I was talking with a new-ish friend today, and at one point I said something about ‘having too many relatives’ – in the context of being invited to way more birthday parties/graduation parties/engagement parties/bridal showers/baby showers/anniversary parties/etc than we could go to (for time and money reasons) or for that matter, wanted to. I mean, yeah, we’re happy in a generic way that your kid (child of a first cousin once removed, does that mean twice removed?) managed to graduate High School, but it’s not ‘worth’ us driving 40 miles round trip and devoting an entire evening to. Which I suspect you know, so basically the invitation is a ‘please send some money to my kid’ notice.
Anyway, my friend laughed for nearly a minute, then told me her story. She was an only child. She married an only child. Sounds manageable, right? But:
HER mother was one of seven children. HER father was one of six children. HIS mother was one of six children. HIS father was one of NINE children. So that means that she has 24 aunts/uncles of her own and his through marriage. All but three of them are currently married, adding 21 aunts/uncles-in law (some are in-law twice over?). (The vast majority of them live within the New England states, so being expected to turn up for celebrations can be not unreasonably expected.)
So far these 24 a/u’s have produced 73 children. In addition, due to various deaths/divorces and remarriages there are 9 or 10 (she wasn’t sure) step-cousins, and of course it would be awful to treat a step-cousin differently than your blood cousins in the same family.
Oh, and that generation is starting to marry/have children of their own…
I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to even remember which ones comprised couples and who their children are, let alone feel a personal/family connection to each and every one of them. And yet they’re fairly close in the genealogy sense. Aunts/uncles/first cousins all, no saying ‘just leave out the second cousins and more distant.’
Anyone else get that ‘too many relatives to handle’ feeling?
My mother was one of 11 children, ten of whom had at least one child. I had something like 30 first cousins on that side of the family (several have passed away); of them, I only really know maybe seven or eight of them. Most of the rest of my maternal cousins, I have only met a handful of times (and, in most cases, I’ve only seen them once or twice in the past 20 years), and I would have a difficult time remembering their names, or which of my aunts and uncles are their parents .
My dad only had one sibling, but he (my uncle) had eight kids, so I have eight cousins on that side of the family. They, I know very well, in part because we lived three blocks away from them when I was a kid.
But, unlike the OP, I barely knew any of my parents’ relatives (their aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.), and those who I did know, I haven’t seen since I was a kid. And, while I was invited to some of my cousins’ weddings (and, more recently, to their own kids’ weddings), those invitations were only from/for the relative handful of cousins whom I know well.
I was an only child as was my mother, but my dad was one of 9 kids to lived to adulthood and had kids, giving me 36 or so first cousins all sharing the same two grandparents. I never could keep them all straight; I thought I did well recognizing all 8 pairs of aunt/uncle.
I was only close to a few cousins. No big deal. Not a tight knit group overall. But as an adult I got to know that grandmother fairly well, and loved her. I’m not sure I spoke more than a few hundred words to that grandfather in my lifetime, he died when I was 16.
I am the child of two only children who migrated to this country when I was two. My maternal grandmother visited once when I was about 7 or 8. So, other than during that short visit, my entire family here was my mother, my father and my two brothers. No aunts, uncles or cousins.
It wasn’t until I got married that I had any concept of large family gatherings. Christmas day during my childhood consisted of my father, my mother, me and my two brothers. And far more food on the table when we sat down to eat. Sometimes the odd family friend would drop by.
Now that my brothers and I are married with children and grandchildren the subsequent generations have aunts, uncles and cousins.
Nope. Only child. Mother was an only child. Father’s side, I have a passel of cousins, mostly in California, with the few I’ve actually met I’ve not laid eyes on this century.
The wife has two sisters and a brother, with only the brother marrying and procreating. He has two daughters and a son. None has married or procreated, and they’re all in Bangkok, which due to Covid restrictions has been almost impossible to visit for a year and a half now.
I have few relatives. Mom had one brother, who had 2 kids. Dad had 2 sisters. One sis had an only, the other sis had 4. I was the youngest cousin by at least 6 years so the others wouldn’t let me hang with them on the 2 or 3 times a year we got together. I am the youngest of 4, but only my sister had kids, 2. So I have only one niece and one nephew. My nephew married a woman who has no aunts, uncles or cousins because her parents were only children. Nephew and wife have one child, but fortunately niece in law has 2 sisters who each birthed 3 kids.
My mom was an only child. My dad was an only child. My mother’s mother hated the fact that her Jewish daughter married a christian, so she was never considered a relative. My dad’s parents conceived very late in life and were gone by the time I was born.
As I think about just how many first cousins I have, I then think about the very different situation for my nieces and nephew on my wife’s side.
My wife’s sister (her only sibling) has three kids; they have zero first cousins. My wife and I were unable to have kids, and while my brother-in-law had a sister, she never married or had a child (and passed away earlier this year).
My wife and her sister have two step-siblings, both of whom have several children, so those “step-cousins” are the closest thing that my nieces and nephew have to actual cousins.
I sometimes think I have too many cousins. My dad was one of three and my mom was one of four. All together, I only have 16 first cousins. It’s not as large as some mentioned. My husband has a much more difficult family to pin down, especially due to all the divorcing and remarrying that went on.
That said, I don’t actually see most of these people. My kids know their grandparents, great-grandparents and the odd cousin or so.
My dad was one of three, and he had the most kids of his siblings (he had four, his brother had one, his sister had three). But these cousins were all enough younger that we weren’t close growing up.
My mom was one of seven, and they all had kids. One had only one, another had only two, but the others all had between three and seven. I gotta lot of cousins on that side. But they’re across the country, so we weren’t close – although I think we could have been close with a bunch of them if geography hadn’t been an issue. The only one (and she’s from the family of seven) that I’m still in touch with is the family genealogist , so we touch base occasionally.
However, I had a dna test and found a cousin (either first or second) who had been adopted, that my genealogy cousin and I could not figure out who her parents could have been. A mystery!
I have a medium-sized extended family but most of us aren’t in the least close – geographically or emotionally. I’m always blown away when someone at work mentions, say, attending a cousin’s wedding – I have several first cousins but have never been invited to any of their weddings in my life.
I’d cordially talk to any of them (well, all but one) if the opportunity arose, but it would just never occur to any of us to keep in touch.