11 Reader Comments on Cousins
Is there anything better than a good cousin hang? Cousins can be like siblings, favorite babysitters, the allies we lock eyes with when the adults are being weird, or the frenemies we fight with every Thanksgiving (almost looking forward to it). So, today, we’re sharing 11 great reader comments…
On secret languages:
“In my family, the phrase used for anything too good to be true is ‘not real cheese.’ It comes from a comment my little cousin made years ago, disparaging Cheez Whiz (‘I mean, it’s kinda yellow and it tastes okay, but it is NOT real cheese’). The raise you’ve been promised? The trip-of-a-lifetime you’ve been saying you’ll take for years? The outfit that looks so cute online and will surely look fabulous in real life? Fun to think about but, just so you know, it’s not real cheese!” — Reba
“Growing up, my Italian-American family would sing Happy Birthday in Italian — then my Nonno would always yell, ‘WHO’S GOING TO EAT THE CANDLE?!’ One day, to everyone’s amazement, my cousin blew out the candle and then promptly stuffed the whole thing in her mouth. We were all in shock. But my Nonno — who’d lived through WWII, poverty, and immigration — broke into belly laughter, tears, and a child-like squeal that I’d never heard before. To this day, at every birthday, my cousins and I yell at each other to eat the candle — which definitely makes newcomers think, ‘This family is crazy.’ I love it.” — Liv
On keeping in touch:
“I have nine cousins in a group chat called ‘The Kids’ Table,’ lovingly named after our longtime Thanksgiving seating arrangements.” — Callie
“When my cousin turned 40, I sent him an email with 40 excellent clips that never fail to make me laugh (the Brooklyn Nine-Nine cold open was in there). When I’m having a rough day I revisit, so really, it was also a gift for me.” — Emily O.
On younger generations:
“One of the unexpected joys of my life is that my cousin now has a son the same age as my little guy. She and I are 12 years apart — I babysat her growing up! — but she started her family at a younger age than I did. So, at 28 and 40, we both have four-year-olds who absolutely adore each other. When they met, my son said, ‘So, is he my cousin or my friend?’ We said ‘Both!’ and they’ve been best friends ever since.” — Hilary
“I once tried to take a touristy trip through Quebec with my four-year-old. She cried the entire week. She worried the hotel rooms wouldn’t have toilets. She missed our kitchen sink. It was adorable and so very frustrating. After that, we decided travel isn’t possible without cousins. I don’t even care what we’re doing, it’s a million times better!” — Sarah
On the birds and the bees:
“My mom used the book method to teach me about puberty and sex. Things like, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and A Knight in Shining Armor — the latter of which sets up some very unrealistic expectations. But it didn’t matter, because long before my mother started giving me books, my cousin had already told me every detail.” — Tara
“I was so embarrassed when I got my first period (my parents didn’t have open conversations about anything like that). But my cousin was overjoyed! She called our grandma with such enthusiasm. I was stunned to see how proud she was of me, and recalling it even now makes me smile.” — Marie
On quiet escapes:
“During big family gatherings, I would take naps in the coat pile at my aunt’s house in the 1980s. Seven siblings, plus partners, and 20+ cousins made for CHAOS, but the ‘coat room’ was such a sanctuary!” — Heather
On celebrating milestones:
“My cousins fall between myself and my parents, age-wise. During my teen years, they were my allies and advocates. They took me to get my ears pierced (with my mom’s permission — she was too squeamish!). And they lobbied for me to have a phone in my room (it was the ’90s!). I still cherish the memories of doing ‘grown up’ stuff with them.” – Leigh-Anne
“My cousin brought me my first meal after giving birth — spicy salmon sushi, as I requested. She picked it up from the Whole Foods on the Upper West Side. There was only one spicy salmon roll left. Another woman tried to grab it at the same time, and she told her, ‘I’m sorry, but my cousin just gave birth and this is what she asked for. I can’t let you have it.’ And so, I had a spicy salmon roll. I love her.” — RQ
Do you have a great cousin story? We’d love to hear it!
P.S. More great reader comments, and Anton’s cousin soulmate.
(Photo by Stephanie Tamir/Stocksy.)
Tags: family, reader comments
Comments
108 commentsWe ended up with two beautiful kids after a long fertility journey. They’re amazing, but a part of me gets a little sad about missing out on the BIG FAMILY ENERGY that comes with families with more children. Well, bless my husband’s sister, who had SEVEN children (currently between the ages of 6 and 23). So whenever we’re with them, my kids get to experience that big family energy with all of their cousins. We even cram into their house on Christmas Eve, because once you have 9 people in a house, what’s 4 more? Truly, a gift.
I wasn’t very close to my cousins growing up, but my brother lives down the street from me now and his kids are so close to my kids. His oldest daughter and my son were born 2 months apart and have such a special bond and have their whole lives (they are now 11). We weren’t sure how the boy/girl contrast would be but they are like siblings and it’s so wholesome to watch and so fun for me to see.
