Chosen family

The network of people one treats as family by deliberate choice rather than by birth or marriage — a concept originating in queer community and widely embraced by polyamorous practice.

1 min read · Reviewed 2026-05-20

Chosen family is a concept that originated in queer community in the 1970s and 1980s, when many queer people — disowned by birth families or excluded from legal-family infrastructure — built deliberate networks of mutual care and called them family. The term is now used widely beyond its origin, including in polyamorous practice, to name the people one treats as family without the relationship being biological or marital.

Polyamorous polycules often function as chosen family in some configuration. The metamours, the partners, the partners' partners — across a kitchen-table polycule, these relationships often look much like extended family, with shared rituals, shared care responsibilities, shared identity-as-a-unit. The fact that some of the relationships within the polycule are romantic and some are polyaffective does not change that the whole functions as family.

Chosen family is real family in the senses that matter for daily life: emotional support, practical help, presence at the important moments, shared celebration, mutual care through hard times. What it lacks in many jurisdictions is the legal recognition that biological and marital family receive automatically — chosen family members do not have inheritance rights, hospital-visitation rights, medical-decision authority, custody rights, or immigration sponsorship rights unless those have been explicitly constructed through wills, proxies, partnerships, or adoption.

The activism and the infrastructure-building work of building real recognition for chosen family — including polyamorous family — overlaps significantly with queer rights work, because the gap is the same: the law has decided which family configurations count, and many of the ones that don't count are functioning as family every day.

Where this term fits in the wider picture

Ethical non-monogamy is a network of overlapping practices, identities, and structures — and Chosen family connects to several of them. The neighbouring terms below show how this one sits alongside the rest of the vocabulary practitioners actually use; the guide at the end is the longer-form treatment of the same territory.

Closely-related vocabulary

Polyfamily
A polycule that functions as a chosen family — shared household, shared finances, often shared parenting — across more than two adults.
Polyaffective
The non-sexual, non-romantic affection that develops between metamours and across polycules — coined by sociologist Elisabeth Sheff to name the bond that isn't romantic but is real.
Metamour
Your partner's other partner. Your partner-in-law, in a sense — a person you are connected to through a shared partner but are not themselves partnered with.

Questions practitioners actually ask about this

Continue reading

The longer treatment of this territory is in the guide What is ethical non-monogamy? A clear primer for adults thinking it through — An honest, plain-language introduction to ethical non-monogamy — what it is, what it isn't, the configurations it covers, and the questions it asks of you.

New to ethical non-monogamy? Start with the glossary for vocabulary, the structures index for the named relationship configurations practitioners actually use, and the guides for longer-form treatment of the common questions.