A wedding always raises the same practical question: whose house do they move into? Every society answers it with a rule — and that rule quietly decides who you cooperate with, who raises your children, and who your allies are. Tap a rule and watch the couple move.
A village of four households
▲ male● female═ marriedgrey = kin already living there
Pick a residence rule. The husband is born into the household at the upper left, the wife into the one at the upper right. Where they end up after the wedding is what anthropologists call postmarital residence.
A finer pair of terms.Virilocal and uxorilocal mean simply “with the husband’s group” and “with the wife’s group.” Many anthropologists prefer them, because patrilocal and matrilocal smuggle in an assumption about descent that not every society makes.
Postmarital residencetap a rule to begin
The residence rules
Residence is the hidden engineDescent tells you which ancestors you claim. Residence tells you who you actually eat with — and daily co-residence usually shapes life more than any genealogy does. The four core rules are patrilocal, matrilocal, neolocal and avunculocal; two more show how flexible the answer can get.
Read the roots: patri- father · matri- mother · avuncu- mother’s brother · neo- new · ambi- either · nato- birth home. The ending -local always means “where the couple lives.”