March Blog Post

I found inspiration from last weeks discussion on families and culture. We talked about loosing touch with extended kinship and the importance of the "nuclear family." I do see this to be true even within my own life. I do not keep touch within anyone outside of my immediate family. This isn't because they lack relevancy or importance it's more so a testimony to how I was raised to act towards extended family. It seems like as society evolves and becomes more individualistic the need for family relationships lessens. Just as it may be common to loose touch with a distant relative it is also becoming more common to loose touch with aging parents. It is an unfortunate reality that many grandparents in retirement homes are only visited by their children and grandchildren a few times a year if even that.

On the other hand, the idea of the nuclear family has been something on my mind quite a bit lately. I see my roommate who has a grand vision of her future in health sciences be overshadowed by educational disabilities. I have noticed this same theme in several of my personal relationships with friends who come from broken homes. I would not go as far to say that this is a pattern within all people who comes from non-traditional families but it does definitely impact a childs life and furthermore their education. 

As we discussed in class, the idea of the "nuclear family" is only true to some parts of North America. Other cultures have different values yet they have successful families. It seems as if the narrow-minded and fast paced lifestyles of US citizens has stopped us from seeing the true benefits and downfalls to each type of family relationship.