I had the same & opposite- not close to my cousins growing up, they are older than I am. So I always said I want to have kids when my siblings do, give my kids the experience I didn’t get. Well, turned out none of us had kids lol! Problem solved
My mom’s brother married my dad’s sister, and had the mirror image of our family structure (two girls then a boy to our two boys then a girl). We call ourselves super cousins and of the many many sweet memories I have of my childhood, time spent with them always rank among my very favorite.
We have a very competitive and fun group of cousins who love to play cards, jump off the dock best, bike down a hill fastest, whatever it is we want to win. But with love! When someone goes out in a round of cards, or when we celebrated our BELOVED Aunt at her funeral we sing in happy unison the following: “Nah, nah, nah nahhhh, nah nah nah nahhh, hey hey hey, goodbyeeeee BUT We LOVE YOU and we’ll miss you! See you next time! Bring some cash.” Without fail puts a smile on my face especially now hearing my daughters sing it on their own accord at games with their super cousins! (Love the new word!)
The comment by Hilary about her & her cousin being young/older moms made me think – It’d be interesting to have a piece on perspectives of women who had kids when they were younger vs older and what their experience was like!
Second this!
agree!
I also think this would be a good piece. I had my first daughter at 19, then 12 years later had her brother and 4 years after that had my youngest. Teen pregnancy to geriatric pregnancy, youngest class mom to one of the oldest. I wouldn’t change a thing about it but we are all over the place in our parenting journey. Planning a wedding with our oldest and still trying to get our youngest to stay in his bed all night :)
My mom is close with her extended family, and I had many second and third cousins that we are in touch with. And somehow even with my third cousins we just feel so at home together, and laugh and crack jokes and figure out the ways our parents are the same and different. I took my son to visit a cousin and her family and we realized our kids are FOURTH cousins!!!
Not only a cousin story but a Grandpa story that gives me chills! Almost all of my dad’s family is in CA where they grew up, and we grew up visiting his siblings and all of our many cousins there each year, as well as my grandparents. My Grandpa was a music teacher all his life and would play various songs for us on the piano and we’d all listen and cheer and smile along as he would play his classics each time. My favorite was Scott Joplin “Maple Leaf Rag” that he played so boisterously you couldn’t help but just fall in love with life! And with dear Grandpa. Last year we lost both Grandpa Jones and Grandma Jones at 95 years of age each. We gathered as a huge family to celebrate my Grandpa’s life (the first to go) and as we headed to the memorial service, my husband and I made a stop at our favorite coffee shop. I walked in to the bustling shop and in the back where they often have live jazz musicians playing music, an old man sat at the piano… I stop and tuned my ear to hear above the noise, and what do you think I heard? Maple Leaf Rag so boisterously and recognizably that it had to have been my grandpa sitting down to play one last time. I walked out stunned and couldn’t wait to tell my cousins and aunts and uncles later! They said, “maybe it was him after all!” It was a moment I will simply never forget. We miss you grandpa Jones.
I didn’t grow up with cousins, but dear god I love my husband’s cousins. They bring out an absolutely ridiculous side of me and fold me up with such love and care. I just saw a bunch of them without their kids and we may need to make this an annual thing, I had such a great time.
I have been reading Coj for a few months and this post caught me off-guard (1st time commenting, yay) ! I had a cousin and best friend for a long time – he was like a big brother to me, and we had so much fun together. He was also very good friend to my now husband and we met thanks to him, so I owe him great joys in my life. Sadly I watched him growing more and more apart from us. He made more and more racists, misogynistic “jokes”. Buying guns (we are in France, so it is very uncommon and far right oriented). Last straw was when he started making comments about my kids. It has been 6 months since we’ve cut all ties. I missed the person he was not what he became! Anyone “losing” closed relatives because opinions diverging so much it was too much to handle? Did they came back or lost for good?
I’m so sorry, Julie. That’s really hard. This has happened to some degree in both my husband’s and my extended family. His closest cousin who he grew up with and we celebrated holidays and our kids’ bdays with — was slowly but surely sucked into a more and more hateful, right-wing alternate universe that it got to the point where she cut his whole family off because we’d (mostly gently) call her out when she made a hurtful or hateful comment. It’s so sad and painful.
My cousin died last year. Her mum and my mum were sisters and best friends, and I loved her mum as much as my own mum. My cousin and I used to be so close – she took me to my first film, and gave me my first taste of real gelato, but she became the most jealous person I have ever heard of after she turned about 40. My nan used to say “Let’s not tell leanne you came today, she gets so jealous”, and her mum would visit me and my son in secret, again, because Leanne was jealous. She was also mean and drove her mother to an early death. Not a single one of her mother’s friends would speak to her after her mother died, that is how awful she was. So when my cousin was dying, I didn’t even say goodbye in the end, and i did not attend her funeral. My cousin used to be like the sunshine, but in the end, she hurt everyone who ever loved her in such cruel ways. I am actually glad she’s not alive anymore because she honestly made the world a worse place to be. It is sad to lose someone you loved and I am sorry for your loss. It can be hard to articulate to anyone what that’s like.
