本文考察宋元墓誌中有關「妾」(也包括側室、姬侍等)在家庭中位置的看法之轉變。首先可以發現，多種身分類型的女性—從婢女、娛樂表演者，到如夫人，都被稱為「妾」。而自宋元以降，不但現存墓誌中提到「妾」字的比率持續地增加，同時，妾在社會生活中也逐漸受到尊重。特別是在南宋到元的墓誌行文中，身為母親的妾開始出現在兒子或媳婦的墓誌內，以展現他們的孝行。到晚宋，妾則是因為她是墓主子嗣的母親，而得以出現在主人的墓誌中。身為母親的妾之所以受到注意，是因為墓誌作者開始注意到庶生子在家中所受的待遇。共同繼承(Equal inheritance)的理想越來越受重視，雖然在現實中這樣的理想經常被忽視。在這類有關妾和她們孩子的墓誌書寫中，明清時代的「大家庭」思想已經浮現。本文最後指出，墓誌銘的書寫固然反映出要讓妾進入家庭的想法，但這樣的想法從來都不曾徹底地實現。宋元社會的特質原在於其社會階層間的流動性和士大夫菁英之間激烈的競爭，妾制所能提供的那種靈活性恰為家族帶來了所需要的競爭優勢。墓誌書寫試圖掩飾這種靈活性，但這正是妾制在這個新社會環境中所能發揮作用的地方。

This article traces changing attitudes toward concubines across the Song and Yuan periods by examining how concubines are discussed in the genre of funerary inscriptions. It shows that the term “concubine” as used in the Song and Yuan encompassed women of many different statuses, from servant, to entertainer, to quasi-wife. It also shows that references, from servant, to entertainer, to quasi-wife. It also shows that references to concubines in funerary inscriptions across this period were becoming both more frequent and more respectful than in earlier eras. In particular, concubine mothers appear with increasingly frequency in funerary inscriptions of the Southern Song and Yuan. First appearing in the funerary biographies of their sons and daughters-in-law (where they serve as a vehicle for demonstrating the filial affections of the subject), in the late Song concubines begin to be acknowledge in the funerary biographies of their husbands, as mother of his children. The new attention to concubine mothers is matched by new attention to the disposition of the their children: the ideal of equal inheritance for all children is articulated with increasing force, even as the texts reveal that this ideal was often ignored in practice. In this new rhetoric about concubines and their children, we see reflections of the emerging ideal of family and lineage solidarity that was to characterize Chinese society in the late imperial period. The article concludes by suggesting that, in spite of funerary inscriptions’ rhetoric of “domestication,” the integration of concubines into family life was necessarily partial and tenuous. In Song and Yuan society, a society marked by fluidity of social status and intense competition among the elite, the flexibility provided by concubinage gave families an important competitive edge. Inscription rhetoric worked to disguise the very flexibility that made concubinage useful in this new social environment.