CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Just wondering what structures people use to represent the concept of a family (i.e. a group of people who are related to each other) as distinct from a group of people who choose to live together. We're setting up for a research study which will involve families that include grown-up children, who often don't live at the same address as their parents. So this seems to point us towards creating an organization sub-type of 'family' which people can have various relationshsips with: father in family, mother in family, eldest child in family, etc., as well as relationships between the individuals themselves, so that we can address the family as a unit, as well as individual volunteers.

Anyone done anything similar? Or used household to achieve the same effect?

I think that's true, and for our purposes I think we'd want to track family relationships more than household ones - who people are related to matters more to us than where they live - but I can easily imagine scenarios where we would need to know details of both. My problem with household as a concept is that it implies a common address, whereas families with adult children rarely all live together.

That's true. Maybe we don't need to define the family unit, but just imply it as the sum of all the relationships. Each person already has a 'family id' recorded as custom data, so we can find all the people in a particular family just by referencing that field. Will consider this some more before making a final decision...

Realize this is an old thread but wondered if there was some outcome on this topic.  We have individuals and couples and households seems like way too much work.  Looking for some best practices.

What I normally do with the data for congregations I work with. Households are an important "logical" entity for the staff of the congregation when they are working with their congregants.

What I do if there is a family that includes a combination of adults and minor children:

Jane Smith has a "spouse of" relationship with John Doe
Jane Smith and John Doe have "parent of" relationships with their 2 minor children(Nathan and Maddie)  who live at home.
Jane Smith and John Doe have a "parent of independent child" relationship with their oldest child (Julie), who lives on their own.
Jane, John and the 2 minor children are all household members of the "Doe/Smith Household" AND have a "shares address with"
Jane has a "head of household" relationship to the "Doe/Smith Household"
all three children (Nathan, Maddie and Julie) have sibling relationships with each other.

If a person is single, or its just 2 adults living as a couple then I do not bother with households.

Membership types that are configured to cover relatives, are set to cover "parent of". It does NOT cover "parent of independent child"
When producing mailing labels, I do one of the following

a) Use "Merge labels for contacts belonging to the same household" option. 

b) (most common) Search on "primary member only" so that I only get at most one person per household ( and it doesn't matter if the person is not part of any household)  then use a custom token on the top line of the label that shows "Jane Smith and John Doe" or "Sam and Rebecca Jones" for any married/partnered people.


What is currently a hassle is when a new family that includes 2 adults and minor children needs to be added to the database. I am thinking of using Drupal WebForms with the CiviCRM integration to create a "new household" form that creates all the typical relationships under the hood.  (Handling blended families is always a challenge: ie Each adult has minor children (living at home) from a previous relationship, and they also have young children together.)

For people living at a common residence ( eg a dorm, co-op house, community house, etc) I do NOT use the "shares address with".

I never use the mailing label option "Merge labels for contacts with the same address" as it is dangerous for reasons mentioned above.