March Blog Post

One sentence that stood out to me over the past few weeks is actually a recent one that I wasn’t able to discuss in class with everyone, so I’m choosing to discuss it now. It’s taken from the article “Family Bullies” by Keith Berry & Tony E. Adams. I didn’t get too far into the article before stumbling across a sentence that made me stop and think for a minute. So, without further ado…

“Indeed, 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.”  

The reason this stands out to me has to do with what we talked about a few weeks ago about roles within society and culture within relationships. One example that comes to mind is taken from the conversation about the Disney video with gender roles and race — specifically the conversation about Belle and domestic violence and the image that puts in children’s heads as they deal with domestic abuse within their own families. It was one of those things that didn’t quite stand out at first, but when analyzed and discussed throws you for a loop and has you going “ohhhh shoot.” I feel like that’s similar to family bullying. At least the kind of family bullying that takes place within my family. You wouldn’t consider the situation that occurs within my family as bullying at first, but after reading the article I pulled that sentence from, it opens you up to the idea. 

This article stood out to me because it was something that connected with me. As I started to thoroughly analyze my family’s dynamic, I realized that my family didn’t fit in with the “assumptions and expectations concerning family communication” within our culture. Growing up, I experienced the typical family dynamic. It wasn’t until I started watching Full House every Saturday morning that I realized families were different. My family now is actually exactly the opposite of how it was growing up. It is nowhere near conventional, but I still have so much love for it and I wouldn’t change a thing. 

Without turning this into too weird of a post, I’ll briefly explain my family’s background as well as the type of bullying that goes on within it. When I say unconventional, I mean my mom’s side of the family consists entirely of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’m sure that religion is a completely different topic that would be interesting in itself to study in regards to relationship culture, but within this religion specifically, they are very opposed to participating with anyone who doesn’t share the same beliefs. In other words, if you turn away after already being exposed to “the truth,” you’re shunned until you find your way back? Maybe as a form of punishment? I’m not quite sure. But growing up in the religion, you don’t really question what you know because you don’t know any different. The family on my mom’s side was the only family we really had. My dad was an only child and both of his parents had passed when I was a kid. I grew up very close to my aunt, uncle, and cousins on my mom's side spending a lot of time with them while my parents were going through their divorce.  My mom had questioned the teachings of the religion for quite some time but knew the consequences of leaving and surely didn’t want to change the relationship culture within my family. Her and my aunt were raised Jehovah’s Witnesses. When she decided to stop attending the church meetings and disassociate with the religion, she encouraged my brother and me to essentially do what we felt was right while keeping an open mind and thinking for ourselves. That was around ten years ago. My “family” and I haven’t spoken more than two or three times over that span of time and the speaking only took place because my Grandpa had been in the hospital. It was the strangest thing though, my aunt acted like nothing had changed. It was by far the most bizarre interaction I have had with anyone. But they sure brought up that they were waiting for us to return to the religion. And to me, that’s its own form of bullying. I’m not even sure they’re aware of it, but they’re emotionally manipulating us into reconsidering our decision promising family bonding only upon returning to the religion. It’s easy for me to look at this from an outside point of view because now they’re more like familiar strangers to me, people I once knew. They must be aware that they’ve closed themselves off to us, but what perplexes me is whether or not they think it was the right thing to do or if they were just doing what they were told. I know they don’t see it as bullying, but it feels like it is. And do they feel like us disassociating from the religion was a form of us disassociating ourselves from them? 

It’d be interesting to answer these questions from a scholarly point of view, looking deeper into what kind of barriers are crossed and how communication and relationship culture is altered when considering the role religion plays in it all. 

Keith Berry & Tony E. Adams (2016) Family Bullies, Journal of Family Communication, 16:1, 51-63, DOI: 10.1080/15267431.2015.1111217