Have you ever heard this word before? I hadn’t, but then suddenly, I’ve heard it in a couple of contexts within a short span of time and thought it might be a worthy conversation topic. The term kind of exploded earlier this year after a TikTok video by Molly Westcott, resulting in kinkeeping being Dictionary.com’s “word of the day” back in April.
I ran across the term kinkeeping in an article in the NYT earlier this year, but it’s not new. It’s been used in sociology circles since the mid-80s and was defined by sociologist, Carolyn Rosenthal. Basically, it refers to someone who acts as a family communicator. The person who tries to make sure the extended family stays in touch by sharing family news and planning gatherings. It’s someone who creates or carries on family traditions, buys gifts for special occasions, and can include lots of emotional caregiving. Someone who, in many ways, acts as the family glue.
It might be done out of obligation or because of emotional attachment. Kinkeepers play an important role in maintaining family cohesion and continuity. Families with active kinkeepers tend to feel more connected.
Listening to that description, at first you might think Oh, it’s the mom. Because isn’t that who tends to do all the things? Make the holiday magic, take care of the gift-giving, make sure kids send thank yous to the relatives… It mostly falls on mom. (Ref: Eve Rodsky’s Fair Play…women bearing most of the emotional labor.)
In my family (of origin), it was my mom. She was making sure we’d do a road trip to visit the grandparents. She was orchestrating the birthdays and Christmas cards to keep in touch with extended family. Once we all moved away, it was largely because of mom that we’d make the effort to get back together around the holidays.
Once she was gone, that “glue” wasn’t there as much. Dad wasn’t as “sticky” in that sense, so we were more likely to spend holidays with our own nuclear families spread out across several states. Interesting how it developed like that. He didn’t pick up the baton in that area.
Renee? Was it your grandmother first and then your mom?
Most kinkeepers are women, it turns out. Women as a gender tend to be more relationship-oriented as a whole, so maybe that makes sense. But a professor of communication studies at U of Nebraska did a kinkeeping study in 1996 and again in 2017. More than 91% of the volunteers for that study were women. You might think (as prof Braithwaite did) that the gender breakdown might have changed some in 20 years, especially with technology making it easier to communicate…but nope. Still women.
Kinkeeping falls under the category of “caregiving” in many ways, and that remains squarely under female expectations.
It can be anything from being the one to host the annual thanksgiving meal to being tagged to organize the family reunion. Think about the things that hold significance for a family or generations within a family.
Sometimes it’s caregiving: who’s gonna go pick up Grandma and bring her to the Christmas get-together? Who knows the family medical history? Or the family history in general? (there are a lot of things I ask my older siblings that I was too young to remember….just the other day I was asking when we lived in Virginia—I’d been 2 or 3 at the time). Now that we have a family group text, stuff like that is a lot easier. We can pose a health question or someone can ask about a date something happened and usually one of us will chime in.
But there are other things that tend to fall to certain people in the family. Once my mother had passed away, we sort of took turns spending holidays with my father. A lot of times it was me and one other sister who made that happen. We were also the ones who provided a lot of care and emotional support in his last years. Part of that is geography, but part is just that that role falls to someone and not to others. Ideally, in a larger family it would be nice if you could designate days of the week to each person so everyone would call once a week and help with the emotional load. You can ask for that support, but it’s not always front & center for everyone & it tends to fall by the wayside.
I watched my dad do things for his own parents, aspects of kinkeeping that my mother wasn’t responsible for. He’d take care of their yard work, for example. He’d take care of some financial matters for them.
Renee—did you ever witness the men in your family participate in some aspects of kinkeeping?
Aside from ACTUAL HANDS-ON caregiving, some of the other types of kinkeeping might involve records and family history.
My FIL kind of made himself responsible for family history. My husband would get on Ancestry.com and they’d trace the family trees as far back as they could…for both of us. He and his dad would visit actual cemeteries and gravesites for photos of dates and locations and add these things to the website for posterity. That’s a form of kinkeeping that I had little interest in.
