Kinship Term Analysis

During my last meeting with my partner we discussed kinship terms and created our family trees. My partner lived her entire life in Saudi Arabia only spoke Arabic before she came to the United States six months ago. Asking questions about the kinship terms that she uses revealed both similarities and differences about how our families are set up. This discussion showed that the ways that our families are structured are very different. We discussed the terms that my partner uses to with regards to members of her family, particularly with her immediate family members. While there were similarities in the terms that we use to refer to members of our family, my partner’s terminology proved to be more extensive than my own. One of the first and …show more content…
The pattern that I noticed with my partner’s kinship terms was that the terms will tell you whether a family member is from the paternal or maternal side of the family. These terms will also tell you whether a family member is male or female, which makes it different from my own terminology when referring to cousins. The kinship terms that my partner uses do not reveal whether or not a person is older or younger relative to yourself, which is a similarity between our kinship terms. My partner also stated that family is very important to her, and because of this, kinship terms are reserved to people that she is related to and those that have married into her family. My partner also said that there are multiple terms that can be used for many members of your family, which is another similarity our kinship terms. For this assignment we chose to focus on the terminology that my partner uses the …show more content…
As previously stated, one of the first things that became clear was that my partner’s family is much larger than my own. In addition to having a larger family, my partner also seemed much closer with members of her extended family. She has mentioned on many occasions that she misses her family and talks to them on the phone almost every day. Doing this assignment helped to demonstrate how close she is with members of her immediate family. The culture that my partner grew up in is structured such a way that she is very close with her family. While she is in the United States, the only family that she has with her is her husband. While I am sure that I would miss my family if I were to move to a new country, my partner seems to be impacted on a much deeper level by being separated from her