When we say that a child resembles their father, while another resembles their mother, are we expressing an objective or subjective judgment? This book examines the social origins of judgments regarding family resemblance.

In the Greek island of Karpathos, it is always believed that the firstborn daughter resembles her father and the firstborn son resembles his mother. However, in the Trobriand Islands of Melanesia, all children resemble their father and none resemble their mother. In the Kachin of Burma, on the contrary, it is believed that all children resemble their mother. In the island of Djerba in Tunisia, a child resembles whatever the mother intensely looks at during pregnancy. In France, in families with two children, especially if they are of the same sex, when the first child resembles the father, the second child usually resembles the mother, and vice versa. In some societies, a child often resembles the one they are named after. Ultimately, we can say that kinship systems are characterized by the way they connect categories of children with categories of parents, living or deceased, through the use of name and/or resemblance, encompassing all children or only certain ones.

The rules of resemblance and the rules of naming constitute two symbolic ways of appropriating children and play a significant role in the emotional economy of the family.