I posted this article years ago in one of my Facebook writers group discussions about how to write fiction around Matriarchal societies.

Female and Male-based societies form the foundation for Western Civilization. Their structures control our mythologies, cultures, and even family units. These structures are changing today just as they changed so radically thousands of years ago.

Many cultures around the world have been Matriarchal Societies. The Welsh, Scots, Irish Celts, and Gaels were once matriarchal and still are in some ways even though modern religious practice and Anglo-Saxon dominance has changed over the centuries. In Matriarchal Societies it’s not about women running the culture as it is how family structure is designed.

Often you see children traced through the mother where the uncle has more importance to the father or the father isn’t acknowledged or known. The mothers brothers then become the tribal chieftains or male warriors or protectors in the royal lineages. That fact itself makes “groups of women” then the matriarchs of the family unit though on the surface the physically strong tribal males still appear to be the protectors in matriarchal societies. You still have queens, however, and powerful clans that control power through the mother’s family line.

Unlike Germanic Patriarchal culture where women seem more equal as partners in the structured marriage system, their sisters lineage isn’t recognized. In matriarchal systems loosely connected families were bonded only through the women via sisters which formed the foundation for the tribal identity for Celtic matriarchal culture regardless of the male warrior structures that dominated the tribe.

In fiction, Matriarchal Societies are in fact the foundation for all of story-telling in America and Europe. Their myths and stories reflect that theme in Celtic or Irish folklore. One example is a story where a boy is a bastard child brought into or taken by the fairy and replaced with one of their own. This bastard child then seeks his uncle, or ‘fisher king’, to do some heroic feat. That’s the King Arthur story which is a proto-Celtic or matriarchal story. There are no fathers in those tales, only bonds to the mother’s uncle.

The father isn’t important in the Matriarchal Society of America that’s now slowly forming. Notice in America 40% of children are born of a single parent. Mostly single women or groups of women are raising kids now. America is moving from a father-oriented, marriage-based Patriarchal Society to Matriarchal Society now.

Germanic culture, and the so-called ‘marriage vow’ brought the patriarchal, nuclear, father-based family unit which you see in the invading Germanic tribes of the early centuries of Europe. They overran European culture in the 5th century and they brought the structured Patriarchal warrior-cults, horse culture, stories of winning on battlefields, warrior-clans, English Common Law, Lords and strict property rights, military structures, and small family units where lineage is traced through a single male. All that forms the foundation for Patriarchal or American culture today.

Beowulf or the lone hero that destroys monsters and wins, Odin Viking culture, Greek myths and culture, Gods with monogamous wives….all that is a relic of the old Patriarchal phenom placing women as equals to men in those structures but where the lone male as father and as patriarch dominates the family structure. That’s what decides Patriarchal structure.

The polyamorous matriarchal Celts where groups of families run by brothers connected to the same mother was very different. So understand these society’s have very different structures. And from those structures came differing views of romance and monogamy, love, and family. The basis for each type is how children and their lineage are traced, often in the royal families that sit at the top in ancient culture.

But the stories we enjoy derive from those two forms: Matriarchal vs Patriarchal Societies. The next time you write romance or fantasy, ponder what the real structure is. If its one woman married to a man she follows and loves, it is a Patriarchal story structure. If her relationships span many men and lovers, or brothers and uncles form the family unit, it is purely Matriarchal.

– the Author

Created Dec 17, 2016, 2:47 AM