Things that affect the family

This week we were talking about how different things can affect the family. We made a list that contained some of the topics such as: location, housing and surroundings, possessions, employment, quality of life, health, and clatter vs clutter. Everything on this list can affect the family in a big way. I never really thought of how your possessions can affect the way you live. If you think about your live with all the stuff you have, it’s not too bad. Say we take away a couch. How might that affect a person’s life. They just don’t have another place to sit. Now take a person’s bed, car, stove, and even a kitchen table away, things might change a little bit. Just think about how your life might change if some of your important and necessary possessions were gone. There was one thing that wasn’t on the list that we did end up talking about and that was the influence of the father.

What does the father do in the home? Typically, he is the one that fixes things around the house, teaches the kids how to work, and he provides for the family. Well what happens when the father isn’t there? Who now has the responsibility to provide for the family? Most of the time the mother ends up going to work and provides for the family. The next thing that we talked about was one that I never really realized. It was that the father is the one who teaches the boys in the family how to treat women. The father shows this example by how he treats his wife. If he treats her well, the sons will most likely end up treating the women they date or the woman they marry just like how their father treated their mother the same way. A lot of the time we don’t realize that how important the father and his influence is on the family. Especially to the boys in the family. Without the influence of the father they miss out on learning some important life lessons.

On Thursday in class we went over the reading assignment about a Hispanic family and their move to America. The reason why we were even talking about this was because of the how cultures affects the family. With this family they were a very close family. Not with their immediate family, but with their extended family. In Mexico everyone always has family over. Family is one of the most important things to the Mexican culture. So, when the family decided to move to the united sates it was defiantly going to change the family dynamic. The first step that the family took was sending the father to the united states to get everything ready for them. The father was gone for three years before the rest of the family was able to go. Waiting three years for the family to be together again defiantly took its toll. The husband and the wife had a completely different relationship. The father and his kid’s relationship changed drastically. Nothing was the same. When a member of the family is gone that long the family adapts to that absence. So, when that family member returns it’s not the same. The family has to adjust having them back in their lives.

One question that my teacher wanted us to ask was how does family create culture? I think that the family created culture by starting traditions that eventually will turn into part of the culture. Just like family gatherings. In some cultures, family gatherings are a daily occurrence while others, they rarely get to be together once a year.