Are big parties with extended family falling out of fashion?

[changergranger]

When I was a child there were often big family gatherings, full of random family members I didn't recognise, telling me how much I'd grown.

All of the extended family were there. All kinds of "aunties" and "cousins" who were actually your aunties half sister's cat's cousin twice removed.

The kids would always play together, running about the dance floor, drinking coke from glass bottles and falling asleep on those pub couches with that very specific kind of fabric.

These events were sometimes weddings and funerals but were also often christenings, communions, big birthdays, anniversaries etc.

I went to a funeral a couple of months ago that was sort of similar and it hit me suddenly that it had probably been about 15 years since I had been to an event like that and I would likely never see a lot of these people ever again.

I feel like as all my grandparents generation passed away it really stopped. It's like they were the glue that held the family together - the root of the extended family, with the rest of us cascading out from there, connected through them.

The next generation - my parents generation - are still sort of close and I know get together but it seems different now. It's much smaller. They never do the "everyone's invited" big events with random relatives and I don't think, as a child, you'd find any great uncles you don't recognise to tell you how tall you'd gotten.

There's been weddings and funerals I've been to, of course, but the fashion seems to be for them to be smaller. In one way they're more intimate (in the sense that there are fewer people there) but also less intimate in the sense that people come in immediate family groups and generally stay together and don't mingle.

Relatives as close as first cousins now often don't invite each other to weddings as they stick to immediate family (as did I) - which means that the "wedding and funerals" relatives are no longer even that. I'm not complaining - as I said, my own wedding was very small as well. I actually think it's better not to spend loads of money feeing relatives you barely know. It's just that it means with that culture change we never ever see each other.

I guess I assumed as I grew up that the big extended family dynamic would stay the same and the younger ones (us) would take over. That's not happened.

I am close with my immediate family and get together with them often - parents, siblings, nieces and nephews. But that's 10 of us playing board games in someone's house or going out for a curry etc. I cannot envision a situation we would book out a room for anything or would have enough people to invite to fill it.

I know people will probably tell me that I could make an effort and organise a big party or say I'm being entitled. I'm not complaining that nobody is throwing big parties and inviting me - I am just reminiscing and feeling a bit sad that my DS will probably never experience that built extended family dynamic that I did.

It's not even like I loved buffet queues and drunk relatives dancing to ABBA as a child - it's just that those memories form such a big part of my childhood and I don't know when it changed.

Would love to hear if anyone has experienced the same or even different? Have things changed in this way since you were a child?

We are all too far apart. It’s just myself, dh and our son who live in same country. When we return to Uk to visit there’s no base we’re everyone lives, they are spread out, and others live the opposite side of the world. So even if it was a funeral for someone close, it’s likely some couldn’t make it anyway due to time and cost.

We still have large ish gatherings now, but they aren’t made up of family. Just local friends and neighbours, mixtures of ages, which does make it feel like family of sorts. My toddler still gets fussed over by our elderly neighbours for his birthday, and plays with kids of all ages at various events.

Growing up in a huge family there was always a 21st, engagement or wedding party on the horizon. Nowadays most of my family can't be arsed, and my own dc seem to prefer smaller gatherings. I have a big birthday coming up and I think I might just invite people to the local pub for a few drinks, rather than book a room with music and food. That's if I bother doing anything. We all live near each other so it's not a question of logistics.

I’ve experienced exactly the same. I’m 33 and growing up we would regularly have big family gatherings, sometimes 30-40 people and I’d vaguely recognise some and others not at all but a lot of ‘wow you’ve grown’ and ‘I can’t believe I used to babysit you!’ And me and my cousins would eat the buffet food and tear arse around the house. The adults would drink and there’s be laughter and karaoke sounds downstairs. This definitely changed for us as my grandparents and their siblings have sadly gradually passed away or gotten older, and the last such event was probably around 12 years ago now.

My mum and her siblings are in their late 40s to early 60s and meet a lot but never an extended family get together, usually just among themselves or us immediate family.

That's just exactly my childhood too, and I feel the same as you that my kids won't experience it. We did okay up until all the weddings finished then covid really interrupted cousins getting together. I don't think it will come back, and dreading the funerals era tbh. We've all moved for jobs and geographically scattered too which is a massive factor imho.