My eldest brother is the lost cousin. He lives halfway around the world, which is what spurred everything. He’s been ‘gone’ for almost ten years now, to the point where some of us had to block him because he would comment aggressively on Facebook posts, but I still hope he comes back.
The only cousins my kids have are college-aged boys, and they live in Hungary. Since the kids don’t speak the same language, we were worried about them being able to bond with their cousins when we would visit. But kids always find a way! Our 8yo daughter and 3yo son are not daunted at all by the “big boys.” Our daughter spends most of our trips pranking her cousins, and our son hands each cousin a toy car when he enters the room and they race cars the whole time. Turns out, love and affection are the same language everywhere.
I really enjoyed this post. I will be 100% honest. I love my niece and nephews but they are feral. I say this in the nicest way possible. Their parents parent completely different from my husband and me. I love for our daughter to spend time with them but I feel stressed the entire time they are together. It’s literally like a tornado went through the house – running, screaming, wrappers left everywhere, toys in every room, etc. etc….
Mandy, I understand where you’re coming from because my sister has a very different parenting style from me. I want our kids to have good relationships with each other, especially since we don’t have any cousins, but it can be such a challenge to be around my niece and nephew and my sometimes toxic sister.
I taught public school preschool for thirty years. I had twin siblings in my class with no issues but twice I had cousins in my class and LOOK OUT! I told my colleagues “Cousins are meant to be a good time! I am an adult and can’t behave with my cousins! WHY would someone enroll them in the same class?!” It was a (hilarious) challenge.
My kids go to a small catholic school and one of the families has 19 cousins in the school! My son’s 21 person class has two different pairs of cousins. It’s very sweet but a bit wild, and at first I thought a big group of the moms at pickup were being cliquey but it turned out they were all sisters-in-law.
Cousin relationships are so special! My lifetime favorite memories are my entire extended family squeezed into one beach house for a week every summer. We aren’t as close as we’ve gotten older, but those memories keep me bonded to them all. I attended a small private high school and a lot of my classmates attended school with their cousins, and I was always so jealous! I thought that must be so much fun. When I was high school or college age I thought sitting at the grown up table was the place to be, since I’m an adult. Now, at 36, I realized the kids’ table is where it’s at ;)
I have 8 first cousins. I am not particularly close with any of them, but we all get along and enjoy each other. Several of them have children, so I have lots of extended cousinry. With increasing maternal age and single child families, the concept of cousins and involved grandparents may continue to fade. Also the concept of middle children like me may fade! Interesting food for thought.
Perfect timing! I’m heading to my cousin’s wedding this weekend where I will have a ball with all my other cousins!! Cousins are the best (at least my cousins are – shout out to all the Atlanta Dickey cousins)!
So, this is pretty meta… Ever since I stopped using social media, the Cup of Jo comments section is one of the main ways I stay in touch with my cousin! 👋🏼 Vanessa!
Awww I love this!!
Had to come back and shout out Kristy & the whole Rico First Batch (all the cousins born in the 80’s, proud member since 1988!) and Second Batch (all the cousins born in the 90’s). There are 11 of us spread over two different countries and we try really hard to see each other at least 1-2 times x year in-person, and ofc in the CoJ comments :)
I have a very unusual last name, and when I got my PhD, I was really excited about being the one and only Dr. Lastname. But then, several years later, one of my much-younger cousins finished *her* PhD and I was even more excited to not be the only Dr. Lastname anymore. :)
It always surprises me how rigid people can be with their definitions of what a family is. My husband grew up without his extended family nearby, thus says he didn’t really have cousins. But he also grew up in a cul-de-sac of kids, the families celebrated birthdays together, christmases, weddings – now they go to their parents funerals four decades later. They intimately know each other’s parents and remember the child and teenage heartbreaks and passions, ‘so, cousins?’ I clarified, and he kind of looked confused and then he recognized the relationship for what it was – cousins.
My cousins remind me of the cousins in “Vacation” so I’d give the whole experience a solid 4/10 😂
Oh Hilary, same!! My two year old and my (much younger) cousin’s two year old are buddies! We call them the cousin twins. And guess what! They are moving TO MY TOWN!
Congratulations, Sam! I am so happy for you! Cousin Buddies are such a gift 🎁
I come from a very small family and I have one first cousin. We call each other “Cuzlings.” ❤️
I started a story with ‘I was talking to my cousin’ the other day, and my boss said ‘Tasmania?’ and I felt so seen. I have ten first cousins, eight on my dad’s side, two on my mums. But my cousin Lou on my mum’s side has always been my special person. Despite living in different states, we coincidentally got pregnant at the same time and gave birth to sons six weeks apart. During that first year we had long phone marathons in our bluetooth headphones to survive the monotony of being home with tiny babies, then walking tiny babies to sleep, then screaming into the void about tiny babies that wouldn’t sleep. Between her on a farm in remote Tasmania, and me in my inner city house, there is a golden thread of connection that never dips, no matter the chaos of our lives. We have said goodbye to each of our dads together, and share laughs and therapy about our mums (sisters, with many similar quirks), and ourselves. My husband once overheard a voicenote which started with ‘The HEADPHONES, WHERE DO THEY GO?’ and yelled ‘she’s you!’ It’s the purest type of relationship where there’s no need for pretence or explanation, we’re just our own full selves, witnessing eachother.
