Fictive Kin Among Oldest Old African Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area

OBJECTIVES: The purpose here is to identify those processes that account for the more active and supportive kinship networks among Black oldest old than found among their White age peers. METHODS: Focused interviews were conducted with 122 Blacks 85 years and older. Both open-ended and semistructured questions were asked in order to determine how Blacks defined family and kinship membership, their expectations for kin, and the desired levels of reciprocity. FINDINGS: A content analysis of the responses indicated that Blacks defined the boundaries of their families flexibly so as to include fictive kin, and they upgraded more distant kin into the status of primary kin. They also emphasized the importance of collateral relatives so as to expand the size of the network. DISCUSSION: These processes use personal choices as well as immediate needs to expand the basis of relatedness beyond blood and marriage. Thus the supportive capacities of networks increase in order to serve a potentially vulnerable population.