What are the reasons we normally don't know our relatives who are kind of distant?

Question

For example, maybe most of us don't know our second or third cousins/uncles. At least without researching

Answer 1

My family had a Bible where all these things were entered. Given than most of my grandparents generation were killed in the First World War (men) or never married (women) there were actually very few cousins in consequence.

Answer 2

It used to be that families got together on Sundays for big family dinners or picnics. Everyone brought food and it was a chance for second or even third cousins to get to know one another. Those immigrant and family ties were strong and people weren't distracted by TV and football games. But times change, families move away from one another and drift apart. My closest relatives (other than my children) live 300 miles away, so I don't see them very often.

Answer 3

Distance and lack of common interests. I have a couple of hundred third cousins whose names I know, because I do genealogy like normal people do crossword puzzles, but they live 2,000 miles from me and we never correspond. I have one 3rd cousin who lives 12 miles from me and goes to the same church I do; we know each other.

Most people make an attempt to stay in contact with most of their first cousins, if only to keep them on their Christmas Card list, but that's as far as it goes.

Answer 4

If you means in the US, it could be because of political differences or movement within the family/

Answer 5

usually because of the distance

and some decades ago, sometimes because there's too many of them

Answer 6

Because we haven't lived near them or visited them.we only know people we have known as children and visited

Answer 7

Because they generally don't live close to you and aren't really friends with your family, so you never see them,