Black Women’s Fictive Kin Networks and the Sisters in the House

By Hettie V. Williams

African American fictive kinship arose out of a response to the chaos of enslavement. Slavery as an institution marred African family ties and their sense of community once defined by blood ties. The separation of blood kin from their children and families made the reliance on fictive kin a measure of survival. This phrase fictive kinship refers to a relationship that is developed between non-related members of a given group that develops out of common ancestry, history, social experience, or predicament while kinship connotes blood or marital ties.

African American women served as important practitioners in the development of fictive kin networks before, during, and after slavery. Children born into enslavement were often reared by un-related “mothers” during slavery and women centered networks also helped to socialize younger women, their master’s children, and in the cultivation of social relationships between women and men. These women-centered networks consisted of biological mothers and “other mothers” that is women who assisted or replaced biological mothers. These fictive kin networks developed over time through enslavement and beyond.

These networks cultivated during enslavement strengthened after and into the women’s club movement to the present day…