We have different religion, caste, sub-caste, language, ethnicity in this world - from east to west, north to south, rich to tribes. Each genre have their own customs and traditions, but what remains common to all genres is the basic family structure i.e., Father, mother and their children. Besides that, we can find gay couples & their children, and lesbian couples & their children, rarely. Had you witnessed or heard any other family structure? At least I had not!
But recently I heard a completely different family structure; a family structure without a father or husband - sounding strange right? and they are called Mosuo. Mosuo, a small minority ethnic group living around Lake Lugu which share the borders of Yunnan and Sichuan provinces of China. They live in a mountainous region whose primary occupation is agriculture and farming as like any other village people in this world. But their traditions of Matriarchal family system and most importantly - the Walking marriage make them distinct from any other existing known community in this world.
Mosuo women are given high preference with due respect and Mosuo follows a matriarchal family system in contrast to our male-dominated family system. In such a kind of system, the family tree consists of only maternal branch since Mosuo don’t prefer to have a father for their child. In many cases, their children are unaware of their father and hence there is no place for paternal branch at all in the family tree. Women will have physical relationship only with the men whom they like and they are free to do it at any number of times with any number of people since the age of 13, and this is referred as "Walking marriage". Mothers teach about sex to their daughters after their age ceremony and they say "Sex is good for skin". It is either the mother or mother's brother responsibility to raise the child.
Mosuo community became so popular to outside world after a well-known Chinese pop singer Namu who left Lugu at her young age, recently released a book “Leaving her mother” after which the government improved the infrastructure to make it as a hot tourist destination spot, thereby reducing a week trekking to hours travel to reach Lugu from outside world. Many tourists visit Lugu looking for free sex because of which Mosuo females are really disturbed. Taking the advantage of this tradition and tourists disappointment of free sex, some prostitutes travel from town and clad themselves as Mosuo and provide them the sex. Thus the access to Lugu by outside world presages the rise of deterioration of Mosuo community. At present, Namu works for the welfare of the uplift of their community, and tries to protect the community & their traditions by building a museum and through various charities.
I came to know about Mosuo community through a documentary "The Great Himalayas". Follow the link to know more about Mosuo community:
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=182&catid=5&subcatid=87
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