Family Tree

I think one of the reasons I enjoy studying demography is because mathematical models of population simplify what is inevitably complex in the real world. But when you look closely at the data, the simplifying assumptions can't help but unravel. For example, how do you interpret answers to the question "how many siblings do you have?" depending on the definition of sibling, I might have none or any number between two and seven (but definitely not one). Today I read an article addressing precisely this topic. The author asks, "should a stepfather's nonresident minor children be regarded as stepsiblings? How about the adult children of a mother's new husband?" For me, it gets even more complicated. Do I count the adult son of my ex-stepfather? Or the ex-stepdaughter of my mom's co-resident boyfriend? How anyone believes survey results is way beyond me!

Comments

[Edward Vielmetti]

"It's complicated."

I'd bet you'd get even more difficult to interpret answers when you asked people about how many cousins they had; if you are in a sufficiently complicated or large or well-connected family the count of cousins is just limited by how hard you want to work at finding 2d, 3d, etc cousins or to creatively interpret the relationship of the cousins of your cousins.

[Emily]

Quite true, Edward. Cousins are also pretty easy to acquire. I spent the summer of 2005 in Accra, Ghana, and the woman I stayed with insisted that I call her Auntie (it would have been too confusing otherwise, as her name was also Emily, but all the Obruni who stayed with her called her Auntie). So then I couldn't help thinking of her nephews, Kwame and Kweshi, who also lived there, as my cousins, especially since we were all the same age. And does that make the other historian who was staying there my cousin as well?