The topic of my paper is the social institution that I will call – “The kinship system”. In the kinship system unpaid caregivers meet needs that either are or cannot be satisfied through market transactions or public institutions. Unpaid caregivers tend to handle the last step in delivery of basic goods and services to children and many adults. Even if food, clothes and medicines are procured from the market or provided by public institutions, unpaid caregivers do much of the hands on work of preparing food, cleaning clothes and attending to the sick. Other services that caregivers provide are more managerial such as keeping track of an elderly person’s doctor’s appointments or guiding a child’s educational progress. In the kinship system unpaid caregivers tend to be relatives of the care recipient and they tend to be women. In recent decades, social scientists have chronicled the disadvantages that fall upon persons who do significant amounts of care work. These disadvantages include less income and wealth, vulnerability to domestic abuse and domination, professional marginalization, less leisure time and lower social status.