GROWING up as an only child in a small family, a 36-year-old communications professional who wishes to be known only as Hassan says the idea of large family gatherings always felt slightly out of reach.
While many of his friends spent Hari Raya visiting house after house surrounded by cousins, aunts and uncles, Hassan’s celebrations were often over within half a day.
Raised by a single mother alongside an aunt who played a supportive role in his childhood, Hassan says he did not entirely miss out on family life, but grew up aware that certain experiences were absent.
“Family days, emotional support, just being there for one another. It looks fun, but it’s an experience that eluded me,” he says.
As an adult with young children of his own, Hassan once imagined building the large family he never had. Before marriage, he hoped for three or four children, believing a bigger household would offer a stronger support system and companionship for his kids growing up, but economic realities changed those plans.
“After having one, then two, I realised there are too many limiting factors, especially financially,” he says. “If the economic side doesn’t make sense, every-thing becomes harder emotionally and physically too.”
Hassan says caregiving duties and family expectations often feel concentrated on him alone.
“There’s always this invisible pressure,” he says. “If anything unexpected happens, it all falls on me. I felt like I couldn’t fail.
“Sometimes you cannot pursue your passion in life because you’re the only one carrying the family’s hopes,” he says.
Over time, Hassan says he has learned to build support systems outside traditional kinship networks, relying heavily on close friends and community ties.
“You have to cultivate your own ‘village’ because you don’t want to feel alone in this challenging world,” he says.
While Hassan’s experience may once have been less common, Malaysia’s shrinking families mean it could increasingly reflect the realities of future generations.
Cultural shifts
Malaysian society has long been organised around the idea of the extended family. Across ethnic and regional lines, family life traditionally stretched beyond parents and children, involving grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles and neighbours who share caregiving, cultural traditions, and social responsibilities.
But as Malaysia’s birth rate declines and households grow smaller, those long-standing familial structures may be transforming.
The changes are already visible in everyday life. More urban Malaysians now spend festive seasons in the city without a kampung to return to. Traditions like rewang, where communities gather to prepare for festivities, are becoming less common. Informal childcare once shared among relatives and neighbours is also less practiced alongside migration and urbanisation. Even traditional Malay sibling titles such as Along, Angah, Alang, Andak, Ateh, Anjang, and Bongsu are becoming rarer in smaller families.
Malaysia’s average household size has shrunk from 4.3 persons in 2010 to 3.7 in 2024, while the country’s fertility rate has fallen from 4.9 children per woman in 1970 to 1.6 in 2024, well below the replacement level of 2.1. As delayed marriage, rising living costs and dual-income households become the norm, the country looks to be moving towards a future where smaller households and single-child families become increasingly common.
On an economic level, individuals from smaller families and only-child households may increasingly shoulder caregiving and financial responsibilities alone. In adulthood, many could find themselves supporting not only ageing parents but also grandparents in what demographers refer to as a “4-2-1” family structure.
The concept, which originated in China, describes a pattern where one working-age adult is responsible for supporting two parents and four grandparents.
Friends as found families
Shrinking family sizes can impact aspects of Malaysian cultural life that have historically depended on large kinship networks and intergenerational interaction.
Assoc Prof Dr Rosila Bee Mohd Hussain from Universiti Malaya’s Department of Anthropology and Sociology says smaller family networks are already reshaping traditional family functions such as socialisation, emotional support, and economic cooperation.
However, she notes that the idea of “family” itself is not disappearing but changing.
“In another perspective, we can see how kinship networks are evolving, for example the emergence of ‘chosen families’ made up of friends, mentors and neighbours,” she says, describing support communities that take on roles once traditionally fulfilled by relatives.
While the trend is visible nationwide, Prof Rosila Bee notes that urban areas are experiencing the shift more rapidly due to financial pressures, lower fertility rates and changing attitudes towards parenthood.
Rural communities, where larger households remain more common, are changing more gradually, although the broader trajectory remains similar. She adds that smaller family structures could affect social bonding, cultural identity and the transmission of traditional knowledge, particularly for children growing up without interaction with cousins, aunts and uncles.
“Humans need interaction to feel part of a culture and society,” she says.
“Some individuals grow up without close relationships with their extended family, and this might affect their sense of identity and culture,” she says, pointing to fewer opportunities for social learning and shared cultural experiences.
Still, she says such gaps may increasingly be compensated through peer support networks, community groups and participation in cultural activities outside the family unit.
