It's easy, I think, to write the modern obsession with the nuclear family back onto those times, but from what I've read of that time and my own experience of family outide the modern context, um. Not true, particularly in the time before before easy, cheap transportation.

Or maybe it's just the notion of a whole family tree full of solid, stolid of Bush makes me giggle. :D I can only imagine how noiy family gatherings were.