My family is spread out all over and I honestly think the last time I saw a cousin was probably about a decade ago. However, I have two kids and a black lab. My sister had three black labs at one point but now has two. My mom has a black lab. We call them “cousin dogs.” They are all boys, too. When we get them all together it’s pure chaos and fun.
I really love this!
I ADORE everything about this article but that photo of 3 kids on a boat with no lifejacket in sight is giving me hives. Ackkk!
These make me so excited for what the future holds. We are intentionally raising our two daughters around their four cousins, and they are very close – something my husband and I didn’t experience growing up. We hope it’s a special lifelong bond for all involved!!
I have 13 nieces and nephews, and nothing–I mean NOTHING–makes me happier than watching their adult relationships blossom. At one point when a bunch of them reached early adulthood and were trying to stay in touch, my niece Emma started sending her cousins the most random cards–think Happy Thanksgiving in the middle of July. It became a whole thing. Our dear Emma passed away several years ago, but the cousins kept it up, both as a way to stay in touch and as away to hold her close.
I am off to England this weekend to do a cousin tour. Four different cousins in seven days with some overlaps! I cannot wait!!
I pretty much have Instagram to thank for the fact that I have a relationship with any of my cousins! I have 9 cousins total, but most of them are younger than me, so growing up we didn’t have a lot in common and I didn’t see them very much. But now we follow each other on Instagram and chat sometimes and see what’s going on in each others’ lives, at least with 4 of them. (The others, who knows!) If it weren’t for Instagram, I wouldn’t know any of my cousins at all. I wish the sibling dynamics of our parents hadn’t interfered so much with our knowing each other. I think it had a lot to do with conflict between them. Sometimes if my cousins and I chat about challenges with our parents now, it’s like wow, we have a lot of shared experience here that we should unpack. I recognize the pattern you’re talking about.
I miss mine, the way we were! We were (are) too spread out geographically to meet often and be truly close or hate each other’s guts. But the times we stayed under the Grandma’s roof, blood drew us together and we’d sleep seven to a room, 3 on a queen, and the rest on mattresses lined up so tight there were no bare floorboards. and could share secrets, talking in the dark until we dropped off one by one. “Hey are you still awake? Finish the story,don’t leave us hanging” “Zzz….”
I grew up spending summers with my cousins at our tiny family shore cottage. We packed 6 adults and 8 kids into 3 tiny bedrooms (plus a sleeping porch) and had the best time together. We cooked meals with “committees” (one adult and a group of kids would plan, cook, and clean up each meal), rode bikes all over the neighborhood and caught crabs off the jetty at the beach. I have some sadness that my kids aren’t growing up with such a big cousin crew (only three cousins!) but we do have a close knit group of friends and they really view all the kids as cousins.
My older sister (and only sibling) has two perfect boys which has allowed me to revel in having the world’s best nephews. But one of the biggest aches of my decision to be childfree has been not giving them the joy of having cousins!
A loving aunt is priceless all by itself! They are all lucky to have you.
As a byproduct of Catholic beliefs in birth control (or lack thereof), I have many siblings as do both of my parents. I have literally DOZENS of cousins, and the highlight of my year was the annual road trip south for Thanksgiving to visit my mom’s sister who, like my own mom, had a ton of kids. The chaos of being in that big Missouri house with piles and piles of cousins was the best feeling in the world. I was a flower girl in my cousin’s wedding, quite possibly the highest honor you could bequeath an 8 yr old. We staged home videos and played capture the flag in the dark and took over playgrounds for dodgeball. Over the years, I’ve lost contact and/or cut off contact due to largely to what we see happening to the country, coupled with the deconstruction of my own faith while many cousins continued down a very different path. There are days that I mourn the loss of what was, but mostly I relish the memories made. The greatest consolation is the life my kids have now when their own cousins come to visit from down south or up north. It is my childhood all over again: raucous games, inside jokes, and a bond that spans the ~14 years from oldest to youngest cousin.
I’ve just become friends with my husband’s cousins’ cousin! She called me up out of the blue to ask me about something that her cousins had told her I’d know. I had always liked her from a distance when we were in a crowd at funerals and so on so I was delighted to hear from her. We hit it off, and now we get together to eat, play board games, and tell each other stories. She’s my cousin-in-law-in-law.
