I have been in radio silence for the past couple of weeks while traveling in Paris with my wife and spending the holiday’s with her family. My wife’s familial relations, while perhaps a bit more complex than most, are not by any means exceptional by human standards. They did, however, inspire me to create the kinship diagram seen below (click to enlarge) illustrating the various members of her family and friends that I have met during our trip.
I love this illustration for several reasons. First, the anthropologist in me loves how clearly the inclusive complexity encompassed by “kinship” is demonstrated and the vast set of relationships that are possible even given a relatively small slice of time and space. I have been joking with my wife that she has given me the gift of four wonderful “mother-in-laws,” though the exact relationship of each of them to me is quite varied.
Second, the population geneticist in me loves how the genetic concept of relatedness contrasts with the broader construction of kin relations. I have shaded in the members of my wife’s family I have met that share direct ancestry with her based on the expected degree of ancestry they share. As you can see, this represents a surprisingly small fraction of the family we have spent time with this trip, and does not match up particularly well with the intensity of interactions we regularly have or have had on this trip.
The next time you find yourself in a large family gathering, consider putting together your own diagram. I can imagine repeating this exercise if we make it as a family to the bi-annual family reunion put on by my mother’s family (in Iowa, though, not Paris), with her five siblings and their families. It would be a very different kind of structure, as there would be only a few individuals with multiple parental relationships, but with an awful lot of children and quite a few adopted children it would be just as complicated. It is a fun exercise.
