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Demographers can help define the concept of generation, and specifically why people feel they belong to a group based on their age. We present an example of such a demographic approach by referring to family generations, i.e. the partition of a person’s kin into three groups: lateral kinship, formed by siblings and first cousins, ascending kinship formed by one’s parents, uncles and aunts and grandparents, and descending kinship, composed of ones children, nephews and nieces and grandchildren. In past socities, no clear age barrier existed between these three groups whereas on the contrary age mixing between kin generations in contemporary societies no longer occurs. This might help understand why our classical « generation gap » didn’t bother our ancestors. The reader will find figures based on a simulation model of kinship that allow us to study the multiple dimensions of the process leading to the progressive separation of various kin groups according to age.