Do bigger families combat loneliness?
Do bigger families combat loneliness?
Research suggests people in larger families are buffered "against poor relationships."
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For the past 13 or so years, my family has gathered on Sundays for dinner. The cast of attendees sometimes changes, for example when one of us moves away or comes back to town. And there have been dry spells, such as during the coronavirus pandemic. But over more than a decade, my siblings, parents and I have gotten together thousands of times. And it has been great; when my wife and I lived in Los Angeles, these dinners were one of the things we most missed.
I’m the oldest of eight biological siblings and two step siblings, so these gatherings are typically large. And they also often involve heated debates. Our family includes people with a spectrum of views on things like politics and religion, and we’ve had many impassioned conversations about these topics. Most recently we had a surprisingly heated debate about the wisdom of visiting Disneyland Paris1.
What’s interesting to me, though, is that while these conversations can become tense, they haven’t destroyed our family or led to anyone’s estrangement. A conversation might include a sharp critique of another person’s religious or political views, but we nevertheless still get together again2.
Why is that? Why have we been able to push each other’s buttons without ruining the family dynamic?
That question was on my mind recently while reading a new book called Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships. The book comes from Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist and emeritus Oxford professor who is famous for developing “Dunbar's number,” which is the idea that humans have the cognitive ability to maintain about 150 stable relationships. Even if you’re not familiar with Dunbar himself, there’s a good chance you’ve come across news articles riffing on the idea that humans can maintain a village (a frequent topic of this newsletter) of about 150 people.
What jumped out to me right away in the book, however, was a mention of research on loneliness that studied people in England and Mexico. And the findings suggested that the quality of family relationships was less critical for people in big families than it was for people in small families. Here’s the passage:
Interestingly, in a comparison between the Mexican and British subjects, [Ana Heatley Tejada]3 found that the quality of relationships with the nuclear family was very important in counteracting feelings of loneliness in the British subjects in particular. However, it seemed that the much larger extended family characteristic of Catholic Mexico generally buffered people against poor relationships with nuclear family members, whereas the British with their typically much smaller families did not have enough relatives to provide that protection4.
This immediately struck a chord. In my own big family, relationships can ebb and flow. If someone gets offended during a heated exchange, for example, there are enough people around to splinter off into smaller groups in the short term. Two people in a tiff theoretically never have to spend one-on-one time. And the family remains a useful antidote to loneliness even if everyone isn’t maintaining the absolute highest quality relationship with everyone else.
In any case, I was so curious about these findings that I reached out to Dunbar to see if I could get more information. He replied and told me the specific comparison between the British and Mexican subjects is unfortunately stuck in publishing limbo.
However, he also pointed me to another paper he coauthored in 20145 that indicated people in Brazil and Belgium had larger groups of family members with whom they were emotionally close, compared to people in Britain. Significantly, the paper also describes Brazil and Belgium as “more pro-natalist and more family oriented, with larger average family sizes,” while Britain is “predominantly Protestant with smaller families.”
The takeaway from all of this research is twofold:
1) That larger families seem to give people a larger network to counteract loneliness. This probably sounds obvious. Of course bigger families mean there are more people around.
2) But also, bigger families mean you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket. If the quality of some relationships deteriorates a bit, you don’t lose a major part of your support network and experience vastly more loneliness. The family dinners continue, even if people get riled up (again and again no less).
I’m not necessarily advocating here for big families. I can speak from personal experience that it is no panacea. Finances are tougher in a large family, and in my own case I didn’t necessarily love having so many siblings around while growing up6. And even into adulthood, I can attest that people in big families still experience conflict and loneliness.
It’s also worth noting that challenges related to money, fertility, housing and loads of other issues make big families impossible for lots of people. I myself don’t have the resources to have a family anywhere near the size of the one I grew up in. And even if did, I’m not sure what I’d do. Personal preference matters, and to each their own7.
(There’s also a discussion to be had about what exactly constitutes a “big” family and if there’s a magic number there.)
But I do think it’s interesting to consider a large family as a longterm strategy for decreasing loneliness while having to invest less in individual relationships. In the past, I’ve written about family compounds, polygamy, and multigenerational housing. These are all niche strategies for building a village and keeping loneliness at bay. Maybe having a big family belongs on that same list.
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Also, feel free to come on over to the Nuclear Meltdown Facebook group, where we discuss all sorts of family- and friend-related topics.
News to read this week:
How to Rearrange Your Post-Pandemic ‘Friendscape’
“Having friends who encourage, stimulate and support you is associated with improved immunity, lower blood pressure and higher cognitive function. Having no friends, toxic friends or superficial friends not only can make you feel insecure, lonely or depressed, but also can accelerate cellular aging and increase your risk of premature death.”
My position was that with limited time and money, visiting Disneyland Paris is an unwise use of resources.
This isn’t to say these conversations never involve anyone getting offended. They do. But at least from my perspective the fact that we keep getting together is significant. I also can’t speak for my siblings (who are all adults at this point). It’s entirely possible that there are lingering resentments I don’t know about, though no one who lives within driving distance of these gatherings has opted to stop attending.
This section of the book is referring to a paper titled “Being unempathetic will make your loved ones feel lonelier: Loneliness in an evolutionary perspective.” Dunbar coauthored the paper with Ana Heatley Tejada and María Montero. Though it doesn’t include the comparison of British and Mexican research subjects, the paper is a fascinating read. It’s also available online here.
Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships Kindle Edition. Robin Dunbar. 2021. Page 23.
“Emotional closeness to maternal versus paternal lineages.” Mauro Silva Júnior, Robin Dunbar and Regina Célia Souza Britto. January 2014. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences 8(1):44
As an adult, however, having a big family is great. Now that all of us siblings are adults it’s a lot of fun to get together.
Waiting to have children, as I’ve written before, also limits somewhat the size of our family.