  Using a large dataset with individual-level demographic information of 60,000
families in contemporary Finland, we analyse the variation and cultural
assortativity in a network of families. Families are considered as vertices and
unions between males and females who have a common child and belong to
different families are considered as edges in such a network of families. The
sampled network is a collection of many disjoint components with the largest
connected component being dominated by families rooted in one specific region.
We characterize the network in terms of the basic structural properties and
then explore the network transitivity and assortativity with regards to regions
of origin and linguistic identity. Transitivity is seen to result from
linguistic homophily in the network. Overall, our results demonstrate that
geographic proximity and language strongly influence the structuring of
network.
