Turkish Village
Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.
Paul Stirling
CHAPTER SIX
HOUSEHOLD AND FAMILY STRUCTURE
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brother-brothe relations. But among women there are at least four common types of relationship.
In simple households only mothers and daughters are present, but in large joint households, a number of women from diverse origins may live and work together. Relationships between them are not easy to observe, and the number of joint households on which we were able to collect evidence was small.
Mothers and daughters. Women want sons, but this does not mean that they do not love daughters. Girls grow up with the women of the household, and learn their most important lessons from their mother, helping her in all the household tasks. This inimacy, greater than that between any other pair of different generations, is violently interrupted by the girl's marriage, which normally takes place about puberty or soon after. Marriage is a time of acute grief to the bride's mother. One woman, on the marriage of her third daughter, told us that she had been seriously ill after each wedding, so painful was the parting. After marriage, a girl still looks to her own mother for help, advice and comfort. She visits regularly; if the distance is great, then for a month or so once a year; if her mother is in the same village, then frequently and casually. If she is ill, everyone expects her to be sent home to be nursed by her own mother.
Sisters. Before marriage, sisters are as close to each other as brothers; how this initial intimacy develops in later life depends on the physical distance and social relations between the households into which they marry. If they marry into the sae household, or two very closely related households, or even if they are in the same village, they will normally maintain close co-operation throughout life.
Mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. The most critical relationships among the women within the household are between the incoming strangers. A girl starts as a new bride, and slowly increases her stake in her husband's household until she becomes inher turn mother-in-law.
In other studies of joint patrilineal households, it has been plausibly argued that the relationship between a bride and her mother-in-law is far more important for the stability and success of her marriage than her relationship to her husband. Fei, for example, draws a gloomy picture of the lot of a Chinese bride in
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