Looking beyond the household: intergenerational perspectives on living kin and contacts with kin in Great Britain

In this article we present the first results from a special module on kin and contact with kin included in the Omnibus Survey earlier in 1999. Our results show that nearly everybody in contemporary Britain has a living parent or a living child, and many have both. Membership of three generational families is now common and quite large minorities of very old people aged 80 and over are members of families including four living generations. Half or more of those with a father, mother or (eldest) child alive see them at least once a week and exchanges of help between mothers and their own mothers are common. Half of those who have the relatives considered, live within half an hour's journey time of them, and half of the sample live within half an hour of the place where they spent most of their childhood. The results show that in contemporary Britain the vast majority has close relatives in different generations with whom they are in regular contact.