Patrilocality is a social norm, common in patriarchal societies, in which a married couple resides with or near the husband’s family. 

Feminist scholars have argued that kinship structures and marriage practices that favour patrilocal residence significantly impact women’s right to an equal share of family property (see Dube, 1997; Geetha, 2007). According to Leela Dube (1997), post-marital residence profoundly impacts women’s access to and control over productive resources. It shapes how labour is organised, influences rights over the products of one’s labour, and affects women’s relationship to living spaces. This arrangement also significantly determines women’s bargaining power within the household and their relative autonomy.

Further, Dube points out that although there are exceptions, the ideal-typical household in much of India is the patrilineal, patrilocal joint family and that this places women in a precarious, liminal in-between space where they lose status within their natal family and are viewed with suspicion in their marital homes.

Socialisation in both homes and schools often reinforces traditional roles, particularly the notion that a woman’s rightful place is in her husband’s home.

From a young age, girls are subtly, and sometimes overtly, guided to shape their character, behaviour, and aspirations around the expectation that they will one day leave their natal family to join another household. They often receive training in domestic skills like cooking, cleaning, and caregiving, as well as values such as obedience, modesty, and self-sacrifice, which are seen as essential for smoothly transitioning into their future marital homes. This emphasis on patrilocality serves as a constant reminder that their ultimate destination is elsewhere and this should shape not only their immediate actions but also their long-term goals. There are specific terms in regional languages that convey this expectation.

For instance, in Tamil, ​“புகுந்த வீடு” (pukunda veedu) literally means ​“the home entered” or ​“the home she marries into”. It refers to a woman’s marital home and symbolises the expectation that her true, permanent place is with her husband’s family after marriage. Similar phrases are present in many other languages too. Even education or career choices may be influenced by this expectation, with families encouraging girls toward paths that align with their future roles as wives and daughters-in-law. 

In this way, socialisation actively shapes not only a girl’s skills and values but also her very desires and ambitions and limits her self-perception to fit within a patrilocal framework.

To give a specific example from the school context, in the Government of Karnataka’s Environmental Studies Text-cum-Workbook for Grade V, published by the Karnataka Text Book Society (KTBS) and implemented from the academic year 2017 – 18, the second chapter on family includes a section on the family tree. In this section, a character named Manu introduces his family through a family tree diagram (page 20)

From Manu’s perspective, this family tree holds patrilocal and patrilineal values by showing only his father’s side of the family, including his paternal grandparents (Vinutha and Ravi) and paternal great grandparents (Ramappa and Bhagyamma), while omitting relatives from his mother’s side. His mother Radha’s parents or paternal grandmother Vinutha’s parents are missing from the family tree. This layout implies that only his father’s lineage is relevant to his family identity and reinforces the idea that heritage and family legacy are passed down exclusively through male ancestors and that women are seen as ​‘marrying out’ and becoming part of their husband’s family. Textbooks inadvertently inculcate such patrilocal values!

The first movie in the 2024 Tamil anthology film Hot Spot, directed by Vignesh Karthick, presents an intriguing sociological thought experiment in relation to patrilocality. This movie begins with a heated dialogue between a couple about whether to proceed with their wedding. The man is furious that the woman wants to postpone the wedding after involving their families, but she reluctantly agrees after initial resistance. She warns him, ​“You will understand what I am saying when we have kids”. Puzzled, the man goes to sleep. Up to this point, nothing seems unusual.

The next day, as the man’s family prepares to meet the woman’s, there’s a stark role reversal: men manage domestic duties while women take the lead in family decisions. The woman’s mother demands a dowry from the man’s family and insists he quit his job after marriage to focus on household responsibilities. His opinions are ignored, and after the marriage, he moves into her home, expected to adjust to her family’s routine, handle chores, and make sacrifices. The woman’s romantic gestures don’t alleviate his frustrations which in turn lead to tensions between him and his father-in-law. The conflict escalates to the point where the wife slaps the husband.

At that moment, the man wakes up from his sleep, realising that this was all part of his dream. The world returns to ​‘normal’, where he hears his mother doing all the household work alone. The man suddenly begins to understand why the woman felt anxious about their marriage. The day starts with the man’s family visiting the woman’s house for the traditional bride-seeing ritual. The women are now shy, diffident, and passive unlike the men. With the unusual dream still fresh in his mind, the man speaks up and says that after marriage, he and his wife want to live separately, or in other words, prefer neolocality rather than patrilocality. He deliberately critiques the ​“conditions apply” clause that usually applies to women after marriage.

The movie provokes us to engage in a thought experiment which challenges the gendered order that normalises patrilocality. Although the protagonist’s speech about gender equality, questioning traditional roles, patrilocality, and subordination of women may sound a bit preachy, the film leaves the audience with an uncomfortable feeling. It highlights the blatant absurdity of a man performing traditional gendered roles, while in real life, married women are expected to perform these roles without question, despite their inherent insensibility and injustice.

The protagonist here asserts that altering the dominant gendered world is indeed possible. He takes the initiative to declare that the couple will live as a separate family or alternate between the families of both the man and the woman.

The thought experiment that this story presents helps us question the social facts taken for granted, in particular, gender. According to Émile Durkheim (1858−1917), there are ways of acting, thinking, and feeling that exist outside the individual’s consciousness. Social phenomena, institutions, norms, and similar elements are external and independent of human beings. Social phenomena have a reality sui generis, meaning they possess a unique reality of their own. These social facts are endowed with a compelling and coercive power, which imposes itself upon individuals, regardless of their wishes. The force of social facts is felt in varying ways and degrees, especially when one tries to resist them. Even when individuals manage to break free from these rules, it is always a struggle against their influence. Over time, the sense of constraint may diminish because these social facts gradually give rise to habits and inner tendencies and make their influence less noticeable but still pervasive. 

Patrilocality, as a deeply ingrained social structure, remains resilient even in ostensibly progressive marriages that may eschew religious observances or avoid extravagant ceremonies. Despite such modern practices, the new family unit often finds its primary allegiance tied to the male partner’s family. This attachment persists regardless of whether the couple lives separately which in turn illustrates that patrilocality is more than mere cohabitation — it’s a social allegiance difficult to break. Any substantial deviation from this norm may invite repercussions. 

The thought experiment in Hotspot offers hope for the younger generation’s capacity to rework the gendered social fact of patrilocality. Hopefully, these reworkings across different communication platforms and educational materials, including textbooks, will eventually transform the cultures of patrilocality within our homes and society.

References

• Dube, L. (1997). Women and Kinship: Comparative Perspectives on Gender in South and South-East Asia. United Nations University Press. https://​archive​.org/​d​e​t​a​i​l​s​/​w​o​m​e​n​k​i​n​s​h​i​p​c​o​m​p​0​0​0​0dube
• Durkheim, E. (2014). The Rules of Sociological Method: And Selected Texts on Sociology and Its Method (S. Lukes, Ed.; W. D. Halls, Trans.). Free Press (Simon and Schuster).
• Geetha, V. (2007). Patriarchy. STREE.
• Karthick, V. (Director). (2024). Hot Spot. KJB Talkies; Seven Warrior Films.
• KTBS Environmental Studies Text-cum-Workbook for Grade V (2017 – 2018).https://ktbs.kar.nic.in/new/website%20textbooks/class5/5^th-english-evs.pdf

About the Author

Vijitha Rajan is a faculty member at Azim Premji University. Her interests lie in understanding the educational exclusion of migrant children and foregrounding the discord between mobile childhoods and immobile schools in the Indian context.

Featured Image Credit: Varsha Agarwal, Azim Premji University