The rules by which a society traces group membership and inheritance through one or both parental lines, the core typology of unilineal and bilateral descent used throughout kinship studies: patrilineal descent through the father line, matrilineal descent through the mother line, and bilateral descent recognizing both. Belongs here: a named rule for tracing lineage or group membership. Does not belong here: a rule about where a married couple lives, grouped under Postmarital Residence Patterns, even though descent and residence rules often correlate in a given society and are frequently discussed together in the literature.
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Sources
1. Wikipedia: Kinship
WikipediaKinship, Descent rules section
There are four main headings that anthropologists use to categorize rules of descent. They are bilateral, unilineal, ambilineal and double descent.
Kinship, lead section
In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated.
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