The more people who are childless or have only children, the fewer big family events there are going to be. You can't have big family parties if you don't have the extended family members to invite to them.

I agree OP. Can't put it down to the credit crunch specifically, but it seems to be a combination of families being more splintered and not having the attitude of 'let's get together and have fun', and instead people feeling they hate/can't stand/despise their relatives (as many previous posters demonstrate), plus everyone living in smaller places and the cost of food and drink being so much higher. It's a shame though, as I used to love these big gatherings of random relatives when I was a kid. We'd even play silly party games, but I think social media and the fear of embarrassing pics has stamped on all that.

DHs parents both had lots of siblings, there were lots of parties and celebrations. They all centred around heavy drinking and didn’t really involve the children (all stuck in a separate room).
Although DH saw his cousins at all these frequently, they all have very little to do with each other as adults. DH has tried but really it’s a waste of time, they’re all different people.

We’ve had criticism for not living in his home town and missing all the family stuff, but there’s none. I did go to a few big birthdays and we missed an anniversary party (which we got grief for) but they’ve all stopped. We get comments all the time from DHs family whenever we go to his home, but they all make zero effort when we are there.

I think the cost is also prohibitive. They had lots of dos in halls with an open door policy, now rental and food would be so much. Apart from not knowing cousins much the cost of inviting everyone to say a wedding would be a small fortune now.

We’ve got my father in law’s 80th and niece’s 18th this year and both will have 20+ family members attending. My DC have experienced far more big family gatherings than I did. They love them. Plus regular gatherings with our local church ‘family’ too, lots of DC a similar age. Nothing makes up for losing DH when they were 5 and 7 but we are not alone

I think there's definitely something in geographical location and mobility. I know that people spread out a lot more now. When I was younger there were a lot of family members very close. However, half of them were living in Ireland and they still managed to get together for these occasions. For the smaller things, the family who lived nearby nearby would always be there. But generally, if a party was happening a lot of family would be over if they could.

Now I feel like, as well as being physically far apart, people just don't want to do it as much anymore. My mum is sort of the middle generation and does get invited to some of the smaller stuff but I've noticed that generally she doesn't ever seem to want to go or seems happy if something comes up and she can't. This isn't just her but seems to be a general thing.

In other words, I don't think it's just that my generation has grown up and not taken the reins. I think it's also that the same generation who were doing these things and enjoying them no longer enjoy it as much. The uncles who were once so outgoing and always the life of the party are just unrecognisable. At the funeral I was at, they were all just sat with their nuclear families quietly and left quite early. People were not mingling and moving around the tables like they once would. In fact I remember specifically hating the constant revolving door of relatives who I had to politely talk to about school when really I wanted to go play and chase my cousins around the dancefloor.

I guess I feel like there's generally a low mood everywhere, both within my whole family and with people I meet day to day. I feel like there's a lot of mental health stuff going on - people are busy and stressed and depressed. I don't want to derail the thread but I feel it in lots of places lately. Not to say nobody ever has fun - of course we do and lots of people evidently do still socialise a lot. I still have fun times regularly. I just feel like there's a bit more of a cloud over people and also that people need a lot more motivation to want to do these things in the first place.

I am, however, mindful that when you're remembering childhood memories it can be easy to get taken up with nostalgia and rose-tinted glasses. Hence wanting to hear everyone's experiences as well.

Unless your from somewhere like Preston where people never leave then I don’t think it is the norm to have massive family parties as people live further apart nowadays- we have big parties with loads of kids but with friends (and immediate family) but not with cousins etc etc

People have less time, less money, move further. There's still a few, like Christmas last year was huge, or occasional buy your own meal birthdays at restaurants.

I also think the new, popular idea that we exclude invite whoever we want makes parties smaller and has caused rifts (it has in our families, anyway). I reciprocate now, and don't bother making any effort with them if they exclude me.

DH is having a milestone in a couple of months, he CBA having anything, even though the last one was huge. We don't have the time or energy to plan it & we'd rather put the money toward a holiday were saving for.

Loved this kind of party as a child. Loads
of happy memories of big family parties at my aunt and uncle’s, cousins, grandparents, great aunts and uncles, their neighbours, sometimes cousins’ cousins and their grandparents as well! My kids have smaller events where we get together with our siblings and their kids, but parental divorce means we don’t have the same family base as some might. My aunt and uncle still do, but their kids have kids and that’s already a lot of people before our side rocks up too. I will keep on hosting and inviting but for us, it was never the same after DM remarried and her new DH wasn’t interested in family gatherings. Refuses to travel at Xmas, Easter etc - knackered things for everyone 🥲DF now deceased and no one from that side of the family left. Sad really!

