Adaptive patriliny: care and lineage continuity in Liangtouhun families in contemporary China

Drawing on field research and interviews with six families in a peri-urban setting in Jiangsu Province, this study examines how Liangtouhun arrangements connect caregiving, family recognition, and lineage continuity. Liangtouhun is understood as a marriage arrangement involving ongoing coordination with both spouses’ natal families, rather than a uniform pattern of alternating co-residence. The analysis identifies four related patterns: participants explained the arrangement through childcare needs and obligations to aging parents; caregiving contributions were invoked to justify claims for recognition; participants attached differing degrees of flexibility and significance to residential, surname, and ritual practices; and competing expectations were expressed through fairness, reciprocity, and family responsibility. Existing surname allocations are distinguished from unimplemented spousal agreements and prospective preferences. Care-for-recognition describes how practical support was connected to claims for involvement and belonging, without assuming a fixed exchange. Adaptive patriliny captures how bilateral participation can coexist with, and reconfigure, continuing commitments to descent-based family continuity. These commitments were expressed by members of both spouses’ natal families. The study therefore complicates an interpretation of bilateral participation as necessarily displacing patrilineal practices, while recognizing that the evidence does not establish the preservation of male decision-making authority.