Looking back over a lifetime of warm memories of family vacations at the beach, I am struck by how often they have little to do with the beach. More often, they’re all about cousins.
Crammed around a long table that was meant to accommodate eight but can seat 16 because we really like each other. Escaping the oversight of stern elders by sneaking off together to walk on the shore after dark, or biking down to a corner market to buy a Pepsi and peanuts. Cousins who, despite seeing each other only once or twice a year (if that), once thrown into each other’s company by their parents, immediately stick to each other like sand on wet skin.
There are the stories that I’ve heard at least 20 times that get us laughing all over again. Like the time a gaggle of youngsters decided to put on a talent show, which started with their insistence that everyone rise and recite the Pledge of Allegiance before the show would start. The adults did their best to obey, but by “and to the Republic for which it stands,” they were covering their faces and turning around, desperately trying to hold back their laughter. But cousins cannot live on oft-repeated stories alone. That’s why I’m glad my children and I were able to spend time together with cousins while on vacation this summer — to make sure we keep adding fresh memories to the stockpile.
Research has found that cousins are bright spots in the “family constellation.” They provide the benefits of family without the baggage.
I love the time I get to spend with my cousins. But, I wonder, would we have been this close of friends had we not been related? That seems to be the litmus test for truly defining what “cousin” means to each of us — and whether the relationship can transcend from talent shows into adulthood, especially in a time when it seems so difficult to cultivate or maintain relationships of any kind.
That said, cousins are hard to define — honestly, how many of us can explain what “once removed” actually means? Franklin D. Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt were fifth cousins — they shared the same great-great-great-great-grandparents. Cousin calculating could be a new Olympic sport, with the gold going to whoever figures out that former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush were 10th cousins, once removed, by virtue of a common ancestor who lived on Cape Cod. “We know we’re related in some way, but it’s not always clear exactly how,” says Heather Hessel, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, and a co-author of one of the surprisingly few studies that have been done on cousin relationships.
Cousins are often our first playmates; they share a not-unsubstantial part of our DNA, and more importantly, they share an even larger part of our memories.
In their study, which was published in the journal Adolescence, Hessel and Rachel J. Christiansen examined cousin dynamics between young adults 18 to 29 years old. They examined how these relationships develop and what benefits they provide. Among 192 people who took the survey, they collectively had 561 people they identified as cousins — although it’s important to note that Hessel and Christiansen let the respondents define what a “cousin” was to them. (In other words, a “cousin” for the purpose of this survey might mean the child of your mother’s sister, but it also might more generally mean a grandchild of your aunt’s stepbrother, or even just someone completely unrelated, but who feels like family in your mind.)
Regardless, within families, the researchers found that cousins are bright spots in what they call the “family constellation,” in part because they provide all the benefits of family without some of the baggage that can come with closer relationships. According to the study, cousin relationships are “generally protective and enriching” and, as such, can be “emotional resources through various life stages.” These relationships stand to be ever more important as the number of close friendships that Americans report dwindles. Unfortunately, the number of cousins in America is also dwindling, as families get smaller. But this also offers incentives for us to appreciate the cousins we have.
The friendship recession
In the U.S., our friendship networks have been decreasing over time. As we become more isolated and siloed into online and physical bubbles, our opportunities to connect with others shrink with our environment. Recent research has found that, compared to decades ago, adult Americans are four to five times more likely to have no friends. One of the biggest factors in this “friendship recession” in people’s lives is a decrease in organic opportunities for connection. Multiple recent studies show that nearly half of American adults find it difficult to make new friends because the chance to connect just isn’t there — or it’s too difficult to find.
In our cousins, we have a built-in connection. They are often our first playmates; they share a not-unsubstantial part of our DNA, and more importantly, they share an even larger part of our memories. It’s an opportunity to “skip past go,” knowing what connects you, and knowing that it’s not something as transient as a college major, a summer camp or a penchant for running marathons. It’s somehow more grounding, yet less committal. It doesn’t demand that you be inseparable or the best of friends or someone you’re not. But it implores loyalty, and a dedication to remembering all your most embarrassing moments as kids.
