<p>We aren’t very close to H’s relatives, as most live in CA and we are in HI. We see my extended family many times a year and it was weekly (or at least monthly) dinners with my extended clan for much of our kids’ childhoods. They have a great fondness for their first cousins that I never did. It may help them in their choice on whether to return to Hi to settle and start their families. </p>
<p>No, I’m not even close with all of my 5 siblings, let alone my 28 first cousins. I haven’t even met them all, as 2 of my mom’s siblings went to England and 2 stayed in Ireland while the rest made their way to the US.</p>
<p>My H has 3 cousins, and they all live far away, so he is not close with them either.</p>
<p>My kids see their cousins a few times a year and are not close with them either. Everyone is scattered across the country.</p>
<p>My parents’ generation valued family and made sure that cousins saw each other on a regular basis as we were growing up. We shared holiday celebrations and family events, and also went on outings together on a regular basis. My parents often talked on the phone with their relatives in the evenings.</p>
<p>As an adult, I am closer to some parts of the family than to others. There are cousins I saw several times a year when we are growing up, that I have not seen more than once or twice in decades (generally at a funeral) even though we do not live far. </p>
<p>I try to catch up with siblings several times a year even when we do not run into each other at weddings or funerals, and I am Facebook friends with my siblings, their spouses, their children, and several cousins. But, not nearly as close with relatives as my parents’ generation was. </p>
<p>I’m curious – does Facebook enhance or detract from your relationships with your cousins? I’m not on Facebook for complicated and obscure reasobs. I have a cousin who is about 10 years younger than me whom I don’t know all that well but for whom I have warm, affectionate feelings. My sister can’t stand to be in the same room as him because he apparently posts hair-raising (for us) political views on Facebook. Am I just delusional in remembering the sweet and earnest kid? Is his Facebook persona an accurate representation of whom he really is? </p>
<p>For me it enhances. I have dozens of cousins but most live very far away. Some of my cousins are barely older than my oldest child. Seeing them and their families on FB has brought us closer. I know what’s going on in their lives and they can see my children and grandchildren as they grow.</p>
<p>It is true that sometimes you see a side that isn’t that flattering, but it’s family. Those sides are going to exist whether you see them or not. At least now I know which cousins not to discuss politics with. Or the anti vaccine movement :)</p>
<p>My 88 yr old mother is on FB for just that reason. She can see enough of the lives of her nieces, nephews and grandchildren to feel connected. She told me one day that it’s sad that her mother never lived to experience FB. She would have loved it. </p>
<p>My mom (85) is on FB, too. </p>
<p>I have 18 cousins on my Mom’s side of the family and 14 cousins on my Dad’s side. While I have never lived in the same city with any of them, I am close to many of them. As a child, we vacationed every summer for 2-3 weeks at my grandparent’s lake house (mother’s side) where there was a lot of fun time spent with cousins. Dad’s family lived nearby so we also saw those cousins a few times every year. While I’m not as close to the cousins on Dad’s side, who we spent less time with, they are all good people whose company I enjoy. </p>
<p>I am Facebook friends with many cousins, and I really like being able to keep up with each other’s lives that way. I also make an effort to attend every family wedding that I am invited to, and in snowy, frigid weather last winter I traveled to funerals for two uncles, each more than 400 miles away.</p>
<p>Here is the interesting part, I have two cousins who are much younger than me, and very close to my children’s ages. DS and young male cousin are close and traveled together a few times when both were living in Europe. DD and female cousin are like the sisters that neither had, confiding and advising each other. In fact, DD asked female cousin (MY first cousin) to be her maid of honor. The cousin reciprocated by asking DD to be her matron of honor. While they may have appeared as unlikely choices to many, they both felt that friends come and go from your lives, and family is forever. </p>
<p>I think facebook both helps and hinders family ties. It does give opportunities to keep in touch and to know what is going on in each others lives, especially if one wouldn’t otherwise be keeping in contact. It hurts the face to face contact if someone that would normally pick up a phone to talk doesn’t because they think they already know everything so why bother.</p>
<p>In my case it helps. I think there is only one cousin I would actually call if we weren’t on facebook. The others I would lose all contact with because we weren’t really that close anyway.</p>
