AbstractAlthough family bilingualism has been the focus of much attention in recent times., most studies of family bilingualism have concentrated on ‘monolingual’ countries and ‘bilingual’ or multilingual countries have tended to be neglected. Harding & Riley's typology of family bilingualism is seen as an inadequate description of these cases. This article attempts to develop an alternative typology of bilingual families, which could serve as a more adequate description of family bilingualism in South Africa.