section_path: Culture and society/Marriage, gender, and kinship
section_name: Marriage, gender, and kinship
paragraph_text: Marriage, gender, and kinship
  
  The Han-era family was patrilineal and typically had four to five nuclear family members living in one household. Multiple generations of extended family members did not occupy the same house, unlike families of later dynasties. According to Confucian family norms, various family members were treated with different levels of respect and intimacy. For example, there were different accepted time frames for mourning the death of a father versus a paternal uncle.
  
  Marriages were highly ritualized, particularly for the wealthy, and included many important steps. The giving of betrothal gifts, known as bride price and dowry, were especially important. A lack of either was considered dishonourable and the woman would have been seen not as a wife, but as a concubine. Arranged marriages were typical, with the father's input on his offspring's spouse being considered more important than the mother's.
  
  Monogamous marriages were also normal, although nobles and high officials were wealthy enough to afford and support concubines as additional lovers. Under certain conditions dictated by custom, not law, both men and women were able to divorce their spouses and remarry. However, a woman who had been widowed continued to belong to her husband's family after his death. In order to remarry, the widow would have to be returned to her family in exchange for a ransom fee. Her children would not be allowed to go with her.
  
  Apart from the passing of noble titles or ranks, inheritance practices did not involve primogeniture; each son received an equal share of the family property. Unlike the practice in later dynasties, the father usually sent his adult married sons away with their portions of the family fortune. Daughters received a portion of the family fortune through their dowries, though this was usually much less than the shares of sons. A different distribution of the remainder could be specified in a will, but it is unclear how common this was.
  
  Women were expected to obey the will of their father, then their husband, and then their adult son in old age. However, it is known from contemporary sources that there were many deviations to this rule, especially in regard to mothers over their sons, and empresses who ordered around and openly humiliated their fathers and brothers. Women were exempt from the annual corvée labour duties, but often engaged in a range of income-earning occupations aside from their domestic chores of cooking and cleaning.
  
  The most common occupation for women was weaving clothes for the family, for sale at market, or for large textile enterprises that employed hundreds of women. Other women helped on their brothers' farms or became singers, dancers, sorceresses, respected medical physicians, and successful merchants who could afford their own silk clothes. Some women formed spinning collectives, aggregating the resources of several different families.