<p>My dad had 4 siblings and all had large families. I am not close to any of my cousins and never was, even though we did get together on a pretty regular basis as kids. I do keep in touch with two of my aunts. My mom had one brother, who had 4 kids who are enough younger that we different generations. We do see them for a family get-together each Christmas-time, and we see them at the occasional wedding or funeral. I am close to my uncle.</p>
<p>I am happy to say, though, that I gained a whole bunch of awesome cousins 31 or so years ago when I married my H. We see his cousins on both sides quite often, and I do count some of them as good friends. They are the only reason I am on Facebook - we do use it to keep in touch, since we live all over the country.</p>
<p>Yes. And I am close to my husband’s cousins, one of whom claims me as sister since she only has brothers.</p>
<p>My maternal grandmother was very tight with her siblings, so my mother’s generation grew up with strong relationships with those cousins as well as with the cousins from their dad’s side of the family who all lived within 5 miles of each other. My dad spent a lot of his childhood with cousins on his father’s side (the maternal cousins were significantly younger and half a continent away). This meant that I grew up with a near army of maternal first and second cousins, and yes if we aren’t at least Facebook friends with each other, we know where/how to find out about each other when we want to, and we usually see the first cousins at least once a year at the family reunion.</p>
<p>The crowd on my father’s side is smaller, but we’ve all adopted the last living aunt as everyone’s honorary mom/grandmother, and we’ve set up a very exclusive Facebook page for the express purpose of keeping her up on all of out lives.</p>
<p>I have no cousins on my father’s side, and 3 on my mother’s. We saw each other fairly frequently growing up, since we were expected to be at my grandparents’ house on a weekly basis. As adults, we don’t see each other frequently (usually bar/bat mitzvahs) or when one of my cousins drives her father to visit my mother (his sister). We don’t live near each other. Youngest cousin has forsaken the rest of the family, so I’ve had no contact with her for around 17 years (I don’t even know her married name or where she lives). </p>
<p>Coincidentally, my cousin who drives her father called yesterday to say they’ll be in the area this weekend. </p>
<p>I have 18 first cousins. I am very close with most of the 13 on my mom’s side. That extended family gets together several times during the summer and at Christmas, graduations, weddings, etc. Love seeing everyone. Many of us are active on Facebook. Everyone in these families lives in my state within a 3 hour drive.</p>
<p>Also love seeing and hearing from dad’s side. I see the parents (my aunts and uncles) 2-3x/year and their kids (my cousins) every couple of years at family reunions. This side of my family is scattered from NY to California.</p>
<p>I do consider the closeness of my extended family a true blessing.</p>
<p>I’m the youngest of the cousins. There are a couple I’ve never met.</p>
<p>How appropriate. I just spent the day with a cousin and his family. His S is looking at a college in which I teach at. we have have not seen each other for several years. </p>
<p>He actually went to college in the city my H and I lived in previously. Now it may come full circle. I would love that.</p>
<p>I have only 4 cousins on my dad’s side, all much older (one already deceased). I am FB friends with them and some of their (adult) children. We see each other at family events–weddings/funerals/milestone birthdays/anniversaries.
My kids know some of their grandchildren–they ask, “How is this person related to me?” (technically, 2nd cousin once removed, but they are all “cousins.”) Everyone shows up for stuff–they are good people, fun loving, no drama. FB is great as long as we don’t talk about religion or politics! On mom’s side I have 14 cousins and most of us are in touch–FB friends with ones around my age. Still have reunions with the older generation, too. Growing up, my mom’s side all lived in one place, my dad’s in another. We were the oddballs who lived out of town and only saw them once or twice a year, but always kept up with what everyone was doing. I also have 6 siblings, and there are 23 grandchildren on my side and 17 on H’s side, so my kids have a lot of cousins, too (though we don’t see H’s side much.)
H grew up not knowing his first cousins (his parents weren’t on good terms with their sibs, so visits were rare or non-existent. Some of them he didn’t even know their names!) My family has a nice network. And no matter how distantly you are related, they will take you in. (I once spent a vacation in S. Africa with my dad’s cousin’s brother-in-law, who introduced me simply as, “My cousin from America!”) In both of my parents’ families, if you’re a cousin, you can always get at least a couch to sleep on, a hot meal, and a cold beer.</p>