All Our Kin Summary

Carol Stack’s ethnography All Our Kin is an exceptional, analytical study of black urban kinship systems. Stack has a dual focus in this ethnography. She studies how residence patterns and household composition relate, as well as how reciprocity between kinship networks and poverty relate. Stack studies how family units are comprised in a poor, predominately black urban community in the Midwest, which she refers to as The Flats. She dispels various stereotypes about the black family; for example, that black families are matriarchal, lack fathers, and that their family structure contributes to their poverty. Her hypothesis is that groups of kin, who may or may not reside in the same home, cooperate and aid each other through the exchange of good and services in order to combat their poverty. Stack specifically studied second generation urban dwellers, that is the children of those who moved from the rural South, who were themselves raised on welfare and now depend on welfare to support their own

She illustrates that an mother may have a long-term partner, multiple sexual relations at once or be legally married. All are acceptable by the community. Generally, a woman’s first child is not with a person they are married to. A child will then only have access to the father’s kin if the father claims ownership of the child. If a man decided to deny paternity, it is generally accepted by the community. Future boyfriends of the mother may fill this paternal role in the child’s daily life, but generally do not confer any kin relations to the child. If the father does not deny paternity, that does not mean that he and the mother necessarily maintain a romantic relationship. The more a father helps the mother and children, the greater his parental rights to the children; but since many men struggle to find employment, they often cannot adequately support the family and so are not involved in their child’s