Extended family

Traditional family pattern that includes more than one blood- (or kin-)related family unit and "could comprise up to 50 people" ¹ This family structure, sometimes also referred to as 'Kinship-' or 'Clan-Family' , did not consist only of father, mother and children but rather included more than one related generation (grandparents, uncles, nieces, etc.) plus servants in one household. These structures developed over time - when a man got married he usually brought his wife into his childhood home and from there on the 'clan' extended.

The functions of this kinship system were social, supportive and practical: socialisation and education for the children through relatives, welfare within the family (when money or material support were needed, the family helped), law enforcement within the family (i.e., vendettas)².

However, family structures also differed from area to area. In contrast to the country side, in the city centre and rich areas the 'nuclear'-style was more common. However, some city households could have a higher number of persons, because of the higher number of servants.³ Another reason was the age of marriage. Living in the country - which often goes along with a lower social status - men and women got married at a far older age than in the city. At that time the parents and grandparents were not alive anymore and consequently the households were smaller.

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Sources

¹ Stott, Anne. Early-modern Europe. The seventeenth-century family. 1 Nov. 2011 <http://early-moderneurope.blogspot.de/2009/10/seventeenth-century-family.html>.

² Haeberle, Erwin J. Archive for Sexology. The Traditional Extended Family. <http://www.sexarchive.info/ATLAS_EN/html/the_traditional_extended_famil.html>.

³ Merry, Mark; Baker Philip: For the house her self and one servant: Family and Household in 17th Century London, Centre for Metropolitan History 2009 <http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/4260/1/LDN01_Merry__Baker.pdf>.