New Zealand

According to the 1996 census, Maori comprised about 14.5 percent of the population, which is much larger than the indigenous population of Australia, Canada, or the United States. Historically, Maori lived in extended families, or whanau. Stewart-Hawira (1995, p. 2) notes that whanau is the most fundamental unit of Maori social life and identity. Maori were positioned within their whanau according to birth order, generation, and senior or junior relationship between people of the same gender. These relationships, combined with genealogy, determined who held positions of status and authority (Cram and Pitama 1998).

When British missionaries and settlers came to Aotearoa/New Zealand in the early nineteenth century, they confronted a different family and economic system, one that included extended families, arranged marriages, and tribal guardianship of land rather than ownership by nuclear families. British colonial families consisted mainly of husbands, wives, and their children. Some households contained unmarried siblings, aging parents, and hired help, but migration often isolated families from their kin. Legally, the husband headed the household, and family roles were distinguished by gender and age. Colonial family law largely over-looked the Maori family system, privileging the British nuclear family.

Most early settlers came from Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to find work, establish financial security, and own homes. Not all migrants were voluntary, as some wives came because their husband and relatives wanted to migrate. Women and children were expected to follow (Dalziel 1991; Toynbee 1995). British husbands, wives, and children worked hard to earn a living, as did their Maori neighbors, and many parents raised their children on isolated subsistence farms in rural communities with few services. Birth rates were high, especially among Maori.

Although New Zealand women had won the right to vote in 1893, before other industrialized nations, family roles were determined by gender, and women's participation in paid work was limited after marriage. Both sexes were expected to marry and raise children, and there was little tolerance of nonconformity (Dalziel 1977). Stable, hardworking families were valued, along with physical prowess, masculine sport, gender differentiation, and British culture. Urbanization and industrialization came later to New Zealand than to Britain, and New Zealanders saw themselves as a rural society well into the twentieth century.

Over the years, laws have been reformed to give men and women equal legal rights, and both husband and wife now typically own the family home and other marital property. Nevertheless, symbolic vestiges remain of the patriarchal family, such as the bride being "given away" by her father at the wedding and using her husband's surname after marriage. Despite urbanization and feminism, the social pressure to reproduce remains strong; birth rates are relatively high; and many married mothers with young children still give primacy to family. Nevertheless, many mothers work outside the home, especially part-time, while their children are young.