Hessel shared with me one of her own cousin memories from a few decades ago, when her grandmother passed away.
On the weekend of the funeral, she and her cousin “took our grandmother’s old 1969 Ford out to the Dairy Queen — it was so rusted, you could see the road through the floorboard. Even though we don’t talk all that often, we have that memory together, which is potent. This was my grandmother — this was our grandmother.”
The memory highlights another function of cousins: They are present at the most poignant moments of our life, moments of mourning and celebration, like deaths, weddings and births.
In the Gospel of Luke, there’s a story that follows Mary, the mother of Jesus, as she traveled to meet her cousin Elisabeth, who was also pregnant. Upon their reunion, it’s written that Elisabeth’s child leapt in her womb. It was perhaps the most joyful meeting of cousins ever. Some two millennia later, my cousin Stephanie and I played out this scene when I arrived, pregnant, at her baby shower. It was a small and sublime pleasure for two cousins to sit side by side, with our sons — second cousins — in utero.
My son and his cousin are 25 years old now, and although they live 700 miles apart and only see each other once a year, they have much more in common than an impending deadline to find their own health insurance plans.
Cousins can feel like siblings “because they want to be, not because they have to be.”
For example, they both play a mean game of Scat, an obscure and simple card game that I’ve only ever seen my own cousins play — and then only at family reunions. They have their own memories, these young men, but they are also repositories of the memories of others in the family, those talent show stories that will be repeated year after year, with tears or laughter.
Hessel and Christiansen would tell these young men that they need to put in a little bit of effort to reap the full benefits of this special connection. It’s “repeated and intentional interaction” that builds and sustains these relationships, even if the interaction is just exchanging birthday greetings, their research found.
A pride of cousins
There is no special word to describe a gathering of cousins, other than, perhaps, a reunion. A “group of friends” works, too. But if we were to choose one from the variety of words used to describe gatherings of animals, I’d pick the one used to describe a gathering of lions: pride.
My own pride of cousins, scattered about the country, is widely diverse when it comes to how we live and work and practice our religious faith. We have little in common and everything in common at the same time. There is a warmth between us that transcends the cold explanation of shared DNA, and none of the chill that can sometimes arise between people who grew up in the same house.
“Sibling relationships can have a lot of baggage that cousin relationships don’t necessarily have. With cousin relationships, you have a lot more autonomy. You can choose to connect, but you don’t have to. Some cousins are close — they will say, ‘She’s like a sister to me.’ But that’s because they want to be, not because they have to be,” Hessel says.
In other words, unlike a parent, for whom we have moral if not legal obligations, when a cousin shows up in an RV (think Cousin Eddie in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”), we can have them camp in the yard, not giving up the best bedroom in the house. And speaking of Cousin Eddie, that’s something else that Hessel’s and Christiansen’s study found — cousins sometimes bond over “difficult” family relationships, with one person saying it “made me happy that someone understood how I felt.”
Every pride of cousins has its own Cousin Eddie, it seems.
And just as in “Christmas Vacation,” every cousin can turn out to be an unexpected source of support. Hessel noted that there is an element of surprise when cousins come through for each other, as they’re not obligated to each other, and most are not in our lives daily, and yet, there is a bond that makes us want to help each other.
“Frequently participants mentioned that older cousins wanted to play a mentoring role,” Hessel said. “I think there is an opportunity to remind people, especially young people, that this is another resource for you, and you might be able to share something special with this person.”
The older we get, the more we come to realize how precious and rare it is to be let into another person’s life, in an age of cocooning and silos. The thing about cousins is, we don’t have to let them into our lives or wait for them to invite us into theirs. They’re already part of our story — no matter what chapter we’re on.
This story appears in the November 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.