Family and Kinship

Arab-Canadian family life reflects both traditional patterns from the Arab world and acculturative changes resulting from the impact of the Canadian environment. The generational factor is a critical influence on family structure and thus the nature of family life among Arab Canadians. Family life in the immigrant generation, therefore, tends to reflect patterns prevailing in the country of origin more strongly than does family life among the second and subsequent generations. In either case, however, the family is a central institution in the life of Arab Canadians.

Almost 84 percent of Arab Canadians live in one-family households, according to the 1991 census; 5.8 percent live in multiple-family households; and 10.6 percent live in non-family households, either as lone individuals or with others. The most typical setting, representing over 60 percent of households, is one that includes a married couple mostly with but sometimes without children. More than 10 percent of Arab-Canadian households include parents/parents-in-law, brothers/sisters, or brothers-/sisters-in-law, among other relatives; and in only 2.9 percent of these households, other residents are unrelated.

Only 8 percent of Arab-Canadian households consist of single-parent families with or without additional persons living in the household. Common-law couples are the least-common family form among Arab Canadians, representing only 1.7 percent of all households.

Among more recent Arab immigrants to Canada, who are the numerically dominant group in the Arab-Canadian community, the web of kinship is both intricate and strong. One indication of this is the prevalence of a tendency to sponsor relatives to come to Canada as immigrants. In this environment there is a strong sense of family obligation that goes beyond the immediate nuclear family consisting only of husband, wife, and children. Unmarried relatives are often incorporated into the same household, thereby reflecting a traditional extended family arrangement, and sometimes married couples share the same household. Typically, unmarried children, particularly females, continue to live with their parents, regardless of age.

In the majority of cases, social roles within Arab-Canadian families are defined in terms of complementarity between husbands and wives, according to which men are expected to be breadwinners and women to be housewives. Normally, men wield considerable power and authority within the family, owing in part to their ability to control the family’s financial resources. The husband’s power, however, is restricted in proportion to the wife’s social resourcefulness and her ability to provide supplementary income. In any case, sex roles tend to be rigidly defined and husbands appropriate to themselves the right to supervise and control their wives.

In this setting, children are socialized to reproduce traditional family forms and thereby perpetuate sex-role separation. Parental power asserts itself in the selection or in strongly influencing the selection of a marital partner for an eligible son or daughter. On occasion this might involve importing a spouse from the home country, as well as enforcement of an Arab sense of modesty, which would include a prohibition against the Canadian practice of dating, particularly for females.

Generally, Arab-Canadian families tend to participate in a relatively close web of kinship reciprocity; to hold marriage, childbearing, and childrearing (particularly of sons) in high regard; to have a strong preference for endogamous unions, preferably same-country and same-religion; and to have conservative attitudes towards the behaviour of females of all ages. However, these preferences and the degree of moral stricture surrounding them are not fixed; they can vary and sometimes greatly so.

On the whole, immigrants tend to be less flexible in their ideas of acceptable family behaviour than the Canadian-born. Indeed, these are the types of issues that have been raised to public awareness in the Canadian media. For example, in recent years, more immigrants have brought traditional dress codes to Canada, specifically the traditional hijab or scarf that covers the hair and neck. The visibility of the hijab and the common Canadian perception that associates it with female oppression make it controversial in the larger society and there has been considerable discussion concerning its propriety and meaning.

Compared to earlier Arab immigrants, their most recent counterparts benefit from advances in communication and travel technology and these also affect their family lives. More recent immigrants for example, tend to have far greater contact with relatives in their ancestral lands and thus with old-country ways than did their earlier cohorts. Traditional family patterns, however, do not exist uniformly within the Arab-Canadian community and the resulting family type is far from monolithic.

In Canada, as in the Arab world, these patterns are undergoing modification and change, more so among Christians than Muslims but also among the Canadian-born, the better educated, and “Westernized” Arab immigrants. Yet, overall, the balance in Canada still favours traditional family and kinship patterns because of the predominance of the foreign-born generation.