Explain what the big words mean. To quote an earlier comment "How would a patrilinear, matriarchal society work? Men inherit property and titles but do not actually control it?"

Do the vampires reproduce by having babies or by biting other people and turning them into vampires?

"in the case of Jews, this is because traditionally, only men could be kohanim, and rabbis, but Jewish blood status is determined by the mother" What are kohanim and rabbis and how do they explain why the society is matrilinear?

Vampires reproduce by having babies, just like us. Kohanim are Jewish priests; rabbis are just the Torah's teachers.

Why questions seek responses that address cause, reason, or purpose all of which essentially boil down to motives or thought processes or choices of individuals or corporates and are thus "story based questions", which are inappropriate for this site.

The two examples of patriarchal but matrilinear societies are so wrong it is funny. No Hebrew society ever was matrilinear. If you read even a small part of the Bible you will notice that all genealogies are always given through men and through men only; and if you know of any medieval famous Jewish philosophers you will notice that they are always so-and-so son of so-and-so, for example, Moses ben Maimon or Hillel ben Samuel. And about the Gypsies, I don't even understand what matrilinearity would even mean in their native society.

@mammifereviolet4694 Vampires have babies? Cool! But I still don't follow your explanation for why Jewish Society is matrilinear.

@Daron I'm assuming they are referring to the fact that a child is considered Jewish if the mother is Jewish.

Do your vampires have resistance to prions?

@AlexP You don't know any modern Jews, do you? The change from patrilinear to matrilineal for Jews occurred sometime after or during the 1st century.. chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/601092/jewish/… As to why it is? No clue. My personel theories are 2 fold. 1) Children adopt the religion of their mother, if the mother is Jewish, children will be jewish, if she is atheist, they will be atheist, catholic, catholic... 2) Children of a Jewess, are definitely her children. Children of a Jew might not actually be his children.

@Questor: I know quite a few Jews or people of Jewish descent. Not a single one of them bears the maiden name of their mother. I am afraid that you don't understand what "matrilinear" means.

If your mother is jewish... You are jewish, regardless of what race your father is. If your father is Jewish, and your mother is not. You are not Jewish (this depends on which Jewish tradition you are part of). This is matrilineal inheritance. Jewishness inherits from the mothers line. Not the fathers.

@Questor Jewishness inherits from the mother, but everything else (what tribe/family one is part of, property, etc) inherits from the father. Not sure how that gets classified.

@Questor: Religion is a personal choice; as it is not a possession in the first place it cannot be inherited properly speaking. People of Jewish descent may practice the Jewish religion, or they may not; you may remember famous examples such as Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, or Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who among other works composed a celebrated oratorio about Paul the Apostle. People who are not of Jewish descent may adopt the Jewish religion, and historically entire communities did become Jewish by choice.

@Esther It gets classified as a society with both matrilineal inheritance and patrilinear inheritance. The two are not mutually exclusive.

@MichaelW. There's a reason that matrilinear societies are the default. Prior to DNA testing, there was no way to 100% prove the fatherhood of a newborn child, while it's always been possible to prove motherhood - she's the one the baby came out of, and it's very likely there were multiple witnesses to the event. Nowadays, in-vitro fertilization and egg donors means even that's not a guarantee anymore, but these conventions were set long before such technology was available.

One advantage of a matrilinear social inheritance is that it is easy to know a baby's mother with near certainty, but the father is much less certain.