to a common ancestor. If a woman remarried after being widowed, or divorced, they would be excluded from the family tree due to termination of marriage.

2. Confucian tradition a uniting factor.

2.1. Kong Fuzi - founder. Open system where mainly men join by adopting doctrine. Filial piety primary tenet. Believe without this, we will subject ourselves to chaos and disorder. Mother and father both honored equally by both sexes.

2.1.1. Woman must strive to be a good wife and support her husband. Man must be a gentleman while showing compassion, and abiding by property and ritual.

2.1.1.1. 5 relationships must be observed. 1. ruler / minister 2. father / son 3. elder brother / younger brother 4. husband / wife 5. friend / friend This will achieve group harmony

3. Han Chinese Women

3.1. Inferior

3.2. Women defer to their fathers. Once they are married, they then defer to their husbands. If the woman should become a widow, then she will defer to her son.

3.3. Disadvantaged from birth

3.3.1. Poor families kill infants (infanticide) because they view them as a waste of family resource.

3.4. Once married, becomes part of her husbands family tree. Is the lowest of the family, now having to serve her mother in law.

3.5. Expected to birth sons.

4. Uterine Family

4.1. Mother centered family

4.2. Served to "support women cut off from their natural kin networks" (Cable, pg. 355)

4.3. Bonds not forced by ritual, rather the bond between mother and children.