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Concept
Extended family
Summary
An extended family is a family that extends beyond the nuclear family of parents and their children to include aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins or other relatives, all living nearby or in the same household. Particular forms include the stem and joint families.
In some circumstances, the extended family comes to live either with or in place of a member of the immediate family. These families include, in one household or close proximity, relatives in addition to an immediate family. An example would be an elderly parent who moves in with his or her children due to old age. In modern Western cultures dominated by immediate family constructs, the term has come to be used generically to refer to grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, whether they live together within the same household or not. However, it may also refer to a family unit in which several generations live together within a single household. In some cultures, the term is used synonymously with consanguineous family.
A stem family, a kind of extended family, first discussed by Frédéric Le Play, parents will live with one child and his/her spouse, as well as the children of both, while other children will leave the house or remain in it, unmarried. The stem family is sometimes associated with inegalitarian inheritance practices, as in Japan and Korea, but the term has also been used in some contexts to describe a family type where parents live with a married child and his or her spouse and children, but the transfer of land and moveable property is more or less egalitarian, as in the case of traditional Romania, northeastern Thailand or Mesoamerican indigenous peoples. In these cases, the child who cares for the parents usually receives the house in addition to his or her own share of land and moveable property.
In an extended family, parents and their children's families may often live under a single roof. This type of joint family often includes multiple generations in the family. Three to four generations stay together under a single roof.
Official source
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