Talk:Fictive kinship

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 August 2018 and 7 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Brown.levander.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:22, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Long before then

Developed in 1995? The term fictive kin has been around long before then. --Gbleem 01:42, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

another example

I can't add it as it would be original research but there might be more on it out there. My family are Dutch Jews and as such large portions of our extended family were killed during the Holocaust. I was raised to call a number of people aunt/uncle who were either only very distantly related or not all. This went beyond using aunt/uncle as terms of respect. The explanation was always that there were so few Jews left after the war that this was the closest we had to family so we might as well consider it the same as actual family. jdevries (talk) 14:23, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

relatedness

"Fictive kinship is also known as relatedness. " someone please explain this. --Gbleem 14:58, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Degree of fictiveness

Would it be fair to say that the degree of the relationship can vary. I could call someone my aunt out of respect or to convey a relationship while not seeing that woman as my actual aunt. My cousin who was legally adopted as a baby I see as my cousin equal to other cousins. Is this a fictive relationship? --Gbleem 15:02, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Adoption is a form of fictive kinship that has been formalized through a legal process. Your are emotionally related to that child as a cousin and consider him/her to be your cousin but in truth, the child is not your cousin and the relationship is fictive. That does not, however, dimish the family bond between you. Usually, adopted children grow up being treated exactly as a biological child. For example, having been adopted at birth, your cousin would be unlikely to consider one of his/her siblings as a potential marriage partner due to the fictive kinship deeming such a relationship incestious. Legally, it would not be, but the family would most likely be violently opposed to such a relationship.

I can give you another example of a fictive relationship that I don't think has ever been formally documented by any anthropologist other than myself, so I can't add it here - it would be original research. It is refered to as 'Cops-In-Law" and defines the relationship between the children of Irish NYC police officers who are current or past partners or who have worked so closely with eacother that a kinship bond is assumed. The way it works is that if your father and John's dad are partners or were parteners, John's dad is your uncle, his wife is your aunt and his children are your cousins. For the purpose of romance and marriage, Cops-in-Law cousins and uncles are off limits. For example, I am female so under this fictive system of kinship, I cannot date or marry my father's partner past or present nor his partners' children past or present. Assuming there is no pre-existing consanguinal relation, this "Cops-In-Law" relation is totally fictive. When I researched it, it had a variety of names and some families had taken it so seriously that they had forgotten such relationships were fictive, continuing to count successive generations as "real" cousins once or twice removed. Since it's primarily an Irish thing, it inevitably gets mixed up with blood relations and becomes even less transparant as fictive. This fictive relationship does, however, serve a valauble purpose. It protects the bond of trust between partnered cops who up until recently were mostly male. The fictive kinship served to put "off-limits" female relatives to the two partnered males and enhance their perceived relationship as "brothers." It seems to be something that is dying off or just not so formalized.

In any event, your relationship to your adopted cousin is very real to you and your family even if academics would classify it as fictive. There are many more types of fictive relationships than those described in the article or by me above. What they all have in common is a goal of formalizing a deeply emotional and important bond between people who love and care for eachother. Anthropologists simply find the term useful to distinguish such relationships from blood or marrige relationships. Hope that helps.LiPollis 10:50, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Would adoption not be considered just as valid as marriage? I understand the non-fictive nature of biological relation, but it seems that marriage and adoption are similar as far as how legitimate people's relations are, since they are both legally and culturally recognized. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.153.3.121 (talk) 18:12, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

How can anyone consider something they know it's false? Or act against their own preservation by treating people that are not our kin as if they were and protecting their survival over the one of our own? 85.244.2.139 (talk) 01:26, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Editorial?

"An alternative standpoint would be that 'either you're related or you aren't'." This statement seems too editorial for Wikipedia. Should it be deleted, or would clarificaton help?

The term has such a broad usage...

"The term has such a broad usage as to suggest that it might be spurious" What is the intended meaning here? The term "fictive kinship" is not in broad usage. What is being described as spurious - the term "fictive kinship", the kinship..? Why does its broad usage imply spuriousness? Mutt Lunker (talk) 16:32, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Gurung unsourced

One sentence/paragraph that uses this term is as follows

A noted Gurung tradition is the institution of "Rodi" where teenagers form fictive kinship bonds and become Rodi members to socialize, perform communal tasks, and find marriage partners.

Shouldn't this information include a footnote to cite the source?

Ed8r (talk) 18:30, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Christian Usage

Fictive Kinship is a major aspect of Christianity. God is "Father"; Jesus is "Brother"; and all members are "family"... Referring to members of a congregation as "Brother So-and-So" or "Sister This-or-That" is extremely common. Something should be done about adding this into the article. Perhaps in other religious traditions this happens as well... How about in the Buddhist Sangha? Emyth (talk) 20:07, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Lack of impartiality

This article all stands on an obviously false idea. It ignores the fact that most people, any of us, naturally, like any other living being, do care about their offspring and their own individual perpetuation, that they do not cooperate with each other against that purpose, and that only degenerate individuals, a minority, do not. Otherwise, without parents having children, there would be no one in the World. 85.244.2.139 (talk) 01:23, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Not so at all. People who chose not to have biological children are *not* degenerates, whether they choose to not have children at all, or whether they choose to adopt or to foster.

Lastly, the world is in no danger of mass instinction of humans. Plenty (indeed, since the world is over-populated, too many) people have children. If we want to have children, we can, but We are not obliged to produce children. 220.245.138.58 (talk) 04:35, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

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Isn't it more obvious that the Americans that Schneider investigated value themselves - in a growingly selfish society - or their children more and that is why they do not value their (other) relatives more than before? Rather than suddenly, out of the blue, they'd simply stopped valuing their kindred? There is no criticism nor even interpretation of both claims or even data, and they both contradict what people individually know to be their case? If it were true that people don't value, naturally and intrinsically rather than as part of a culture, kin above nurturing, then how are there people who claim that is true, how could they do that themselves as they do in the first place? 193.126.164.147 (talk) 02:55, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

section on adoptive/foster fictive kin

"The children are normally treated as the adopters' biological kin" - Uncritical, spurious statement - abuse and othering of both foster and adoptive kids are quite common lol. Avoid conflating wishful thinking/societal expectation with what happens in real life. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.168.37.85 (talk) 01:52, 28 December 2018 (UTC)