November Blog Post

In “Family Bullies”, one of the articles we read earlier this month, Keith Berry and Tony E. Adams explore bullying within different family contexts. In the beginning they state that “assumptions and expectations concerning family communication pervade our culture, and conceptualize family life and persons' orientations to the family in certain ways, effectively leaving little room for variation” and I think that is is 100% true (51). I remember briefly discussing this in class and if you think about it, when you think of a family, I think the general perception is a big happy family with married parents and kids who all get along great and live fantastic lives, but that isn’t always the case.

Ever since I was little, I always believed that all my friends’ families were perfect. Even I believed that my family was a perfect family for the longest time. My parents were married with the three of us kids and our dog and everything was good for the most part. However, as I got older some of the relationships within the family began to deteriorate. One of my younger brothers and I became both the victims and the bullies within our family. We never really physically hurt each other, but instead relied more on verbal abuse and this is a pattern that continued for years.

I always felt terrible because I lived with the “assumption that family members are obligated to get along”, but I think it’s important to remember that relationships don’t always work that way (59). According to Berry and Adams, it's important “to recognize more diverse possibilities for relationships” and that is something that I have to remember while moving forward and looking to improve the relationships I have within my family (53). Overall, I thought that their article really challenged some of the general perceptions that we form about families and relationships within them, but it was also reassuring to know that these relationships vary.