One of my sisters is big into old photos. We don’t have many of the older generations left to identify some of these, but she takes the time to ask those still around for some oral histories and keeps records of those photos. (many of these can be uploaded to Ancestry type genealogy sites). You probably know who that person is in your family…if there’s a milestone bday coming up or you need photos for a funeral slide show, is there a go-to person? Or the person who has the playlists. Who’s your go-to for the playlist for the 50th anniversary party?
Back in the day, I was all in the scrapbooking craze. I spent hours organizing pictures and writing little bits of narrative for each of my kids and a little bit for our family. I found a bunch of old slides and had them made them into photos. Turns out a lot of them were baby pics of my little brother, who—because he was the 5th kid—had always thought he never had a lot of those. For one birthday, I made those into a scrapbook for him.
With kinkeeping, so it doesn’t get overwhelming for one person, you should focus on something that interests you.
Pictures. Digitize them and share a scrapbook or digital album with everyone.
Because I had a lot of the slides and old audio tapes, I sifted thru and made digital copies of relevant bits to share.
Recipes or Cookbooks: make a digital family cookbook. Even better if you can include some handwritten recipes from grandparents or extended family to preserve. Maybe make a recipe or two from it when everyone’s together.
Organizing reunions or gatherings. Some families are great about doing this. They make Tshirts and have whole agendas for the weekend (games, trivia, etc.). I know families who’ve been going back to the same place in Maine for decades. Have you ever tried organizing a big trip like this? It can be a LOT! Even for the 5 of us—who now try to get together every couple of years—it’s not always easy finding a fairly central location everyone can afford with a place that sleeps 10 or more…and then you’ve got to think about food, etc. A lot of people would go if something like that’s organized—just tell me when and I’ll show up. But they don’t want to have anything to do with the planning, etc. So there’s typically a person or two who—if this is going to happen—they’re the ones making it happen.
Stories: does anyone in your family know the stories? The ones that get told over and over at each get together but also those that are lesser known. Has anyone recorded them or written them down? After a few generations (not that many), a lot of this just gets lost to time. Maybe that’s ok. Not everything needs to be chiseled in stone.
Rob recording my granddad’s stories at lunches.
Cemeteries. Here’s an odd one that my husband’s gf did, which I think is a kind of kinkeeping. Years ago, he purchased a handful of cemetery plots, and these became the designated area in the local cemetery. Maybe to you that’s a creepy idea and one that you’d rather not think about, but to him it was like a legacy gesture.
Stuff: Being an executor or taking care of someone’s estate… I’m sure there was a lot my parents and their siblings had to do with my grandparents’ things. We know these days that Millenials, Gen Z and the following generations aren’t so interested in stuff. They’re paring down and traveling lighter. But it is kind of cool to have SOMEthing that might have been meaningful to someone in a previous generation. Maybe that one pitcher that always held flowers in the summer at grandma’s house. I have my gf’s pitchfork of all things.
Of the things I’ve kept of my children’s, now that it’s time to pass some of that on, my daughter isn’t that interested in her childhood mementos. Even the outfits or toys I saved. But it was special to be able to give her a rabbit that my mother had made.
Next time you’re all together, everyone can bring an object or a photo (if item is large) that belonged to someone no longer around. You could talk about the significance of it or what it may have been used for (younger gens may never have seen a typewriter or watched a cassette tape play).
Are you your family’s kinkeeper? Do you enjoy it or does it overwhelm you? Talk about the elements of the holidays with your spouse and extended family and ask for participation or delegation of responsibilities/activities. For some things, in some areas, it may be worth letting things go if you’re the only one who thinks it’s important. Do you really need to make that special 10-layer cake that grandma made every holiday?
Everyday kinkeeping: just getting together for lunch or dinner or an activity like meal prepping or a football game.
Unintentional Side-Effects of Being the KinKeeper
People tend to rate relationships with their mother’s side of the family more favorably. Most people tend to say their relationship with their maternal grandmother is closest out of all the grandparents. Then paternal grandmother, then maternal gf, and paternal gf.
There’s a matrilineal connection advantage. Mothers are responsible for a large majority of caregiving and communication…followed not by fathers but by maternal grandmothers.
