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2 Constructing Kin
- Baylor University Press
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39 2 Constructing Kin Scholars note that “contemporary extended family does not simply persist. Someone expends a great deal of time and energy to maintain it.”1 Aunts often function as that “someone.” Gretchen, a 50-year-old Polish/Irish American woman, described her role as primarily one of preserving family connections: My role as aunt? Try to encourage them of the importance of family, when we get together—to encourage an atmosphere of family, right. To encourage them to continue to get together as a family and to rely and count on your cousins and aunts and family connections—that they are the most important, that they should come first. In addition to preserving and strengthening family bonds, aunts often initiate or participate in the formation of chosen kinship ties that extend family networks, blurring distinctions among family, friends, neighbors, and significant others. Kinkeeping communication maintains family relationships in ways that coordinate, supplement, and even substitute for the more material forms of care discussed in the previous chapter. In this chapter, we explore how aunting creatively constructs and maintains kinship connections and networks by organizing and 40 AUNTING participating in family rituals, keeping in touch across long distances, functioning as information sources and influences within the family network, and establishing and maintaining chosen family ties. These creative relational configurations attest to the importance of nonnuclear family connections and extend the benefits of kinship beyond biolegal relations. Gathering Together Rituals are often an important aspect of aunts’ interactions with their nieces and nephews. Families create their own rituals, sometimes within the celebration of larger cultural events, such as religious ceremonies (e.g., bar mitzvah) or holidays (e.g., Thanksgiving Day). While rituals vary widely in form and content, they have certain elements in common: they involve “an act or actions intentionally conducted by a group of people employing one or more symbols in a repetitive, formal, precise, highly stylized fashion.”2 Symbols can be language based (that is, written or spoken words, such as the Torah), or involve another medium such as dance or music (e.g., Mendelssohn’s wedding march), or they can involve interacting with an object imbued with symbolic value (e.g., heirloom serving dishes). Facilitating rituals is one of the primary outcomes of kinkeeping communication among biolegal and chosen family.3 Rituals play a central role in forging and maintaining connections among aunts and nieces and nephews. Rituals affirm the reality of abstract meaning for daily living, and they define the continuity of experience between past, present, and future . . . family rituals are part of the ongoing process by which a private sphere of intimate ties is continuously constructed and reconstructed.4 Sharing family rituals was an important element of the relationships of some nieces/nephews with their aunts. A Latina college student noted: “Tía [Spanish for “aunt”] is the aunt that I know the best. Our family spent numerous holidays with her family.” For other participants, family gatherings were among the only occasions in which they interacted with their aunts. One European American woman stated: “The only time I ever really see [my aunts] is during the winter holidays.” [18.216.199.136] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 19:06 GMT) CONSTRUCTING KIN 41 Aunts often play a vital role by simply attending events that mark turning points or accomplishments of their nieces and nephews. A 21-year-old niece observed that her aunts have been there for all the important rituals of her life: I just feel like they’ve known me since I was born. They’ve seen me go through every stepping stone and they’ve been to the baptisms and the graduation, all the birthday parties . . . it’s like I’m used to seeing them everyday; we’re always close like when we come in contact with each other. For this niece, the participation of her aunts in periodic rituals is so meaningful that she describes her relationships with them as being as close as relationships that involve daily contact (even though she does not see her aunts that often). By affirming her stages of growth and accomplishments, her aunts made her feel that they appreciate and care about her. Another young niece, Ruth, grew up in a Catholic family with seven children and close extended family ties, particularly among her mother’s relatives. Regular visits to her grandparents’ home for holidays and summer vacations helped to forge her bond with her aunt Elena. She explained that her mother’s sister...