Is this wrong? It's going to niggle in my brain all afternoon if someone doesn't tell me!

[squeaver]

On the front of a magazine, the X-Factor bird: "I've ruined my family's lives".

So "family" is singular but "lives" is plural. Obviously there is more than one person in her family, but it doesn't look correct to me.

Could someone explain the rule to me please?

Hmmm
I've ruined all my family's lives
(each of them seperately in different ways)
or
I've ruined my family's life
(as a group, they have suffered)

is what I would say.

I think it is possibly right although not the best use of the 's. If it were multiple family's it would be families lives.

Whereas you couldnt use family's life because you are talking about multiple (people) so they are seperate.

But then again i was crap no good at English at school

think I agree with lentileater. It's not right as it is but I was tryig to think what I would say in that circumstance but then realised that I never would anyway

I would have thought, as family is a collective noun (I think?) that there would be multiple lives involved so it's ok.

I am an amateur at this though so don't take my word for it!

Yes I think that is it, Zoe.

Because you can talk about e.g. a team in the same way.

Where's Edam? She'll know definitively.

No...looks grammatically right to me.

The lives are plural, and they belong to teh family....so the apostrophe is needed...

It just doesn't read well and a beter choice of sentance would probably worked better