Blackwell Reference Online

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When people discuss family life there is often a confusion between family as kinship and family as household. The two ideas are so much part of commonsense understandings of “family” that they are elided together. Though less common in sociology, a similar lack of clarity over what aspect of “family” is being examined sometimes arises. In principle, the distinction is clear-cut. Family as kin are all those people who are linked to you genealogically or who you otherwise define as kin ( Schneider 1968 ; Silva & Smart 1999 ). Typically, they remain kin whether or not they live with you, though the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion drawn around “my family” may alter across the life course. Households, on the other hand, are essentially those people who share a home with you. In this sense “my family” are those with whom I live and with whom I participate in a domestic economy. The membership of an individual's household will certainly change over time, and may for significant periods include people who are clearly not regarded as family. Defining who belongs to a household appears relatively straightforward and for many people it is. There is a clear-cut group of individuals who normally eat together, share a common housekeeping, and sleep in the same dwelling. These are the essential criteria used for defining a household, criteria which in different combinations are utilized ... log in or subscribe to read full text