Hello friends! Last week I talked about the different family dynamics in the home and how they influence how we function together. But, we know a lot of different factors play into how our families function together, so today I thought I would blog about the cultures in families and how they influence how we react and respond to each other in our family units. Now, when I talk about culture, I don’t just mean the ethnic culture that each family comes from (although that is a huge influence as well), I mean the cultures that we create in our families come based on our social standing in society. This will determine if we work a lot or not at all, causing parents to be home with their children or not, potentially effective the relationship between parents and children, and then even sibling to sibling.

As I was studying about the different cultures of families, I particularly studied one article called “The Costs of Getting Ahead” by Marticia L. Bacallao and Paul R. Smokowski, this article primarily focuses on the effects that immigration has on Mexican families. Which, in my opinion, there was a dramatic difference in how the family was before immigration compared to after immigration.  From the multiple accounts given, these families were strong tight units before they immigrated to the United States, but when they got here, things took a turn for the worst as they had to begin working long hours, leaving behind family members (a lot of the time husbands), traditions, and language. In most cases with these families, it was the mother who came to the united states with her children (without her husband) and had to be the main provider for the family, taking her away from her children during the critical ages where guidance from a parent is very much needed. So, majority of the time that would leave these kids home and alone increasing their odds to get in trouble. I know for me, when I was in the 2^nd and 3^rd grade my mother and father both worked. So that left me and my 2 other elementary aged siblings home alone for a few hours before mom came home from work. This left us with a few hours to be able to do whatever we wanted, and very often my siblings and I got in trouble when we were caught doing those things we weren’t supposed to by mom when she got home. The only time that we stopped doing what we weren’t supposed to was when mom started to stay home and was with us most of the time. I can honestly say that if she didn’t start staying home, my disobedient behavior probably wouldn’t have stopped the way it did.

Because teenagers where far away from their extended families it caused many of them a lot of stress. One young woman spoke about how hard it was dealing with the emotional stress of being separated from Grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. She became depressed and contemplated suicide as her mother was away at work and had no one she loved that she could turn to. Other teenagers would get into trouble with the law because there was no one around to supervise or correct them. In other families, parents got divorces or the relationships with the Father were very strained due to the long hours spent at work or the long time they would be separated from the family. 

In conclusion, we see that there are many things that contribute to our family cultures, work, money, time, priorities, hobbies, location, etc. All these daily factors contribute to how we could be as a family and where we can end up in the future.  We know it is important for us to be with our children, growing strong relationships to help secure and sustain them in their futures to have a more positive outcome.