I was motivated to start this thread by another thread on 23 and me. I know such testing serves other purposes, but one aspect I’ve heard mentioned is people being excited about finding relatives they did not know existed.
Does that have any appeal to you? Why or why not?
In a related manner, I was recently invited to a 90th birthday party for an aunt who lives several states away. I find I have mixed feelings about this. In the past, I have envied people whose families have large, regular reunions. But my family doesn’t. (Besides a pre-existing conflict w/ nonrefundable airfare/hotels), I’m not sure I see much appeal in visiting w/ people I have seen infrequently - if ever - in the past and am unlikely to remain close to in the future.
Heck, I receive only a fraction of Christmas cards I send. Family isn’t hostile to each other, but we all have our own lives, and just don’t seem very interested in keeping up closer relationships at a distance.
How do you feel about such things? Do you regularly communicate/visit with/seek out extended family?
It’s marketing–trying to make people feel a need that just happens to coincide with the capabilities of a product for sale. It strikes me as absurd to mete out favor to people who accidentally share an ancestor over those who play an active role in my life.
I was posting in that thread, and was pleased that a distant relative contacted me and sent me a photo of the great grandmother I never met…but it’s on the emotional level of getting a cool fortune cookie. I don’t want to meet anyone, and if I never hear any more about the family tree, that’s fine, and just what I expected.
As has already been said, dealing with the ones I actually know is plenty.
This is an interesting one. I agree that just because someone is genetically related to you, there should be no obligations there if they are an ass. I have always wanted a close extended family, but it has not been in the cards. My parents moved away from our ancestral home area on the NE coast to come to CA when I was young, thereby severing potential close ties with family remaining there. We are in touch every so often, and have exchanged the occasional friendly visit over the decades, but we are not close at all. Do I care about them? Sure, but we are not really involved with each other’s lives. At least, not in the same way as I feel about close friends who I interact with regularly.
I don’t have an urge to connect with distant relations and attempt to have some kind of relationship with them. But if I found out that a distant relation was a person of note (one of my favorite writers, let’s say), it would be hard for me not to feel stoked about that. I probably wouldn’t reach out to them, though. Not unless they said hey to me first.
One of my cousins recently traveled to Poland to the town that our grandparents were from. She connected with assorted relatives, tho in the 100+ years since our grandparents emigrated, I’m not sure how close the ties are.
I thought it was kind of interesting that she was able to track them down, but I don’t feel compelled to learn more about them. And I certainly don’t intend to return to the Old Country.
My husband’s family is even less interested in that in their ancestors. He doesn’t even know where they all came from or when they crossed the ocean. I found that rather odd, but each to his own. Then again, my connection to folks back there is obviously more recent than theirs.
panache45 and KneadToKnow stole my answer. Mom was a genealogist, so I know of relatives out several removes. I barely talk to my cousins - why should I care about some random schmoe I share a great-great-grandfather with?
It depends on your definition of “care about.” If it means “find interesting” then yes.
Some interesting things I found out using Ancestry and other means:
My last name is fake. My grandfather changed it and he was a completely different ethnicity than I thought.
My grandmothers grandfather was killed in the Civil War. Lucky for me he enlisted when he was older and already had his kids.
One branch of the family is very prominent. I can trace it back to Edward Longshanks who is a x-grandfather of mine. I share a grandfather with Abe Lincoln.
On the maternal side we found a bunch of old pictures. Those relatives look so Italian the pictures should be dripping olive oil. It looks like the cast of The Godfather in the Deniro parts.
Do I care about it like those that are currently in my life? Of course not. But it is interesting.
My mom and dad, both gone now, were both only children. So, family reunions were never a thing. If a long-lost relative surfaced, I don’t imagine I’d be eager to meet them.
My gf’s family is freaking huge. Her dad had 12 siblings, her mom 4. I enjoy her family reunion parties, as everyone likes to party, even those in their 90s. Last summer at a reunion everyone was drinking beer, when I surreptitiously snuck a hit on my vape pen. One of my gf’s cousins saw and the next thing I know everyone had theirs out and we’re comparing strains! Turns out they were all staying on the down-low because they didn’t know I partook.
My father broke up with his family in 1946. I have never met any of my relatives from his side (a lot, because he came from a big family). About 20 years ago one of my cousins from my father’s side managed to find me via internet ans asked to meet up. I thought about it, and decided I had zero interest.
Even from my mother’s side, more than half of the uncles, aunts and cousins I have not seen in almost five decades. Again, no interest.
I have strong relationships with my brother and his wife, their two children and their families, and two cousins from my mother’s side. That’s enough for me.
I haven’t used 23 and me or Ancestry to find more relatives (at least not yet) but that’s in large part because there are already more than enough relatives that I know and keep in touch with. My mother had 40 first cousins, all of whom I know/knew. They had about 80 kids (my second cousins) all of whom I know* and many of whom I’m still in touch with and I am somewhat interested in their children and grandchildren ( some of whom I know). I mean, I probably wouldn’t recognize most of these second cousins once or twice removed if I ran into them on the street but I am interested in knowing that my cousin Maryann’s son got married or Donna’s daughter had a baby.
When I was a kid, I couldn’t understand why Uncle so and so visiting was a big event to a TV family - that was Tuesday at my house.
My mother was one of eleven kids (of her ten siblings, eight had kids themselves). My father had one brother, but his brother had eight kids.
So, I have something like 30 first cousins. I’m close (emotionally speaking) to a few of them, largely because we grew up together, and I’ve stayed in touch with them, although I might see some of them only once ever few years.
However, I barely know over half of my cousins, and after my maternal grandmother died, 25 years ago, reunions on that side of the family stopped being a thing.
So, for the rest (and their kids, whom I know even less about), I’m just not close to them at all, and would struggle to even remember names, and which of my aunts and uncles they’re the kids of.
I grew up in a small family - just mom, dad, sister and me. My mom had one brother, who also only had two kids. Most holidays were pretty small.
However.
My dad was one of five. One brother had 8 daughters. Another had 5 kids. His father was one of six.
My mothers father was one of six, her mother one of eight.
I have tons of second and higher cousins that I have only seen at funerals or weddings. Quite often my mother will mention someone, I’ll ask who is that person, she’ll respond oh my cousin from so-and-so, you met them once when you were 12, don’t you remember?
My mom did the ancestry dna testing a few years ago. It pulled up a slew of people she never heard of, mostly 4th-5th cousins. She knew a fair amount of the 2nd and 3rd cousins. We traced a few of the wider relations back to her, which was kind of neat. “I remember Eunice! When I was six, she bought me an ice cream when we were vacationing at cousin Teddy’s cabin!” Mom, that would’ve been 76 years ago, but you can’t remember where your phone is…
I fairly recently connected with a half-sister I didn’t know existed. I was excited about this and we keep in touch in spite of the fact that we live thousands of miles apart. I suspect a big part of it though is I’m an only child and always wanted a sibling.
Just in town I’ve got my parents, my brother and his kid, a sister and her six person family, an aunt and uncle, and two or three cousins, each with their own families.
Forget extended family - I’m ignoring half of the above and still spend between two and four nights a week with them, and that’s when there’s not some sort of holiday, visit, or event going on. I’ll hang out with my two out-of-town sisters when they visit, or go to the monthly-or-so gatherings that happen, and that’s more than enough family for me.
