Moso is a Chinese ethnic group that is famous for being a matriarchal society with minimal contact from the outside world. In Moso matrilineal system, woman is the pillar of the family. As the head of a family as well as a mother, a Moso woman is responsible to determine family’s name, decision, and inheritance. No one has right to replace woman’s authority, even a man. This is the primary point of a matriarchy which traces the side of Moso family’s lineage through the descendant of woman. What is great about Moso, despite being matriarchy, is that the society has no gender preference. Moso society shares their workload wisely between man and woman. Man usually works on labor-intensive ...view middle of the document...
A woman must choose a man from a different household. If pairs are interested to one another, then they will secretly have a sexual relationship at night. The primary difference from the common traditional marriage is that, after that night, the man and the woman will return to their respective families. So, for example, after a man visits a woman at night, he will return to work for his family dwelling at dawn. Similar to the case for a man, a woman will do exactly the same. In other words, family members in Moso society will never get separated. This system also contradicts the study conducted by Anitei (2006), which states that women in most modern countries join their male counterparts’ families after getting married. However, this system actually ties Moso’s families from falling apart. In fact, the walking marriage system provides the basic stable structure of a family where family members are able to live together.
Because none of the children will ever leave, every family in Moso society lives respectfully without any particular preference for both genders. By the system of walking marriage, the Moso family generally lives in large extended families with many generations under one roof. A family may have three women generations with their uncle, brother, son, or nephew. Nonetheless, according to a study conducted by Gatusa in 2005, all family members treat men and women equally. They live in mutual respect of one another and consider everybody as a part of the large family. All men and women in Moso society take pride of their families. Young family members will take care of the elders. On the other hand, when a young mother is pregnant, her brothers have a responsibility to treat the newborn as their own child. It does not matter whether the newborn is a boy or a girl, the baby is treated equally. In addition, jealousy among genders and ages is fully prevented in this society. Furthermore, Geertz (2006) also supports the model of Moso family structure which has successfully shared their financial and child-rearing responsibility without any gender preference. Therefore, Moso society understands about getting mutual respects among themselves.
On the contrary, there exist opinions implies implausible stability of family structure about how a family structure could survive without the existence of a...
