Family connections

Siblings – brothers or sisters

Immediate family直系亲属 – generally considered to be siblings, parents and children. However, some people also include grandparents in this list

Extended family – people with a connection to you within the family tree (aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews etc).

Types of family

A nuclear family – a couple and their children (considered to be the ‘average’ family structure). Statistically, a ‘nuclear family’ typically consists of 2 parents and 2.2 children.

A matriarchal family 母系氏族– (can also be used to describe a society) – where the mother/female is considered to be the most important person

A patriarchal family (can also be used to describe a society) – where the father/male is considered to be the most important person

Single parent family – where the child/children has only a mother or father

Same-sex parents – these are parents who are either both male (gay) or female (lesbian).

Connecting families and people

Genealogy – studying the family history back into the past, often by hundreds and even thousands of years, to see where someone’s bloodline originally came from

Family tree – a diagram that represents all the members of a family

Lineage – the sequence of people before you (father > grandfather > great grandfather and so on).