Secret family recipe
Southern families mix faith, family history, traditions and technology to keep connected

For Southerners, secret family recipes extend to more than Aunt Lily’s famous three-bean salad.

A recent study conducted by Modern Woodmen of America, Rock Island, Ill., finds that residents of the southern United States are more likely than Americans as a whole to say they are very close with their extended family.

As a fraternal financial services organization, Modern Woodmen’s mission is to improve the quality of life for its members and their families. The organization created a Web resource, www.gatherings.info, which offers tips to help Southerners and others create traditions and plan gatherings with immediate and extended family.

“Southerners seem to have stronger connections with their extended family than other Americans,” says Modern Woodmen’s Sharon Snawerdt.  “According to our survey, 42 percent of respondents in the South claimed they are very close with their extended family.” 

A potluck of qualities keeps Southern families strong
According to Deborah Thomason, a certified family-life educator and associate professor of Family and Youth Development for Clemson University, Clemson, S.C., several key ingredients bind Southern families together more so than their counterparts in other regions of the country.

Thomason points to Clemson University studies conducted in the 1980s and the mid-90s.  From those studies, they generated a list of the top 10 characteristics of strong families.  Among the characteristics were family history, communication, and spirituality, as well as qualities such as optimism, resiliency and values.

“Family history, communication and spirituality are probably the main elements that really help keep Southern families connected,” says Thomason, who helped develop Clemson University’s Build Family Strength curriculum that is used nationwide by various educational institutions. “But they are intertwined and build on one another. We couldn’t isolate one factor above another.”

A regional specialty
Shaye Polk of Fuquay Varina, N.C., and a graduate student at East Carolina University, points out that her college friends from New Jersey and New York are close to their family, too, but in a different way.

“People in the South seem to have a greater connection to their grandparents and family members outside their immediate family circle,” observes Polk. “I have friends whose family still lives mostly in the state, and they get together frequently with their extended family, up to their second cousins.”

Cindra Bell of Jacksonville, Ark., would concu