Culture: The Importance of Family

Key points

• Arabs think of 'family' as more than parents and children — it includes the extended family: grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
• Visiting a family means hearing a lot of conversation centered on family news: how a cousin or an aunt is doing, family problems, and updates.
• As a visitor, expect to be asked a lot about your own family too — not just your immediate family, but your aunts, uncles, and grandparents as well.
• It's common, especially in rural areas but also in cities, for several generations or extended-family members to live together in one household.
• Family functions as a social support network: important decisions are made with the family's involvement, regardless of whether the person could afford to decide alone financially.
• This is evolving: multi-generational households and frequent visiting are less common now than in the past, partly because people increasingly move to different cities for work, making frequent family contact harder.

Full text

When Arabs think about family, they not only think of the immediate family — mother, father, and children — but also the extended family: grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. So what does that mean for a language learner? First, when you visit a family, you'll hear a lot of conversation centered on the family: problems, news, how a particular cousin or aunt is doing, and so on. Second, when you spend time with a family in the Arab world, you'll be asked a lot of questions about your own family too — not just your immediate family, but also your aunt, your uncle, your grandmother, or your grandfather. So get used to talking and learning a lot of family vocabulary. Another trend tied to the importance of the extended family is that it's very common to find several generations, or members of the extended family, living together in the same household — more common in rural areas, but it happens in urban areas too. The family in the Arab world also provides a social network of support: family is involved in every important decision a person makes, regardless of whether that person has the financial means to decide entirely on their own. Of course, like every society, the concept of family in Arab society is evolving. It's no longer as common as it used to be to find several generations or extended-family members living under one roof, and visiting each other as often — daily or weekly, as families used to — is less common now too, partly because people are moving to different cities for work, and the geographical distance makes frequent visits and contact harder.