Family Culture

This week we looked into the culture of the family, and how it is affected by where we live, what we believe what we look like, and even the language we speak.  We discussed the difference between traditions and rituals, and how to perpetuate those into our coming generations.

One of the things we went over was the effects on a family when they decide to move from Mexico to the U.S. Many families decide to immigrate for the benefit of their children, and to give them better opportunities. This is a very noble reason, but it can cause some damage to the family structure and culture. We looked into a situation, where there were two brothers, with their own families. Both families had a similar situation, the father worked while the mother stayed home to raise and nourish the children. One family decided they wanted to move to the United States, so the father left first, to go and find a job to pay for the rest of the family so they could also come. What they were expecting to happen, is that they would follow the father up after only 6 months, but it ended up being 5 years before they were able to leave and rejoin their father. But this wasn’t the only issue. Because they were moving their illegally, they could only take with them what they could run with. This also meant that once they got to the U.S, they couldn’t have a very nice place to live, or very good jobs and they had to stay kind of on the down low. Also, because they had separated from their dad for 5 years, the oldest son had kind of taken over the father’s role, so when they reconnected the family had a hard time readjusting to the father being there to lead them. They went from a very well connected family with a great relationship, to hardly knowing each other. And similar things can happen in other situations. Their whole family culture changed from moving from one location to another.

Most people think of a tradition as something that you do regularly, for example I always thought my family’s “Pizza and Movie Night” every Friday was a tradition, but actually this is called a ritual. A tradition is defined as: inherited patterns of belief or behavior. Customs that are passed down from generation to generation, not just little activities that we repeat over and over. For example, my parents passed down their religious beliefs, and I plan to pass those on to my children and I hope that that is a tradition that carries on for generations and generations to come. There are several aspects of my family culture that I would like to pass on, and some things I would like to change. Something about my family is we are late to EVERYTHING. It doesn’t matter how early we get ready or even how early we leave, something will happen that makes us late. And of course, one of my biggest pet peeves is being late. So that is part of my culture that I would like to change for the future generations. On the other hand, something I’d like to keep is the family time that we had. We were very fortunate to have a stay at home mom, and a dad that worked in an in-home office, so both parents were always there. This means, that we got a lot of family time. My siblings are some of my closest friends and I wouldn’t trade that relationship for the world, and I believe that is a result of all the family trips and rituals that we had. That is something from my culture that I hope continues on in my family and for generations to come.