Genetic ties out, friends and pets in as young people redefine family

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Key points

• Many people say unconditional support is more important than genetic ties defining who qualifies as family.
• Chosen friends are considered family by many, as are pets.
• Blood or genetic ties are considered more important by older Australians, Gen Z’s do not consider them as important in defining ‘what is a family’.

When former partners Emma Kennedy and Klyde Salcedo decided to part ways, they needed to consider how to share care of Snickers – their treasured Maltese shih tzu.

As both consider him to be part of their family, they settled on splitting his time evenly between their new households. “He’s basically our child”, says Kennedy, a website manager.

All in the family: Former partners Klyde Salcedo (left) and Emma Kennedy, with Snickers.Credit: Jason South

“We’ve both re-partnered, and are still really good friends,” she says. “The dog is the love of my life, and I would also count Klyde as part of my extended family; we do a two week-ish kind of [custody sharing] arrangement.”

The pair is among a growing number of Australians for whom the traditional idea of what makes a family has shifted, new research shows. Family no longer simply means people related by blood, marriage, adoption or fostering, as government agencies still define it.

The evolving definition places more importance on those who show “unconditional, non-judgemental support” being seen as family, and not necessarily just those to whom one has genetics and legal ties.

Two in three (67 per cent) of 6000 participants in the Australian Institute of Family Studies research, What is Family? by Dr Luke Gahan and Mikayla Budinski, said people’s closeness as shown through their support was important in defining who family members are, and two in five (41 per cent) said family is people they choose, including blood relatives and close friends.

LGBTQ+ people were almost twice as likely to rate blood or genetics as unimportant in defining a family, compared with others (32 per cent versus 17 per cent).

Older Australians, those born before 1946, still consider genetic ties to be important markers of family, but this declines among younger generations. Just 24 per cent of those among Gen Z said they consider blood ties to be important.

All demographics rated love as more important than any other characteristic in deciding who is family. More than half (52 per cent) of participants consider their pets to be family members.

Dr Liz Allen, a demographer and social researcher at the Australian National University, said the findings reflect a major shift in Australian society.

‘I value communication of my discipline to a wider public,’ says demographer Liz Allen, of ANU.

“One thing is for certain: the way Australians define family has changed substantially, particularly over the last 20 years or so,” Allen said. “The traditional notion of a family being a mum, a dad and two point something kids is no longer applicable in Australian society.”

Allen said it was good that for many, the old expression “you can’t choose your family” no longer applies, as it meant deeper ties were being formed across wider areas of society, rather than people limiting the boundaries of family to relatives.

“There is a grandness that comes from a greater definition of family, it means potentially greater social cohesion. We might see some of our work colleagues as one family, we might see some of our neighbours as one family, or our school groups,” Allen said.

“These things are essentially ties that bind us; they don’t have to be by blood or the law, they can be of our choosing … not according to arbitrary roles.”

Gahan said the extension of friendship into the idea of family possibly reflected a deepening of the importance of mateship to Australians, especially as friendships were seen to be so important during lockdowns.

“I suspect Australians have always valued mateship across all generations, it’s just that young people are more likely to refer to them as family,” he said.

“If you talk to older family members, they probably do have people [they regard] like that, but they might not use that word.”

The findings create challenges for law and policymakers and have implications for employment law regarding leave provisions dedicated to caring for family, Gahan said.

And the heavy emphasis on pets as family also had potential legal implications: for example, more people expect to take carer’s leave for pets’ medical needs (and some employers already allow it).

“I think there is a change in culture [as to how important pets are to people]; maybe COVID brought that to our awareness a lot more,” Gahan said. “Our relationship with dogs and cats goes back millennia, it’s just that we’re starting to look at it in a different way.”

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