PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to compare and contrast descriptions of "family" amongst Swedish and South African university nursing students.

DESIGN AND METHODS: This qualitative inquiry, using convenience sampling, explored how 232 undergraduate and postgraduate nursing students responded to a two-query, open-response questionnaire designed to elicit a definition of family and a description of who students considered to be members of their own families. Free-text responses were analyzed using manifest and qualitative content analysis.

FINDINGS: Five categories emerged from the data: Ties of Kinship, Ties of Love, Ties of Influence, Ties of Everyday Life, and Tied by Slipknots. Analysis clarified that students' responses from both countries were addressing the same issues and as such were in general very similar. Contrasting Swedish and South African responses, a noticeable difference in proportions of responses coded into each category was evident. Three conceptualizations of family are offered: for the total sample, Swedish sample, and South African sample.

CONCLUSIONS: The study provides data on students' conceptualization of family usable in family research, nursing education, and practice as a basis for comparison, and as a starting point for discussions on the nursing of families, not only in South Africa and Sweden, but also in broader international contexts.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Because understanding family is important for healthcare providers in their everyday work, awareness about what is meant by family can assist nurses through increasing understanding of the complexities surrounding this issue and encouraging cultural sensitivity and openness to patients' and families' views about who is a family member.