I’ve always been fascinated by friends who come from large families or have a lot of extended relatives living nearby. They talk of huge Sunday dinners with aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings all getting together at least once a month. They tell of holiday traditions that involve extended family gatherings. They have a familiarity with their relatives that allows them to seek them out at any time for almost anything. It sounds so supportive and fun.
It fascinates me because my experience is so different. I have only one sister, and though I have a lot of relatives on both sides of the family, they were and are in different regions, scattered across the U.S. and Canada. Our paths rarely, if ever, crossed. I have a number of cousins I’ve never met, and very few I’ve met more than three or four times (if my fellow blogger Ben and I ever randomly walked past each other, the only way I might be able to place him as a relative is because of his blog picture).
However, while I may have missed out on forming bonds with many family members, I grew up in a family where we had our own traditions, independent from impositions outside our small family unit. Holidays were calm and fun, and we happily celebrated in our own little family, easily incorporating new ideas or dropping old ones as we desired. As I read blogs of friends who have the extended family connections, I see that they get frustrated by expectations from both sides of the family that often conflict with their own plans and hopes. Instead of Christmas at home with mom, dad, and the kids, they feel the stress of expectations to run from family to family, as well as host their own large celebrations.
So clearly there are pros and cons to having extended family connections or not.
What pros and cons do you enjoy or struggle with in your families? Do you wish you had a more isolated family or a more integrated extended family?
Further, how do you envision family connections after we die? We say “families are foreverâ€, but those who are now your kids will (hopefully) be sealed to their own spouses doing their own thing. Time won’t be an issue, but what do you hope it will be like or not be like?