Recently, in a college student’s TikTok video that went viral, a woman discussed the little-known progressive gender studies term, “kinkeeping.” According to one professor interviewed by The New York Times, “kinkeeping” involves cultivating a sense of “family solidarity or connectedness” and is primarily performed by women. In the TikTok video, the woman negatively described “kinkeeping” as “the unpaid labor that women are assigned to subconsciously as a gender.” 

The New York Times article took a more balanced approach. One scholar described the work as “empowering”:  

Many kinkeepers genuinely appreciate being the person relatives turn to for emotional support and guidance, or the person responsible for carrying the torch from elder generations. 

All this hubbub about “kinkeeping” is just needless jargon for what many women do and have been doing as women for others since the beginning. The family is a God-given gift. Stewarding it for the good it brings requires the work of men and women.