No “typical” family type exists. Instead, families come in many different forms (Braithwaite et al., 2010). But even these forms are not fixed: you may experience several different family structures as you progress through life. For example, 60 years ago, the nuclear family—a wife, husband, and their biological or adopted children—was the most common family type in North America. Today, it is in the minority. Instead, families may include children or not; have one, two, or several parents; be headed by heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered people; include other relatives such as grandparents; include stepparents and stepsiblings; or any other combination you can imagine! While we discuss the family types below, consider how your family experiences align with or depart from these depictions. But, perhaps most important, keep this in mind: what matters most is not the “type” of family you have, but whom you consider part of your family in terms of love, respect, and communication.

When relatives such as aunts, uncles, parents, children, and grandparents live together in a common household, the result is an extended family. By the year 2050, 100 million people in the United States will be over the age of 65, and many of these individuals will be sharing a household with relatives. Numerous Italian American, African American, and Asian American families fall into this category.

Approximately half of marriages in the United States and Canada are remarriages for one or both partners (Coleman, Ganong, & Fine, 2000). This often creates a stepfamily in which at least one of the adults has a child or children from a previous relationship (Ganong & Coleman, 1994). Stepfamilies often are called “blended” or “remarried” families. More than 50 percent of children born throughout the twenty-first century will grow up in stepfamilies (Crosnoe & Cavanagh, 2010).

Some couples live together prior to or instead of marriage. These cohabiting couples consist of two unmarried, romantically involved adults living together in a household, with or without children. Cohabitation is steadily increasing in Western societies (Adams, 2004). This is partly due to an increase in cohabitation among middle-aged and older adults, many of whom were formerly married but now want the relational flexibility that cohabitation affords (Silverstein & Giarrusso, 2010).

In a single-parent family, only one adult resides in the household, possessing sole responsibility as caregiver for the children. As of 2011, 27 percent of children in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011) and about 16 percent of children in Canada (HRSDC, 2006) were growing up in single-parent households.