ADRIENNE RICH
19
masculine intellect and spirit have dominated in the interpretation of
society and culture-whether this interpretation is carried out by
males or females . . . fundamentally masculine assumptions have
shaped our whole moral and intellectual history .' ,
Matrilineal societies-in which kinship is traced and property
transmitted through the mother's line-or matrilocal societies, where
the husband moves into the house or village of the wife 's mother–
exist as variations on the more familiar Western pattern of the patri–
archal family which is also patrinomial, patrilineal, and patrilocal
and in which, without the father's name, a child is "illegitimate."
But these variations merely represent different ways of channeling
position and property
to
the male; they may confer more status and
dignity on women and reduce the likelihood of polygamy, but they
are not to be confused with " matriarchy. " Nor , as Angela Davis has
noted , can a black woman who is the head of her household be
termed a "matriarch" while she is powerless and oppressed in the
larger society .
David Schneider finds three constants in matrilineal descent
groups : women are responsible for the care of children , and every
child is the primary responsibility of a particular woman even where
other women share its care ; adult men have authority over women
and children; and descent-group exogamy (marrying out of the
maternal family) is required . Schneider makes the relative power of
men and women extremely clear: women and children are under
male authority "except perhaps for specially qualifying conditions
applicable to a very few women of the society . Positions of highest
authority within the matrilineal descent group will . . . ordinarily be
vested in statuses occupied bymen . "
The advantages
to
women of a matrilineal over a patrilineal
order are actually slight. The emotional bonds between a mother and
her children are subject
to
the strain of the father 's kinship group
pulling the child away from the maternal descent group ; patricularly
in the case of sons , "economic cooperation and the transfer of proper–
ty between father and child " has a compelling effect in weakening
the emotional and psychological authority of the mother. The reverse
is not ttue in patrilineal societies because the mother , however strong–
ly bonded with her children emotionally, has no power beyond that
relationship which might challenge the power of father-right.
