Many different forms of kin relations were associated with early civilizations. While these relations were intimately connected with family life, residence patterns, marital practices, and the nurturing of children, they were also associated with broader sociocultural practices such as landholding, agricultural production, craft organization, inheritance of property, political and economic activities, value systems, and religious beliefs. They also constituted the primary sphere in which gender roles were defined, although class differences also affected these roles. Lower-class women in all early civilizations cooked, cleaned houses, cared for children, and spun and wove to provide clothing for their families, but the division of domestic labour among them varied according to the number of women who lived together and how they allocated household tasks among themselves. The division of labour and relations of authority between men and women also varied significantly from one civilization to another and according to class.

The seven early civilizations provide examples of kinship systems characterized by patrilineal descent groups (Shang and Zhou China, Yoruba-Benin, Classic Maya, Mesopotamia), endogamous descent groups or demes (Valley of Mexico, Inka), and non-corporate descent (ancient Egypt). The Egyptians did not have, beyond the nuclear family, any kinship unit that possessed land, political power, or a sense of corporate identity. In no two early civilizations was family organization precisely the same.