Worldbuilding - Unnamed Fantasy Setting One - Mountain People Family Structure

[becka_sutton]

Brief thoughts on the Mountain People's family structure. There are still some things I need to work out but so far it's verging on a matriarchy. Whether it ends up being a true matriarchy or not depends on what is going on above household level in the society (I think it's likely to be a theocracy in the way that many preindustrial societies were).

• Families live in multi-generational extended families in households.
• Each Household is run by the oldest woman supported by the other elders. She has the final say on what males are adopted and how the household's property is used.
• Marriage as we understand it is unknown. Instead all males and females in an household who are of the same generation and who have completed their rite of passage may freely have sex with each other.
• In spite of these the keeping of only one sex partner is encouraged. Not knowing the father of a child is considered a failing – though not a crime or sin.
• Once weaned children are raised in common by all adults in a household though they do know who their parents are (or at least who their mother is).
• Sex before the rite of passage is strongly discouraged and forbidden within the household.
• Sex with an age difference of more than 14 years is strictly forbidden.
• When a female of the family completes her rite of passage a new male in her age group is adopted into the family. When a male completes his rite of passage he must leave the house and either join another house or stay in the unattached males house until he finds one to take him in. The number of males and females over the age of coming of age must always be the same.
• If a woman of childbearing age in the house dies then one of the males in her age group must leave the family. Usually, but not always, the one who was adopted when she came of age. Men who leave a family in these circumstances cannot be adopted into another family and spend the rest of their lives in the unattached males house.
• Unattached males are distrusted and considered expendable and are sent on the most dangerous hunting and fishing missions and are most prone to be chosen for the rare human sacrifices as no one needs them. Tradition forbids unattached males from carrying weapons other than hunting gear and even this is forbidden in the village. They must collect it from the great moon's priestesses before departing on a trip and return it when they return.
• The only way for a male cast out from a household to avoid this is fate to castrate himself and then either rejoin his birth family or become a priest. Many men take this option as it holds no stigma unlike being an unattached male.
• If an adopted male in the current child-bearing age group dies one of the house females - generally, but not always, the one who he was adopted for - is expected to become a resident at one of the village's temples and abstain from sex from then on. If she is pregnant or nursing she will wait until the child is weaned and then depart as sex with pregnant and nursing women is taboo anyway. These women aid the priestesses and are not viewed with the suspicion that unattached males are. They are, however, expected to be celibate since they have no household and hetrosexual sex outside the household is forbidden.
• If an elder (a woman over-childbearing age or a man in that age group) dies no one has to leave since sex between elders is purely recreational.

Thoughts?

Comments

[inventrix]

I don't really understand the maintaining male/female balance within a household. I can see how adoption of males fills a similar function as marriage, but I don't quite understand the benefit of making it a one:one ratio. Especially since, unlike a marriage, the man being adopted into the family doesn't necessarily have any other ties or responsibilities to that family in particular outside of those that are a direct function of being a male member. It seems almost more like they are simply shuffling around brothers, which doesn't make much sense at all. Do they have little interest in the concept of kin by blood? It seems unlikely that they would use adoption of other men as a way of forming ties with other households, as it appears that after coming of age, the men lose their born familial identity.

[becka_sutton]

They think not having a one to one ratio provokes jealousy and tension in the household. They don't enforce it among elders because they are thought to be more rational and also to have less libido.

It's my intent that men do retain a bond to their original household as well as their new one and that adoptions do form alliances. That why a castrate can rejoin his birth family. (The castration like the age bar is an attempt to avoid incest). Also a man from a powerful household is less likely to get tossed out of his new household.

I was just freewriting this stuff so I know it's got holes - but I like the idea of not having marriage as we know it.

[inventrix]

Well you wanted thoughts, and from me, thoughts is always finding holes. ;P

The incest-thing is a good point, by the way. I hadn't thought of that, but it makes the basic concept make more sense.

I am however also curious as to why a male tossed out due to a female death can't be readopted by another family. Also, do those males, forever consigned to the unattached-males-house, form their own sort of "household" hierarchy?