Since women are more likely to maintain the family networks, they’re also likely to be at the center of those networks. And that can extend to the whole side of their family. Women tend to rely more on their own side of the family for childcare help…which strengthens those bonds and sheer time spent together.
Lacking those tight ties can be a real loss for fathers and their side of the family. When men take paternity leave, they’re more engaged with their kids thru the first year of their lives…and this could strengthen children’s bonds with their whole extended family (on dad’s side). If more dads were involved in kinkeeping, they might rely more on THEIR relatives for help…which could even the field and keep dad’s side of the family from missing out.
Single Friends and Kinkeeping
Voluntary Kin
I realized that the hundredfold-now-in-this-time aspect of this promise had been fulfilled in my life through a phenomenon sociologists are now calling “voluntary kin.” According to a recent New York Times article, voluntary kin are simply people who choose to be related.
Anthropologists have traditionally used the term “fictive kin” to separate such relationships from “true” kinship based on blood or law, but many researchers have recently pushed back against that distinction, arguing that self-constructed families are no less real or meaningful than conventional ones.
My heart rejoices to see such relationships gaining formal recognition because my own experience has affirmed the reality. I have been greatly blessed with voluntary kin that make a life of celibacy easier. They make it easier because these types of relationships enable me as a celibate Christian to give and receive sacrificial love in tangible and intimate ways.
So when I help plan my voluntary sister’s engagement party or hold my nieces and nephews for the first time, I am participating in familial love. When I attend my voluntary little brother’s basketball awards ceremony or go on a camping trip with my second family, I am participating in familial love. And all of a sudden, a life of celibacy is not simply defined by what is lacking, but rather by the opportunity to love and be loved, serve and be served, invest and receive investment, in the God-designed community of the family.
True Kinship in Christ
Voluntary kin is a biblical concept as well. Or better yet, in Christ we might call it “non-fictive kinship.” One of the beautiful things about these types of relationships is that they tangibly reflect the spiritual kinship of all Christians. The bonds that believers share in Christ run deeper than blood.
When Paul calls Timothy his “true child in the faith” (1 Timothy 1:2), it isn’t simply a ceremonial label. The title “brothers and sisters in Christ” (Colossians 1:2) is not an abstract comparison to a different concrete reality. The Church of Christ is the family of God (1 John 3:2), and our earthly relationships should reflect this spiritual truth.
Yet sadly, as I look at the church at large from my limited vantage, I find that my experience may be the exception, rather than the norm. What might happen if the family of God as a whole began to dream more aggressively of creative and life-giving ways to live out our spiritual kinship?
Proverbs 31:26-29 describes the valuable role a mother plays in the lives of those in her family:
“She opens her mouth in wisdom; kindly instruction is on her tongue.
She watches over the affairs of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband, too, praises her:
‘Many are the women of proven worth, but you have excelled them all.’”
Throughout the Bible, we see depictions of faithful mothers who trusted the Lord, and in turn, were blessed. We also see others who were blessed with the Lord’s steadfastness, even when their faith faltered.
Lois and Eunice – 2 Timothy 1:3-5
The grandmother and mother of Timothy respectively, Lois and Eunice trained him in the word of God. Thanks to their spiritual guidance, Timothy grew strong in the faith and became a prominent leader in the early church. Paul states in his second letter to Timothy:
“I am grateful to God, whom I worship with a clear conscience as my ancestors did, as I remember you constantly in my prayers, night and day. I yearn to see you again, recalling your tears, so that I may be filled with joy, as I recall your sincere faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and that I am confident lives also in you.”
– 2 Timothy 1:3-5
Even if you don’t have a fully intact family (as it seems Timothy did not), you can have a big impact on your kids and their future.
Paul’s use of kinship: Paul refers to Timothy as his “true child in the faith” in 1 Timothy 1:2.
Kinship in God’s family
The Bible refers to kinship in God’s family, such as in Mark 10:29–30, where Jesus says that those who leave their homes and families for the gospel will receive a hundredfold.
https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/true-kinship-in-gods-family