Awww what a joy to be featured in a reader comment! This comment was from awhile ago, but the Cousin Friends are now 5 and their best friend/cousin-ship is still going strong! And for all who mourn not having cousins, we are very close to our besties and their child and basically created a close cousinship out of it! Their child is an only, which kinda breaks my heart, so we refer to her as our “friend-cousin” and shower her with as much love and time with our little pack as possible. My hope is that she will grow up experiencing the love, mischief, squabbles and shenanigans with our kids who, while not her siblings or actual cousins, just might as well be.
This cracks me up every time! Oh cousin shenanigans. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRz1Q0bkiQ1/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
love this–as a late in life first time mom, the age gap between my beloved nephew and my daughter is nearly 12 years and he has turned into a devoted big brother BFF. If we merely mention his name in her general vicinity, she squeals with joy, blows kisses, and talks about some of the things he has already taught her (dinosaurs! baseball!)
Umm… I think we might have just solved the childhood lore question. How is it possible that kids in Toronto, Dallas and Edinburgh are all playing MASH with the same rule? COUSINS
Yesssss!!!! I learned it from my older cousins and taught it to my younger cousins!
100%. My international cousins taught me “there’s an egg on your head” and light as a feather, stiff as a board. We were also able to get the PG-13 Friends VHSs from the video rental when I went with them. And they taught me what the lyrics to “Let’s Talk About Sex” by Salt’n’Pepa meant. They were – and remain – awesome.
On my cousin’s 13th birthday my mom gifted her a copy of the gigantic tome “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” Me, an 8 year-old who IDOLIZED her, saw my soul LEAVE MY BODY when I realized how mortifying this was of my mother. Then, with perfect comedic timing, and the whole chaotic family gathered for cake and presents, my cousin goes, “Shall I read a passage?” What a goddam icon. Cousins are
I died.
oh my god, legendary joke. I have to share, you’ll understand. Instead of buying a new one. . Our mother simply gave me my older sister’s copy of “our bodies, ourselves”. Which means I was reading it, along with reading my sister’s notes in the margins and her responses to the journal prompts. We were 10 years apart, and she was like a celebrity in the house haha
I have very few cousins but am lucky to have married into a family with 50+. We all have kids (some in the same ages and even classes), have a very active group chat, and I just love it. Cousins are the best!
I have my own cousins, but sometimes I think it’s even more fun to be a cousin-in-law! Especially when you are BOTH partners who married into the family — you are one level removed from any of the long-standing drama, and you have someone to commiserate with about the family’s idiosyncrasies! My husband’s cousin’s wife is the FIRST person I seek out at their family gatherings for a nice, long, giggly gossip session.
Our family has a generation of beloved cousins and when we started having kids we created the term supercousin to help that generation connect. Over time the word offered wonderful scalability. As blended families and kids from prior relationships joined the scene, “supercousin” offered an easy way to describe connection without complicated or exclusionary labels. It’s become a kinship category that prioritizes relationship and belonging over strict genealogy. We create culture, we don’t just inherit it- so go gather up your cousins!
I have a few cousins but didn’t grow up geographically close to them, so we are basically strangers. My kids, on the other hand, have 6 cousins that are all within a 5-year age span (oldest is 8, youngest 3). We live close by and make it a priority to see each other frequently. It’s one of the greatest joys of my life to nurture those hopefully lifelong relationships.
I wish my kids had this! My siblings do not have children, and my husband is an only child, so no first cousins for them. I have four cousins and barely know them due to distance and age differences. I hope my own sons have kids so at least THEY can have the “cousin experience!”
Bonnie, my sibling also doesn’t (and may never) have children, and my husband is an only. My kids have no cousins, and only one uncle. Yikes! I am also not close to my cousin due to age and geographic differences. Sometimes it makes me sad that my kids won’t have a big extended family when they grow up, but we have lots of friends who have kids our age, and they are sort of all growing up together like “cousins”! And, truthfully, I’d rather pick my family, anyway ;)
I was that kid! My first cousin was born when I was 20, so I spent most of my life as the only child at any family gathering. At least your kids have each other! But hey I turned out fine, just very curious about other people’s cousin experience, haha!
Same situation here. I’m the only child of an only child (father) and my husband had a brother who passed several year ago (no kids) and his older sister has one son, who is lovely, but we are not close to his sister or her second husband in any way for 100 different reasons, so sadly my two girls don’t really have any cousins either, nor do I. My husband does have a lovely cousin on his dad’s side who we are close with despite a big geographic distance, but we try to get together once a year so our girls (I guess they would be second cousins?) can get together and try to have a semblance of a relationship.
Core memory: In 1985, me and my sisters were allowed to go to the movies with my cool older cousins (!). The ones who lived in our town PLUS some of the even COOLER cousins on their side who lived a couple of hours away and were visiting. Peak 6 year old experience, right? I thought we were going to see Gremlins, so I was nervous that I would be scared, but excited. I braced myself for those little monsters to show up and promised myself I would play it cool when it happened. Those monsters never did show up, because the movie we were ACTUALLY watching was…. Goonies, dear readers. We were watching Goonies. I never said anything to anyone. I just sat there the whole time like, what?? where are the monsters? LOL (and if my sister reads this, I hope she recognizes the story)
My kids will never have first cousins (my only sibling doesn’t want kids and my husband is an only child), and I will never have nieces or nephews. I feel a very real grief about this – for my kids and for me. I have six first cousins and grew up across the country from them, but we were lucky to spend our summers together: those summers are the best memories of my life.
