 Families and family members have been observed to interact with one another following regular kinship patterns in order to form larger social systems, as Giallombardo noted in her 1966 study.Early studies of pseudo-families focused on the homosexual couples within the families rather than on the family groups themselves, though the women within them stated that sexual gratification was not their main reason for entering and maintaining a pseudo-family.While conventional interpretations of this practice has seen it as significantly different from gang grouping in male prisoners, some researchers are challenging this interpretation as a misreading of gang groupings in women's prisons based on gender bias.