For many women, ‘kin-keeping’ is just another energy sapper. Can more men please step up?
Of Sandra* (39) and her husband, she does all the ‘kin-keeping’. “I’d never heard that word before,” she tells me, “but it describes it perfectly.”
Part of the mental load – something that is carried largely by women – kin-keeping refers to a person’s activities or efforts to look after relationships with relatives. Often women are ‘kin-keeping’ not just for their own extended family, but for their partner’s extended family too.
Sandra’s husband’s family members don’t live in the same town as them. She decides what Christmas presents to buy for her husband’s parents, his siblings and his nieces and nephews, purchases the presents (in person or online), and makes sure they’re delivered in time. “Some of them live in the U.S. so I really need to get things organised early.”
If they’re spending Christmas with some of them, Sandra still purchases the presents. Does her husband help? “I mean, he says he will, but he never gets around to it.” Indeed, she has to remind him to call his mother.
One Christmas, Sandra printed out photos from her daughter’s first year, created photo albums, then posted them to her mother-in-law and father-in-law, who are divorced. Sandra’s husband liked the idea, but didn’t get around to helping.
Perhaps it goes without saying that Sandra also buys the presents for her side of the family.
The Invisible Labour Of Kin-Keeping
Erienne Fawcett, an American professor of women’s studies and gender studies, teaches her students about a form of invisible labour dedicated to family: kin-keeping.
One of her students, Molly Westcott, has created a three-minute TikTok video about kinkeeping. Molly compares family life to a play, saying women are working offstage. She calls kin-keeping “the unpaid labour that women are assigned to subconsciously as a gender. Not only does this cause a lot of stress in women’s lives, it also breeds a lot of ignorance in men.”
This video has got 2.5 million views, and on April 10 ‘kin-keeping’ was dictionary.com’s word of the day, defined there as “the labour involved in maintaining and enhancing family ties, including organizing social occasions, remembering birthdays, sending gifts, etc”.
Kin-keeping is particularly important if relatives don’t live in the same town or country. Maybe it’s always you, not your partner, who posts photos of your children in the family WhatsApp group, because you know your in-laws will love seeing photos of their grandchildren. Maybe it’s you who schedules phonecalls or video calls with your in-laws and puts your children on the phone. Maybe it’s you planning holidays with the extended family. Maybe it’s only you asking what everyone’s dietary requirements are before a family gathering.
The Glue That Keeps A Family Together
A New York Times story called ‘The Constant Work to Keep a Family Connected Has a Name’ says “references to kinkeepers began cropping up in sociology literature in the mid-20th century. Researchers defined the role as a family communicator who helped the extended group stay in touch by sharing family news and planning gatherings. In recent decades, sociology and psychology researchers have expanded the definition to include things like creating or carrying on family traditions, buying gifts for birthdays and holidays, coordinating medical care and performing all sorts of emotional caregiving.”
“‘A kinkeeper is someone who cultivates a sense of family solidarity or connectedness,’ said Carolyn Rosenthal, a professor emeritus of sociology at McMaster University in Canada who researched kinkeeping in the 1980s. ‘It’s someone who, in many ways, is the family glue’. Carolyn says that studies throughout the years to the present day show that ‘most kinkeepers are women’.”
“In many cases, being a kinkeeper is rewarding,” the article says. “But kinkeeping can be time-consuming – and emotionally heavy.”
The Assumption of Women’s Work
Most women I asked about kin-keeping hadn’t heard that exact term before, but it resonated with many. “Yep 100% me!” “This is me all over.” “I’m definitely the kin-keeper, so much so that my in-laws would keep me over my husband in a divorce LOL!”. “Totally me! It’s great to have a word like this to draw attention to part of women’s unpaid second shift.”
Jenny* says “I’ve tried really hard to be bad at kin-keeping so my OH’s [other half’s] family won’t always come to me to plan gatherings, get updates on the kids etc. I have my own circus to manage! But the good, polite, please-like-me girl training runs so deep.”
How Kin-keeping Works After Divorce
“Not having to do kin-keeping anymore is one of the great things about being divorced,” Mel* says. “I only have to care about and think about my own family now.”
However, even after a split, some women are still the kin-keepers with their ex’s family members.
Sally* says “I still do kin-keeping and we’ve been separated for four years! I don’t organise gifts for his parents or siblings anymore but I still do for his sister’s kids – mainly because I don’t think they should miss out just because my ex is a dickwad.”
Kirsty* says, “I was the kin-keeper and I totally f**king hated it. When my husband and I separated, I made a list of all the emotional labour and home-management jobs that I’d done – and made it clear what I wouldn’t be doing anymore: including buying gifts for his family, and being expected to choose and buy all the kids’ gifts for birthdays, Christmases and other things. I do keep track of a family tree, family histories and family stories, including from his family, but that’s my choice as I love that stuff.” Indeed, documenting and preserving family history is another part of kin-keeping.
Can We Just Stop Kin-keeping?
Deirdre* says: “where’s the call for men and husbands to be accountable and step up to the plate to do kin-keeping? There are too many pressures on women these days. Men are completely capable of being kin-keepers – the reason they don’t do it is that no one expects them to. How do we change our culture so that kin-keeping is an expected part of being an adult of any gender?”
Good question. I mean, we can ask men (not that we should have to), but if that doesn’t work? Some say stop doing it yourself, and see what happens.
Anna* stopped. “A few years back, pissed off, I started refusing to do it.” Because her husband doesn’t get around to buying presents, “the in-laws usually get an online gift card purchased on the day of the occasion or nothing, but so be it.”
“Before I quit doing it, we once headed to my in-laws for my mother-in-law’s birthday. I’d bought the present, but told my husband to buy a card. He didn’t. We stopped at a servo on the way, but there were no cards. So we just gave her the present without one. ‘No card?’ she said, looking directly at me rather than the person she gave birth to. For several years thereafter, she exclaimed pointedly at every birthday, ‘Oh look, you got a card!’. So she’s enjoying my husband’s half-arsed, forever-cardless efforts these days.” It’s not Anna’s problem to sort.
Because family is important, but it’s not all on us.