Hi. Same here, no first cousins for my kids. But my kids know my cousin’s kids as their cousins. They also think of many extended family members as cousins, which is very common in our Asian culture. Plus, my friends kids are also their “cousins.” I don’t mean to dismiss your grief because that is valid and real as well. Just sending this note that maybe you might have an opportunity to make your own family outside of blood.
Just wanted to give you a squeeze and a gentle reminder that family is who you make it. Our girl has a few bio-cousins on my husband’s side, but due to age disparities and in-law issues, the kid’s aren’t really close. Her *best* cousins are the awesome kids of our closest family friends (who are honorary aunts and uncles), which is a bonus since we don’t just see each other on major holidays!
Blood relatives are never a guarantee of a good relationship. Hopefully your kids have amazing friends that they can refer to as chosen cousins!
My dad’s one of 10 kids and each sibling has at least 2, maximum 4 kids, so I have SO many first cousins on his side. I think I fall somewhere middle of the pack. My youngest cousin just turned 13 last month, and my oldest cousin is nearing 60 years old. I’m 31. The older cousins have kids who are around my age, and they all get folded into the cousin squad too! I love love love having a big family scattered all across the globe. I don’t get to see everyone all the time, but when we do, it’s madness in the best way. On my mom’s side, I am the oldest grandchild, so I have 4 cousins. The youngest is 25 years old. Our get togethers are quieter, but still special.
My dad is one of 11 and I cannot count all my cousins (and now cousin’s kids!). I am on the older end of the madness. AND, we all live in relatively the same are, and most of us went to the same HS! There was a point of my life where I had a cousin in every grade, including my own!!!
I’m from a big family (one of five children, 27 first cousins) and my cousins were the great joy of my childhood, after my siblings. Many of us are close in age and went to the same university together, halfway across the country. I spent my college years running into my siblings and cousins at the dining hall, in between classes, and at tailgates. Now my own five children have 16 cousins so far, ranging from infants to young adults, and almost all of them live close enough that we see them regularly. My kids cheer on their big cousins at the high school soccer games and drama productions, and they’re hatching plans to babysit their little cousins as soon as they’re old enough. One August, my kids attended essentially the same party at their grandparents’ backyard pool four Saturdays in a row—there were three cousin birthday parties and a going away party for a college-bound cousin thrown in. It was the best!
Wow, this sounds incredible and also rare! How is it that your entire family ended up at the same university if it wasn’t in your hometown?? (and now live in the same city afterward?)
My only first cousin on my mom’s side of the family lives all the way across the country from me, but I am going to see him this summer and I’m SO excited. Our kids (we each have one kid) will get to hang out together, too. I lost both my dad and my sister; my cousin just lost his mom last year (he’s an only child and was raised entirely by his mother). So it’s really meaningful for us to get to hang out. I have a bunch of cousins on my dad’s side, and they are NUTS… they’re honestly like a SNL skit. But they crack me up, and I love them.
I only have three cousins, and we were never super close. One lived across the country, and two were quite a bit younger than me, so we never bonded the way I wish we would have. But my son (2) is so enamored by my brother’s three daughters (4, 10, and 12). They live in the country and have chickens, quails, a big, sprawling garden and property where they all run and play. It brings me SO much joy to see them becoming such friends. It’s extra special,, as my brother and I have been working on rebuilding our relationship after about a decade of estrangement (by his choice, not mine).
I LOVE my cousins, esp my cousin who is super close in age to me. We were such a duo growing up, with our two younger siblings also part of the pack, a fun foursome. We had countless adventures. We’re still great friends to this day. At the same time as I celebrate my own cousin experience, I mourn for my children because they only have 1 cousin and she is much older than them. It is completely outside my control but I really wish some of my or my husband’s siblings would hurry up and have kids so mine can have some cool cousins. Sadly it is probably not going to happen. I think about how to cultivate a cousin-like relationship with family friends or other more distant relatives.
Yes! My kids call our closest friends “Aunties” and “uncles” and are close like cousins with several of their kids, the ones we see the most. You can make this happen :)
I think, with declining fertility rates, this is going to become increasingly common, so you’re not alone!
Lol, it’s not up to your siblings to provide cousins for your kids. What a weird pressure to put on them, even if it’s just in your head. Let their chosen friends be their lifelong cousins!! Sometimes that works out better than blood anyway.
I have 20 and my spouse has 0. Cousins aren’t the only reason but I think it really contributed to the joy I associate with my family… I just had a lot more fun growing up. Not all my cousins lived in the same area, but I still got to see many of them regularly and built close relationships over the years. They are the closest people to me who are the most different – such a wide range of politics, religion, lifestyles, etc. It’s a gift to have that exposure even if it makes me a little crazy.
