The 'cousin deficit' is why chosen family is so important to millennials and Gen Z

I'm an auntie to five nieces and nephews, but only two of them are biological relatives. The rest are children of my "chosen family" close friends who serve as a mutual support system.

According to an international kinship study published in December, the shrinking size of the nuclear family means kids around the world are growing up with fewer and fewer cousins. As relatives dwindle, chosen families are taking the place of the extended family structures our ancestors relied on for skill sharing, child careand, yes, even cousin-like childhood friends.

In 1950, the average 35-year-old Canadian woman had 20 cousins. Today a typical woman the same age has 10, and thedecline shows no signs of slowing. The kinship study authors project that 70 years from now, a 35-year-old woman in Canada will have just five living cousins, 75 per cent fewer than her 20th-century predecessor.

My own family tree gives an extreme example of cousin decline.

My father is descended from a line of exceptionally hardy Catholic women who were encouraged by their faith and enabled by their robust constitutions to multiply. As a result, he has around 140 first cousins.

As for me, I have just 11 first cousins, and it's looking like my biological niece and nephew will have a handful at most.

Not only are extended families smaller than they used to be; they're also spread farther apart.

The Industrial Revolution made labour more mobile. Rather than settling near their parents to farm the family land or apprentice at the family business, young adults began to move from place to place in search of employment.

Compared with our ancestors, adults today are less likely to live in the same community as their siblings. The greater the distance between them, the less often they and their children may be able to see one another and provide in-person support.

I grew up surrounded by second cousins and first cousins once removed. Moving away from my great-grandparents' hometown in late childhood saved me from a lifetime of having to DNA test all my dating prospects.

My own niece and nephew, on the other hand, live in Toronto and Ottawa, respectively, while I'm more than a thousand miles away in St. John's.

Scarcity and separation

This new scarcity and separation of relatives has made chosen family all the more important for millennials and Gen Z.

Families have always been partly inherited and partly acquired. We're raised by and with some family members, and others we add later in life, through partnership, marriage, adoptionor birth.

Anthropologist Kath Western coined the term "chosen family" in her 1991 book Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship to denote the close-knit networks of friends and partners queer and trans people historically created when rejected by their families of origin.

Members of these 2SLGBTQ+ chosen families became a lifeline for one another, providing not just affection and understanding but housing, money, and, during the AIDS crisis, end-of-life care.

Over the past decade, the concept of chosen family has grown in popularity amongyoung adults of all genders and sexualities. In many cases, these intimate friends are an addition, not an alternative, to biological relatives, who may be few in number or live far away.

Chosen families spend time together and celebrate special occasions, but, unlike more casual friend groups, they also offer concrete support to each other, picking up many of the roles traditionally filled by relatives.

Chosen family is there when you need a drive to an appointment, an extra pair of hands for a home improvement project, a loan of an expensive tool or appliance, or a grocery drop-off when you have the flu.

• History, society and change: Read previous articles by Ainsley Hawthorn

Because the friends who come together in chosen families are often similar in age and life stage, they can also share milestones around careers, relationshipsand children.

Two of my friends have recently had children, with a third on the way.

These little ones are already sharing many of the same experiences cousins would: they spend time together on play dates and at "family" dinners, they have a common group of "aunties" and "uncles" who've been in their lives from the beginning, who babysit them, cuddle them, and love them.

Ironically, while the adults in our family chose each other, our children will grow up much more like biological cousins thrown together by circumstance, learning to get along despite their differences,and commiserating with each other about the foibles of their elders.

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