Family forms, diversity and relationships

Families, households and kinship

A family can include a married, civil-partnered or cohabiting couple with or without dependent children, or a lone parent with dependent children. Wider family connections also link relatives across homes. Sociologists often use the plural families because there is no single arrangement that describes everyone’s family life.

A household is about where people live: it consists of one person living alone or people living at the same address and sharing facilities. A group of students sharing a house forms a household, but they are not necessarily a family. Conversely, relatives can belong to the same family while living in different households.

Kin means relatives. Kinship is the network of relationships based on blood ties, marriage or adoption. These connections can provide practical help, care and emotional support beyond the people living in one home. Willmott and Young’s study of Bethnal Green in 1957 found strong kinship networks among working-class families, with relatives supporting one another across separate households.

Recognising different family forms

A nuclear family consists of two parents and their biological or adopted children: two generations. The parents may be married or cohabiting. The conventional family is the traditional image of a married couple and their children living together. This conventional image is sometimes called the ‘cereal packet’ family because it presents a familiar idealised picture of family life, rather than the full variety of families.

An extended family includes relatives beyond parents and children, such as grandparents, aunts or uncles. Three generations might live together in one home. However, extended family relationships do not require everyone to share an address. In a modified extended family, relatives live nearby in separate homes but maintain regular contact and support. The important feature is the wider family connection, not simply the size of the household.

Not all families maintain these wider connections. A privatised nuclear family is separated from its extended relatives and centres its life on its own home. Isolation (social and family) describes the idea that some families, often nuclear ones, have become distant from or separated from their wider family. Living in separate households does not itself mean isolation: relatives may still have close contact and support one another.

A blended, or reconstituted, family forms when one or both partners have children from a previous relationship. A partner may become a step parent to the other partner’s child. What makes the family reconstituted is the connection to a previous relationship, not whether the new couple is married.

A lone parent family consists of one parent living with and bringing up their children. It can result from separation, divorce, a partner’s death or a person bringing up a child without a partner. A same-sex family consists of a same-sex couple and their children; the couple may be married, civil partners or cohabiting.

An empty nest family is a couple whose children have grown up and left home. For example, when the youngest adult child moves out, the parents may become an empty nest family. Their family relationships continue even though their children no longer share their household.

These labels describe different features and can overlap. For example, a lone parent and their children may live with a grandparent. This combines lone-parent relationships with an extended family household.

Communal living

A commune is a group of people who share living accommodation, ownership of property and the work needed to maintain their shared life. Equality and cooperation are important values in this arrangement.

A kibbutz is a type of commune usually found in Israel. Members live communally, sharing resources, property ownership and work, with equality and community highly valued. It is a concrete example of how communal living can organise resources and responsibilities collectively.

The distinction from an ordinary shared household is the collective organisation of property and work. Students sharing a rented house form a household, but sharing an address alone does not make them a commune. Communal living also shows why shared accommodation need not be organised around a couple and their children.

What family diversity means

Family diversity means the variety of family forms, relationships and living arrangements within society. It includes differences between families, but also changes within a person’s life. Someone may grow up in a nuclear family, later live in a lone-parent family and then become part of a reconstituted family. Parents may later become an empty nest family when their adult children leave home.

Diversity is not the same as relationship breakdown. Some arrangements develop following divorce, but others reflect choices about partnership, wider kinship traditions or bereavement.

Changing social attitudes have increased acceptance of cohabitation and different family forms. Secularisation, the declining influence of religion, can weaken the expectation that everyone should marry or remain married.

Ethnicity refers to shared cultural traditions and norms, such as language, religion or customs. An ethnic group consists of people who share an identity based on these cultural characteristics. An ethnic minority is an ethnic group that does not make up the majority of a society’s population, while ethnic diversity means that a community or society contains a range of ethnic groups.

Immigration has contributed to ethnic diversity in the UK, bringing a wider range of family traditions. However, families within any ethnic group vary: shared ethnicity does not mean that everyone has the same beliefs, relationships or family structure. Ethnic diversity and family diversity are related, but they describe different things—one concerns ethnic groups, the other family arrangements.

Marriage, cohabitation and choosing a partner

Marriage is a legally recognised union between partners. Cohabitation means living together as a couple outside marriage or a civil partnership. A cohabiting couple can have children and form a family: marriage is not a necessary condition for family life.

These terms identify a couple’s relationship arrangement, while terms such as nuclear or extended describe family structure. Keeping the two distinctions separate helps explain why families that look similar in terms of generations and children may have different legal relationships.

An arranged marriage is one in which families help select a suitable partner. The individuals retain the choice of whether to accept the proposed partner and marry. For example, relatives might introduce two people, but either person can decide against the match.

Consent distinguishes an arranged marriage from a forced marriage. In a forced marriage, one or both people do not consent freely; forcing someone to marry is illegal in Britain. Family involvement in choosing a partner does not, by itself, mean that a marriage is forced.

One spouse at a time or several at once?

Monogamy means being married to one person at a time. For example, two people married only to each other are in a monogamous marriage. It does not mean that someone must have only one spouse throughout their whole life.

Serial monogamy means having successive partners, but only one at a time. Someone who marries, divorces and then remarries follows a pattern of serial monogamy. The marriages happen in sequence rather than overlap. If either partner has children from a previous relationship, the new partnership may also form a reconstituted family.

Polygamy means having more than one spouse at the same time. For example, an individual with two spouses simultaneously is in a polygamous arrangement. Its two forms are polygyny, where a man has more than one wife at once, and polyandry, where a woman has more than one husband at once. A man with two wives illustrates polygyny; a woman with two husbands illustrates polyandry.

Bigamy involves marrying again while already married to another person, so that the marriages overlap. It is a criminal offence in the UK. For example, someone who marries a second person without legally ending their first marriage commits bigamy. Polygamy describes a marital arrangement; bigamy identifies the offence in the UK context. Both involve simultaneous marriages, unlike serial monogamy.

Relationship breakdown and its consequences

Divorce is the legal ending of a marriage. Emotional breakdown and legal divorce are not identical. In an empty shell marriage, the couple remains together even though their emotional relationship has broken down. They might stay together for the children or a partner’s career. Divorce statistics therefore cannot reveal every unhappy or broken-down marriage. An empty nest family, by contrast, describes children leaving home, not the quality of the couple’s relationship.

Relationship breakdown can change living arrangements without ending all family connections. After divorce, a child may live mainly with one parent while retaining relationships with the other parent and wider kin. A later partnership may create a reconstituted family.

Legal changes can make divorce easier to obtain, while reduced social stigma makes it more socially acceptable. Greater financial independence can also make it more possible to leave an unhappy marriage. These changes help explain why people may act on relationship difficulties rather than remain together.

The consequences are not the same for everyone. Running separate homes can create financial pressure, and changes in parenting arrangements or kinship networks can cause distress. A reconstituted family may require people to adjust to new expectations, but it can also bring additional care and emotional support. Leaving an unhappy relationship may improve someone’s circumstances.

A sound sociological judgement therefore considers both difficulties and possible benefits. Family structure alone does not establish the quality of family life: relationships, financial resources and support also matter.