These stories are amazing. I love the glimpses into deep family love and shenanigans. My husband was lucky to have a cousin who was really a brother to him, they were like twins, born just months apart and raised together by sister single moms. He has thousands of stories like this that just make me laugh and smile and feel warm. We lost him way way too young and we all miss him every day. I have so so many cousins, but I want close to any, for various reasons of family dynamics. But when my husband was having very serious health issues and couldn’t work for months, earlier this year, one group of cousins, 5 sisters, my oldest uncle’s girls, much older than me, sent fat checks with a sweet note, “our dad would’ve wanted us to help out Tommy’s girl….”. Ugly tears. Family runs very deep sometimes.
I have 37 first cousins; 25 are maternal. In college I had to write a taxonomy on a subculture for anthropology and pitched me and my cousins (the prof did not go for it). But growing up in that environment was a a whole subculture. There is a distinct vocabulary, shared lore. We all grew up with a lot of siblings, and it was nice to have someone similar to your siblings but without all the baggage of sharing space and parental attention. Most of us are not going to have as many children as our parents did, so the first cousin relationship is being preserved for our kids in the next generation. I enjoy seeing my children growing up with a similar network.
Cousins are the best!! Growing up my older cousin totally changed the trajectory of my life — he showed me that moving to the West Coast for college was a possibility, which started my lifetime as a Californian. I am jealous of my kids’ cousin set up: they have a gaggle of first and second cousins who they see multiple times a year (including 3 who are around the corner) — and regularly count their cousins as their best friends.
Ahhh cousins. I grew up with 7 on my dad’s side and 7 on my mom’s side and so family gatherings were always the best time because we all had an age partner cousin. We lived 2 hours away from all of our family and I was envious of all my friends in my hometown who went to school, church, babysat their cousins. The cousins have mainly dispersed and we don’t keep up anymore on my family side but we live in my husband’s hometown and so im overjoyed that my own children have their cousins right up the block, in the same grade, as babysitters, etc.
Heather— are you my cousin lol?! Same. Exact. Mems. My mom had seven siblings and I had 20+ cousins all living in NJ. Were all grown now, so have the same get togethers but with our own kiddos now!
We have a tight-knit group of college friends that live closer in proximity than many of our actual families. We get together for weeknight dinners, holidays, an annual camping trip and we even traveled to Italy together last year, all 16 of us. Somewhere along the way, our kids started referring to each other as the “Seattle Cousins” and it stuck. They range from ages 10 to 4 and absolutely love each other. One day a friend was asking my 7 year old daughter about this group of kids… “But are they your ACTUAL cousins?” to which she replied, “They’re our found family.” Heart burst.
I love my cousins but lived far away from them. My husband lived close to his cousins and has fond childhood memories. I don’t know which is better.
I’m an eldest daughter who yearned for an older sister, and I observed my impossibly-cool cousins Jeena and Kirsten (6 and 3 years older than me) like David Attenborough making notes for a special. The goth stickers on Kissy’s Hello Kitty lunchbox-as-a-purse? All bands immediately recorded in my journal and hunted at Tower Records. Jeena’s hair-teasing techniques? I could AquaNet asymmetrical bangs in my sleep. We once went to Great America and got drenched on a log ride, and when I saw Kissy had a black bra on underneath her white tee I almost DIED she was so cool.
Haha, the teenage girls with with white tees and black bras on the water rides at Great America! My friends and I would marvel at them; we never dared.
My parents allowed their own issues in familial relationships to affect ours. They isolated us from family and to now as an adult, I grieve this lack of connection all the time because I think at least some of my cousins could have (and would be!) good fun! Because of how they went about it, I am pretty much unable to pick up and form new relationships with my own cousins but I love hearing about cousin relationships and imagining what that is like though to have them ♥️
This has happened with estrangements between cousins’ parents on both sides of my family also, Sarah, and I know just what you mean.
In my case, mental illness fueled intense favoring and jealousy between the siblings. So, they didn’t want to have anything to do with one another and that affected our relationships with our cousins. My female cousin introduced me as her mother’s niece a few years back, when I had been trying to maintain some contact between the two parts of the family. She and her brother also didn’t RSVP to or attend my wedding.
Hi Sarah, I was in a similar situation growing up — lots of great cousins but we lived far from them and my parents didn’t foster relationships with my aunts/uncles or cousins. I share your sadness at that lack of connection — observing friends who grew up close to cousins/aunts is so foreign but looks so wonderful. A few years ago, we moved across the country so that our kids could be within driving distance from their only cousins, and it’s so fun to watch them together. Sending you hugs.
