TOPIC: Family Composition and Ideals
SOURCE: “Certain features of the typical
American family stand out” (RR 110).
RELATION: Chapter 5 in ANTHRO outlines the
traditions and tendencies of families in Trobriand, Ju/wasi, and traditional
Chinese societies. This led me to think about the composition of families in my
life and the reasons they exist in the ways that they do.
DESCRIPTION: Upon moving into a dormitory with
hundreds of other first-year freshmen, I was not exactly sure what I should
anticipate or expect. As one of seven children, I did not think it strange that
I would be sharing a restroom with so many other girls on the floor, and I was
certainly not new to the idea of having a roommate. To other girls, however,
these things seemed strange, and these differences sparked conversation on what
we all consider to compose the typical family in America—we all thought we had
one. But what we found out was that all of our families seemed to be made up in
very different ways with many sorts of people. So we looked for similarities
between the many groups that we call families. We found that I came from the
largest group, including the most siblings as well as cousins. (I was also the
only one of the group who had been raised by a member of the extended family,
my Aunt Mindy, which would explain why I was also the only one who readily
included cousins and other members of kin in the discussion when asked about my
family back home.) Others had situations unfamiliar to me, though, and it
seemed that everyone had very different backgrounds and ideas of what they
would think to be typical of a family. A common trend I noticed was a household
of two siblings, which most people in the group agreed to be “normal.” This was
followed, of course, by the count of parents at two: a mother and a father. A
few people, including myself, interjected and explained that we had more, and
sometimes fewer, parents due to circumstances including divorce, remarriage,
and death.
COMMENTARY/ANALYSIS: What
we all managed to gather from this talk was the fact that while our situations
all varied, we all had somewhat similar views when it came to what we figured
other cultures might consider being “typical” of a family in American culture.
And from there, we reasoned why we all seemed to think of that particular sort
of family as “normal” despite the fact that none of our own families fit that
expectation very closely. We knew we at least had basic understandings of what
exactly composes a family in this culture, with consideration for both the
family of orientation (father, mother, self, siblings) and the family of
procreation (husband, wife, and their children). The ties between our various
homes became clearer, too, once families from other cultures beside our own
came into the picture. None of us even thought to consider the fact that some
people might not even think of both a father and a mother when we think of the
rearing of a child. We thought, of course, of the situation in which either of
those parents might not be present, but we acknowledged it as just that: an
absence, as if something was missing and everyone would consider it thusly. It
did not seem usual to us that the people of another culture might not even take
into account the contribution made by both a male and female parent in the
birth and raising of the next generation. We were thinking of our families in
terms of deviations from a standard set by “norms” in the media and the
families of our friends. However, there exist many types of families and many
different ideas of what it would mean for that family to be “typical”, such as
in the Trobriand Islander, Ju/wasi, and Chinese farming families of the world.
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