109nuclear family (parents, siblings, children), meaning that even very close
blood ties may tend to be more easily excluded from the family realm in
this country. In other words, in spite of the strong focus on the conjugal
and parent–child dyads, electivity is also a strong principle in Switzerland,
even in the case of these close persons more commonly perceived as
family.
Secondly, we witness a striking difference between the percentage of
respondents in Switzerland who cited friends as important persons and
the percentage of those who considered them as family. For example,
25% of the Swiss respondents cited male friends, but only 4.2% consid-
ered them as family. The same happens with female friends: 29.8% of the
respondents cited female friends, but only 8.7% considered them as fam-
ily. In other words, 20.8% of respondents citing male friends and 21.1%
Table 4.4 Percentage of respondents citing each type of tie in networks of impor-
tant personal ties and in networks of as-family ties
Portugal Switzerland Lithuania
Important
personal
tiesAs-family
tiesImportant
personal
tiesAs-family
tiesImportant
personal
tiesAs-family
ties
Partner 76.7 76.20 72.6 71.40 67.8 65.80
Ex-partners 2.8 1.3 3.7 2.8 1.0 0.6
Father 23.1 23.0 16.7 13.2 17.3 16.5
Mother 33.0 33.0 27.5 22.5 35.2 34.2
Sons 47.2 47.0 31.8 29.3 46.3 45.6
Daughters 49.1 48.9 32.5 28.2 45.3 44.6
Brothers 13.0 12.8 14.8 12.7 15.0 13.3
Sisters 16.8 16.7 20.0 17.1 19.8 18.1
Grandparents 1.3 1.2 0.5 0.5 1.5 1.4
Parents-in-law 7.9 7.3 3.0 2.6 3.8 3.3
Grandchildren 10.2 10.2 1.5 1.3 9.0 8.5
Stepfamily 2.0 1.9 2.9 2.8 1.4 1.4
Children-in-law 7.0 6.6 1.5 0.5 7.5 7.3
Siblings-in-law 6.8 6.5 4.8 4.6 4.2 3.1
Collaterals 8.0 7.3 6.6 6.5 6.1 3.7
Fictive kin 1.2 1.1 1.2 0.8 0.5 0.4
Male friends 15.1 12.1 25.0 4.2 2.2 0.2
Female friends 19.1 11.3 29.8 8.7 4.1 0.9
Colleagues 5.1 2.1 8.9 7.4 4.5 0.7
Other non-kin 2.5 1.1 5.0 0.0 6.5 0.0Changing Meanings of Family in Personal Relationships...