Those other two threads got me thinking about this…
I stated in both threads that I have an aunt and uncle that have eight kids. The aunt is my mom’s sister, the uncle is by marriage. Uncle himself has six siblings; I only know the number, I have no idea what their names or genders are, and I’m not sure how many are still alive. If I’ve ever met any of them, I don’t remember it.
So, it occurs to me that these eight cousins have other cousins through their dad’s side - probably a whole slew of 'em. I don’t have the faintest idea who any of them might be, or even how many there are. It’s kind of mind-boggling - there could be a whole assortment of strangers out there that I might consider extended family.
So, where do I fall on the scale of normalcy with this? Is it the norm to not know your cousin’s cousins? Am I a freak for never having given these people any thought? Do I have some major atonement to do, or may I continue on with my attitude of “meh”?
Oh, hell, I have no idea who my cousins’ cousins are. And I have a metric asston of cousins. My dad is from a Southern farm family - I have 20 first cousins and I don’t even want to do the math on seconds.
I don’t think there is a measurable scale of normalcy. In the family I grew up in learning and knowing family history was important. I know stories about my great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents and their sisters and brothers and can name a whole lot of cousins. My first cousins who are related to me on their dad’s side have cousins on their mom’s side. I keep loosely in touch with them, and know a little about their kids (like who’s graduating, not who doesn’t like green beans).
My husband doesn’t know all of his grandparents’ first names, or when his family came to this country and doesn’t seem remotely interested in finding any of that out. He doesn’t keep in touch with his own cousins, much less his cousins’ cousins.
Is one of us normal, and one of us not? I don’t think so. We just have different priorities.
I know essentially nothing of my cousin’s other relatives. Some things sneak through the family grapevine if they are mutual acquaintances of other family members or if someone mentions to someone else and it manages to wander through but mostly no.
Well, it’s good to know I’m not a terrible person.
I’ve been giving the whole thing more thought, about my other aunts and uncles… I want to say my dad’s brother-in-law has siblings, but that’s the best I can do. My mom’s sister-in-law - she’s been dead for 14 years, and she was always kind of a loner, a “black sheep” if you will. But that doesn’t mean anything - perhaps she has all sorts of brothers and sisters, perhaps she was an only child. I have no idea.
Lastly, there’s my uncle married to my mom’s other sister. This one, it turns out, answers my own question - heh. This uncle lives in my parents’ area, and has a brother somewhere nearby. I’ve even met him a couple of times. In fact, this past January, my parents had a 50th anniversary party for this aunt and uncle, and the brother was there. With some of his kids, who I met. They would be my cousins’ cousins! This never occurred to me until just now. Can’t say I really give a shit, either. I certainly wouldn’t think of them as family - it was like meeting random people at an office party or something, and I’ll most likely never see 'em again.
I barely know my own cousins. Hell, I barely know my aunts, uncles, and grandmother (paternal). I’ve never met my maternal grandmother. If I can’t bother to keep up with my own family, I’m certainly not going to attempt to get to know THEIR families.
On the flip side of that, my boyfriend’s entire maternal family grew up in the same town and they all know each other. His paternal family grew up more spread out but has a reunion every year (going on 41 years now) so they still keep in touch. Freaks.
I know some of my cousins’ cousins fairly well. My mom’s oldest sister’s husband’s family was very close and so we saw them a lot. Anytime there was a family gathering at my aunt and uncle’s house, they were there. I pretty much considered them part of my family.
I don’t believe I have ever met any of my other cousins’ cousins.
Beyond first cousins, you’re just that part of the family that shows up at the reunions–the same reunions at which I used to flirt as a kid before I understood the implications.
I know some of my cousins’ cousins fairly well, as we’re all close in age and used to run into each other in several places. Others, I’ve met but haven’t seen in decades, so if we ran into each other they might ring faint bells but I don’t think I’d recognize them. The cousins’ cousins on the side where there was an extremely nasty divorce? I figure I met them at D and R’s baptisms but I was aged 8 months and 3 years, respectively, so I don’t remember much.
I also have some second cousins I’ve never met, or which I met when we were already all grown up; we just happened to grow up very far away from each other (this includes a whole branch of the family in a different continent).
When my mother growls about Dad’s side of the family being “thorny” (Mom-speak for “you don’t call, you don’t visit!”), I remind her of how many of my distant relatives on Dad’s side I happen to know and how many on her side - a lot less, percentage-wise.
It used to be the case that my Dad’s side of the family made a pretty big deal of periodic reunions of the families of my Dad’s generation of first cousins and their offspring. The reunions were pretty well attended as that family had a lot of family pride and whatnot. (My mother’s side never even entertained the idea for whatever reason.)
As a result I met many of my second cousins and learned their names and what they looked like and in a few cases became friendly enough with some of them to be a guest at their lake house in the summer. I have lost track of them, but I could recover their names and probably their whereabouts with little trouble by way of my own first cousins who would also have been at those reunions.
Our family (both sides) used a system of nomenclature for kinship that I learned in later years is non-standard. (That “standard” version is explained at http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~reavis/kinchart.html and other similar websites.) The “once removed” component was not followed and you could be “second cousins” two ways. Without elaborating on the non-standard system we used, I’m just curious if other families had a “non-standard” nomenclature, too.
It all depends on the (size of the) families. I only have one aunt from my mothers side who is married to a guy with one sibling. Since my cousins are still kids (14 and 9) and by at least 10 years the youngest of any of the ‘children’ most events (like Christmas) evolves around them and the extended family participates. It was only a couple of years ago that they found out (and were surprised) that me and my sister had never met their ‘other cousins’ until they were born. Things probably would have been quite different if we had all been the same age or if my cousins would never have been born.
In Spanish, my cousin’s cousin is just… well, the cousin of my cousin (el primo de mi primo). My paternal family uses “reprimo” (something like “twice-cousin”), though, because we’d be in mixed groups and have to explain the relationship so often: many times at the pool (think country club, social-wise) we’d have my own paternal family (cousins and local second cousins), plus cousins and second-cousins of my I-OO cousins on their father’s side, plus cousins of my OO-S cousins on their mother’s side… You could easily have some 20 nuclear families there, plus assorted grandparents, and we’d be asked relatively often what was our exact relationship to this or that other kid in the swarm.
I have a ton of first cousins – over 40 of them. My father only has one sibling (a brother), but he had 8 kids. My mother was one of 11 kids herself, and only one of her siblings never had children. I don’t even know all of my first cousins particularly well, especially the ones who are children of my mom’s oldest siblings (as my mom, herself, wasn’t terribly close to those siblings – they were adults, or nearly so, when she was a little kid).
I don’t think I’ve met “cousins of my cousins” more than a handful of times, almost exclusively at weddings. I don’t consider them to be relatives of mine (sorry, guys, but the connection is distant, and no blood relation at all).
I’m very close to all of my first cousins, but even so I barely know any of their cousins on their “other” sides. So I don’t think you’re unusual at all.
My five first cousins have among them five children. I know three of their names, but I could find out the other two without difficulty. One of my cousins was married before I was born, and moved away before I was in high school. They and their children are my only relatives, really.
I have 24 first cousins, all of whom probably have other cousins, and I don’t have a clue who they are or how many. When I was younger I remember being perplexed if they’d say something about an aunt or uncle or cousins, and I’d think, " how can you have a bunch of strangers as your relatives?"
I certainly wouldn’t think of them as family - it was like meeting random people at an office party or something, and I’ll most likely never see 'em again.