The Extended Extended Family, Sport and Familial Relationships

Abstract

Traditionally, the terms extended family and extended kin have been used to refer to family members outside of the strictly-defined ‘nuclear family’ or more usefully, two generations of parents and children. The extent to which extended family members are embedded into nuclear family practices varies tremendously in and between cultures. Some cultural groups, such as South Asians, are known to place more value on extended family members, most notably grandparents (Ballard, 1994; Becher, 2009). Ballard (1994) notes how such families were close in terms of both physical and emotional proximity. As a result, many of these families were living in what Smalley (2002) described as ‘nuclear family households, extended family lives’ (cited in Becher, 2009: 150). However, in our contemporary globalised and highly mobile society, how useful is it to think of extended families in terms of proximity? Families are increasingly fragmented and geographically separated, meaning that family members have to find new ways of connecting with one another, for example, forming digital relationships via social media (Baldassar et al., 2016).