Cousins are great! I am an only child. My husband is practically an only child (sib lives across the country). Back in the day, I grew up living in a mixed generational household with my grandparents, so on my mom’s side, my relatives would come and visit them which mean I had built in “weekend siblings”! It was great: they’d assure my parents they’d watch over me and take me to the library or playground, they taught me how to braid my hair, kick and punch properly, how to launch a football, and helped with paving the way for dating. It wasn’t always rosy, I was treated like an older sibling to my younger cousins, so if one of them balked because they didn’t want the caramel sundae, I had to give up my chocolate sundae… yes, 45 years later and I still remember it, along with the silly straw swap, and one of them messing up my pan of beloved watercolors -haha! I am in my 50s now and still very close to a number of them, whose children I babysat, who in turn, baby sat my own, who now watches over their little ones at big family gatherings. It is beautiful and I know I’m very fortunate because not everyone has family like this. On my dad’s side I’m the only “girl” in my cousins group, but I am still included in the chats, the gatherings, and still chided and teased along with the “boys” even though we’re all in our 30s and over.
My mom finally put an end to the kids table when we were all in our 30s because “it wasn’t fair, that’s the fun table”. We have a game called “Knife or Whale?” where you name an object, like a fan, and convince each other it’s obviously more like a whale because the blades are like fins and they are grey, white and black like whales.
I love all these so much…’The Kids Table’ group text name is SO good. Growing up, our extended families lived far apart and didn’t get together too often, so while I loved the idea of cousins, we didn’t see each other much. Cut to early adulthood, many of us cousins become close (those group texts help!), some live closer now, and we make a point of traveling to see each other. And now that we are in our 30s and 40s, our own kids are friends and it fills me with so much joy!
Any tips for staying close to cousins who live far away? We have a great time when see each other, but, despite best intentions, phone calls never quite happen and text messages aren’t satisfying. How do you keep making new memories despite physical distance?
My friend who is very close to her family lives away from her family so each week they have a zoom meet. Sometimes only a sister can log on, other times everyone is there. Sometimes they play bingo, other times they have a drink and a snack with one another. She actually plugs her computer into her TV so they appear in her living room, almost life sized! She says it isn’t the same as irl, but it’s better than nothing.
I came here to ask the same – how do you keep up cousin relationships once you’ve grown up and your grandparents died? Everyone seem to have retreated in their core family and our parents/their siblings aren’t the ones to make big family gatherings- we do live fare aparty I feel line the others aren’t interested (?) but maybe it’s the usual time constraints… Any ideas?
Great timing. My cousin is 6 years older than I am, but he’s as close as a brother to me. We grew up in separate states, but in our 20s and 30s we managed to live in the same cities in TX and CA at the same time (all coincidence!!) We have become so close and have seen eachother through heartbreak, loss, and both of us getting married. He is now getting ready to move to FL (he’s in the military), and I am treasuring our coastal runs together all the more. Just did one last night! I will miss him so much.
I’m an only child (loved the Only Child post from last week!) with no extended family in the US—all of my family is in Malaysia! My dad is one of seven and my mom is one of ten, so when we’d go back to Malaysia, there were SO. MANY. COUSINS. I would be overwhelmed by all of the chaos and wished I could experience it all the time when I was home. There was one cousin in particular, who I now call my sister. She’s younger than me by a few years (her two older brothers are around my age) and I always found her annoying when we were kids. She’d tag along with her brothers and I whenever we were up to something, which would ruin our plans! But as we got older, her and I got closer. We have the same sense of humor and love to do gross things together (I’ll pluck her armpit hairs at the breakfast table). She’ll ask me for advice about anything happening in her life, and I’ll vent to her about my mother, who she completely understands because our families are so close. She’s the younger sister I never had and I miss her all of the time!
Cousins are the best! I’m one of 12 cousins on my dad’s side, and we’re all very close. Truly nothing beats the weeks we spent at the lake growing up, or the Christmas mornings crowded in my grandmother’s living room, absolutely buried in wrapping paper. My grandmother used to make us line up in age order on the stairs while she went “to check if Santa came.” Tiny toddlers on the bottom step, all the way up to my dad at the top–the oldest of the parents. The idea of cousins is something that I always think about in the only kid v. multiples kids discussion (loved that recent post!). If everyone is an only child, no one has cousins! Of course logically I know people can and do build those full, wonderful relationships with friends too. But for me, clearly just based on my own experience, the idea of not having cousins is almost a bigger deal than not having siblings.
“If everyone is an only child, no one has cousins!” What an eye opener! I never realised that some of my best friends don’t have cousins!? Wow!
I had the same thought about the only children post — what about your possible grandchildren?? They’ll have NO COUSINS!
You can also have cousins and not know them! It’s really not a big deal. Or perhaps you can’t miss what you don’t know.
Just spent the weekend with all the cousins, and their kids, and it is such a joy to see all the littles run around in a little pack the way we did so long ago. They are at an age where they can more or less play independently but still manage to surprise us with their inventive silliness. My nephew loves his slightly older and slightly younger cousins and I’m so glad our family can keep up the cousinly traditions we all enjoy.
I don’t have any first cousins so it’s fascinating for me to hear about what it’s like!
I have two biological 1st cousins. I’ve met them a handful of times; there are big age gaps and geographical gaps. I’ve never quite understood the hype.