I think the concept of family has changed. True, it may have been restrictive, there are lots of other options now (serial monogamy where you have several long term relationships) resulting in blended families mean the traditional partway not be so easy. But otoh it led to increased social capital and feeling secure that you have a "tribe".

Maybe families being more spread out?

I didn't experience these much as a kid as our extended family weren't closely related so I didn't go to any weddings, and very few bar/bat mitzvahs. We'd also see people at shivas to mark deaths. I never had a clue who distant relatives were but my mum could remember everyone, even though they were all dad's side because she barely had any family and most weren't in the UK.

Nope. But culturally it's the done thing to have big parties and all the lovely craziness.

I think it is largely due to people being a lot more mobile. Both DH and I have family scattered all over the country, from the South Coast of England to the North of Scotland. I don't think anyone is within 2.5 hours drive of anyone else and many are considerably further apart. That means that not only is getting together logistically difficult, especially once parents have died and thefe is no longer a family home base, but the next generation just don't get to know each other. My children aren't close to their cousins because they rarely see them, and they don't particularly want to see them because they don't really know them, so it's a bit of a viscious cycle. It is a bit sad, but it's just modern life. They've nothing against each other but they don't have shared memories etc of cousins who have grown up together so they're not particularly interested in each other.
My eldest is planning her wedding and doesn't want to invite extended family. Initially I thought she should but then I counted up that aunts, uncles and cousins plus their partners and children would be about 40 people just on her side. If her fiance invites the equivalent family members on his side that's a lot of people, most of whom the couple barely know and there wouldn't be room for many of their friends who are more important to them. That just doesn't make sense does it?

Ouch @Matilda1981 !

Something else to consider is that pubs used to give you their backroom for free knowing they'd make money on the bar but now they charge £100 for the room before you've even started on the catering.

I know what you mean, OP, sounds like you have fabulous memories. On a much smaller scale, DH's parents, their siblings and spouses, and all their children used to meet at DH's gran's house every Friday. Once she died, nobody bothered any more, which I thought was a shame. Turned out the siblings couldn't stand each other!
I have 2 DCs, both with partners and DC, and they seem to think even coming to us at Christmas is optional, which makes me sad (I'm a feeder!).

Hadn’t thought about it, but you are correct. In my family the reasons are:

children moving away including overseas. my family are UK, I live in France, my cousins (mums side) both emigrated to Australia.

fewer children being born so the generations get smaller. My sister has no children, DHs sister has only 1.

fewer ‘events’ - not so many people getting engaged and married, fewer children and fewer christenings.

This. People don’t have 3 or 4 children like they used to, and they have them older, so there are less generations of family milling about in general. There are pros and cons to everything of course, but I do raise an eyebrow when I hear parents who have onlys complaining that their child has no wider family to rely on and how quiet Christmases are.

We never had these, since parents were immigrants and we are first generation Canadians. I was always a bit envious of people with large families.

And I think some others are right in that society has changes since families are spread apart, and there are fewer big celebrations since people have moved away from the church.

We did this a lot on one side of the family. We hardly ever met the others. Now we host the occasional event but these are almost entirely connected to religion (I'm Catholic) so Christenings, Holy Communion etc, weddings and funerals. I've noticed my pals who are lapsed Catholics and don't have these celebrations dont replace them with alternatives. One friend recently commented that her parents and inlaws only met once, they just never bothered to organise anything and I think that's a real shame. There is something magical about being a child at these events that their kids missed out on.

This sounds like my family growing up. A lot of the issue now is that we’re so spread out geographically and almost all of the cousins (my generation) are in the kind of jobs where long hours are the norm. That said, my parents generation seem to be doing a fantastic job of falling out with each other over really petty things now they’re retired and bored so that’s likely a factor too.

Definitely less parties in my world now too. There always used to be 21sts, engagement parties, anniversary parties for the oldies with loads of people but most people do a meal with close family for things like this now.

It’s interesting.

Maybe ours stopped when grandparents too old to attend but it didn’t feel right having the parties without them?