111The impact of national context also reveals that the process of overlap
between personal and family networks operates differently across the
three countries: on the one hand, in Portugal and Lithuania, there is a
tendency for respondents to perceive important personal ties in general as
family; this would point, in these countries, to an overlap whereby close
personal relationships are imbued with family meaning and easily
absorbed into the realm of the family. However, in Portugal, even those
that are non-kin may be imbued with family meaning, driven by a strong
process of suffusion between kin and non-kin and between personal and
family ties, while in Lithuania the overlap is mainly driven by the overall
salience of kin in personal relationships. In contrast, there seems to be a
weaker process of suffusion between personal and family bonds in
Switzerland, mainly linked to the fact that non-kin members, in particu-
lar friends (who are so frequently cited by Swiss respondents) are, in gen-
eral, less likely to be perceived as family. In this country, family meaning
thus emerges as strongly driven by blood and alliance principles as well as
by more electivity within kinship ties, meaning that even children may
sometimes be excluded from family meaning.
Typology of As-Family Networks
In the previous section, we identified the main ties that are considered as
family, by characterizing the network members (alters) independently.
But can we find different network patterns by examining the combina-
tion of those specific ties?
In order to explore the composition features of as-family networks, we
carried out a cluster analysis in the total sample, using the Wards Method
extraction, and based on the Euclidean distances, as was suggested by
Widmer ( 2006 ). As active variables, we introduced the average number
of alters cited in each of the main categories of ties considered as family:
partner, father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, parent-in-law,
grandchildren, children-in-law, sibling-in-law, collateral (cousins, aunts,
uncles, nieces, nephews), female friend, male friend, co-worker, and an
aggregate category (ex-partner, grandparents, step-family, fictive kin, and
other non-kin). These categories of ties were mentioned by more than
Changing Meanings of Family in Personal Relationships...