This month I'll be drawing on some of the elements of previous Closer Looks, as usual, but I'll be using more elements from the caste system previously provided than I usually take from these articles. It should still be easy enough to insert anything from this article into a culture, but for people who are wanting to combine it with the caste/brotherhood system, some elaboration might be appreciated.

Family Relations

Families are built on respect, loyalty, obedience, responsibility, and a hierarchy which determines who receives which of these qualities. Inferiors give obedience to their superiors, and superiors have a responsibility to care for their lessers, help them, and never abuse them. Respect and loyalty are mutual virtues given by both inferiors and superiors within the family; inferiors respect their superiors for carrying out their familial responsibilities and superiors respect their inferiors for displaying obedience, and both are loyal to each other against outside forces.

Each generation is inferior to the generations which precede it and superior to the generations which follow after it. A man is inferior to his parents, aunts, and uncles, and superior to his children, nieces, and nephews. In each generation, women have superiority within the family while men have superiority should outsiders to the family be involved. After this, birth order determines status within the generation, and gender and birth order of the preceding generation must be considered. Take, for example, three cousins, all children of different siblings: a firstborn son, a secondborn son, and a fourthborn daughter. Regardless of their own birth orders or ages, the child of the fourthborn daughter is superior within the family, followed by the child of the firstborn son and then the secondborn son. Outside of the family, the child of the fourthborn daughter is actually the most inferior of the three.

No matter where you are in the family, you always know your place.

Marriage

Marriage occurs in many different ways depending on one's situation, especially one's class in society. In the dregs of society, the practice of xilgorompol, or ìwalking marriage," is predominant. Xilgorompol is a form of serial monogamy where both sexes remain with their respective families. Men may offer to warm the beds of women who catch their fancy, and if the man is accepted he will travel to her house around dusk, and return to his own house with the coming of morning. While these relationships can be dropped easily it is considered bad form to carry on two of these relationships at the same time.

Children born into a walking marriage are not considered the responsibility of the father (though it is embarrassing if their mother does not know who their father was). Instead, while men may give gifts to their children, they are expected to provide for the children of their sisters. One of the beneficial effects of xilgorompol is that the demand for children of one gender or another does not exist on a large scale. Women are needed in order to carry on the family name (the children of your sons will not be part of your family, so it falls to children of your daughters to carry the legacy on) and men are needed to support those women's children, preventing the usual problem of preferring sons to what can be a dangerous degree. Unfortunately, this is practiced by low class families specifically which means that if status is determined by something other than wealth, there are still going to be many poor families with that problem (it's not for the respectable elements of society after all, no matter how poor they are).

In the brotherhoods-based society, marriage is typically only condoned within castes boundaries. In larger population centers, where it is possible to find a member of your subcaste who is not a member of your family as well, it is very frowned upon to marry outside of it. Sometimes even dangerous (and it's always dangerous to marry outside of your caste, no matter how small the town is that you live in). Marriages between members of different subcastes are slightly more complicated. Most women do, in fact, perform at least some amount of work related to their subcaste even when they have children, especially if they're in a place of small population, and they certainly perform the work up until this point. When a mixed couple has children, the daughters will belong to the subcaste of the father and the sons will belong to the subcaste of the mother, in what might be a deliberate attempt to provide another way to balance out a bias for one gender or the other (sons will carry on the family name, but only daughters will carry on the family trade). Whatever the original reasoning, this is one of the things brought up most often when it is being explained why someone erred in bringing their children up as part of the wrong subcaste.

This society really does try to keep gender relations from getting out of hand, and tries to work within the confines of tradition and custom to give safety and even freedom to women. A woman may divorce her husband, or vice versa, with far less difficulty than in some societies, and while the initiator of the divorce is expected to care for the children, most women have a working knowledge of their subcaste's trade (or just their parents' trade or trades, if there are no subcastes). It might be difficult to make a living as a single mother but it isn't impossible. The dower, or pouol, is another safety net, and is a sum of money paid by the husband to his wife which is her property alone and is typically invested in some way in order to lighten her load should she find herself divorced or widowed.

In classes which do not practice walking marriages, eldest sons are expected to marry and bear children. Other sons are permitted to be practically single, although they must for appearances' sake still be marriedÖ after a fashion, that is. Uomdypol can be translated as ìspirit marriage" and is a marriage to a dead woman (or dead man, if the living party is female). Since divorces are not incredibly difficult to obtain, especially if there's been no consummation, the uomdypol can be dissolved at a later date should the living party eventually decide to marry in a more standard manner, but for the time being he is now free from any pressure to marry, unless it becomes clear that his eldest brother will not be able to carry on the family line. Spirit marriage is also performed should a widower decide to marry again. It can be considered bad luck, even fatally bad luck, to be the next wife of a widower, so a man will instead marry a woman who is already dead, divorce her three days later, and move on to the woman he is actually interested in.

Qiopomompol is another form of marriage which is not uncommon to this society. When families, nations, or other groups are feuding, especially violently, each will marry one or more of their daughters to the other's family. So far, so standard. Where qiopomompol marriages differ, though, is that this is a temporary matter. Once each side has had at least one child result out of the marriage and said children have lived for at least two years, the women will divorce their husbands and return to their families. Just not with their children. While other cultures consider it hard to attack the family that your daughter is married to, here it is considered to be just as hard, if not even harder, to attack the family that is ìmerely" raising your grandchild or niece or cousin, and this also allows the family's daughters to regain whatever independence which they had had before the qiopomompol. Unfortunately, remarriage is not an option, since it is believed (rightly) that many women would return even to a marriage which they weren't happy with if that were the only way that they could have their children.

Virginity is usually prized in this society, but even more prized is one's participation in a qiopomompol. One is definitely not a virgin after returning from this, but instead one has made what is one of the greatest sacrifices possible and given up one's child (not to mention two years of one's life) for the sake of peace. It is not just an honor for a woman to marry in a qiopomompol but to be allowed to marry such a woman as this. Families with qiopomompol brides in their lineage make as much of a to-do about it as, say, an American family descended from George Washington would.

Education

Education occurs in one of several ways, especially in brotherhoods-based societies such as that which was presented a couple of months ago. Firstly, wealthy upper-class families, especially those involved with the government or some other administrative or aristocratic function, will hire one or more private tutors for their children. Slightly less well-off families will pay teachers who take on entire classrooms of children. In villages, towns, and cities alike, these teachers may work on their own, while in larger population centers there are also oqokipes, or ìgreat-schools," where a number of teachers are organized together in order to teach groups of children. Typically, each of these will cover certain subjects not part of the expertise of the others.

Regardless, these kinds of education are general, not specific to certain trades. Teachers are therefore used either when the parents believe that a general education is necessary for the child to perform his job (such as if the child is expected to grow up to inherit an administrative or noble status) or when the parents want the child to be set apart from families which aren't able to afford the education. Again, wealth isn't the base of status in every society, and this can result in good education being given to the high and low alike. To draw examples from the castes, a tax collector's child is a member of the highest caste in society, but will likely never receive the sort of education which the child of a fueller or even a smart bookseller will be given.

Apprenticeships are the most common means of education and they can come in one of two forms. Where it is possible by dint of having enough people in the area who know that trade, a blacksmith's child will not be trained by her father but by another blacksmith (who probably knows her father well, since blacksmiths stick together, like fuellers, tax collectors, tutors, and everyone else). In smaller places, though, children are taught the family trade by their parents, and the duty of a mother is in fact seen less as actually rearing the child and more as giving them a proper education in the family trade. Certainly, parental responsibilities are handed off to the woman who takes her children as her apprentices, and houses, feeds, and clothes them as she would her own children (and their master is invariably a woman unless the children were given to an unmarried man).