The Traditional Family: The Roles Of My Family

Improved Essays
Usually we consider a traditional family to have a male, female and children they care for, when the female is the homemaker and the male to be the breadwinner. The idea of the male breadwinner and the nurturing mother as the traditional family appeared only in the 19th century, when “the white middle-class families became less patriarchal and more child-centered” (Coontz, 1). When I was growing up, roles in my family have been changing to some degree. Before my parents got married, my mom was a tailor, and my dad worked as a welder. However, after they got married and I was born, my mom quit her job. From that time my mom stayed home and became the homemaker, while my dad was the breadwinner. My dad was the main source of the family’s income, …show more content…
From the time I could remember myself, I remember that my mom always had a great respect and love for my dad, and the last word in our family always was after my dad. My dad greatly loved (and still does) my mom, an even though he technically did have more authority in our house than my mom, he never used it against any of us. He is a really wise man, and he always includes everyone’s opinions in his decisions. When there was a time when we did not have enough money to pay for everything, and my mom had to return back to being a tailor, which she did before my parents got married. One time that I remember which really made me grow up is when I was 7. Both of my parents were working, and because I am a girl and the oldest child I was expected to take my siblings to school, clean the house and cook. My siblings were also trying to help me with everything. We were in school from 8 am to 5pm. After coming back from school, I tried to do my house chores, and at 7pm my mom came back from work, cooked something else and make sure that we finish our homework. When I turned 10, we moved to the USA, and my dad found a good job as a welder and my mom takes care of her parents …show more content…
My family is the reason why I am who I am, and I would never want to lose a connection with a single member of my family. They are part of me. Like I said before, my dad is the head of our family, and I will be more than willingly have my husband to take charge of my future family because I see that it worked for my parents. My family also influenced the things that I like to do, such as painting, drawing, singing, teaching, spots, exploring, and my goals in the future, such as being involved in church, getting a good education and a good job. As in anything else, there are benefits and drawbacks in the way I was raised. For example, one of the drawbacks of having separate chores between boys and girls led to be being closer connected with my sister than my brothers. Coontz actually addresses this problem in her article, explaining “Rigid insistence on separate spheres for men and women made male-female relations extremely stilted, so that women commonly turned to other women, not their husbands, for their most intimate relations” (Coontz,

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Living within poverty level can be a hard day-to-day struggle for anyone. I know this from my personal experiences growing up. Also in the book The Short And Tragic Life of Robert Peace, Jeff Hobbs, the author; describes how Rob and his mother went through life in poverty. Poverty is defined as, "the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor" (Dictonary.com, 2017). I always think of living pay check to pay check and having the uncertainty of not knowing if you have enough money for everything.…

    • 837 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Non Traditional Families

    • 1675 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Laurel Elder and Steven Greene in their work, “Politicians love to talk about family. But maybe not yours.” try to argue that politicians need to start talking about all families and not just traditional families and need to provide support for all families. While their abundance of logical appeals and their choice of not including emotional appeals would make their argument successful for the type of article they produced, their lack of intrinsic ethos makes their credibility a little faulty and makes their overall argument unsuccessful. Elder and Greene are both Political Science professors; Elder teaches at Hartwick University in New York and Greene teaches at North Carolina University.…

    • 1675 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    In the book, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz, the author deconstructs various types of stereotypes and myths embodied by television shows that romanticize family life and gender roles. Coontz (1992) states that these idealizations promote the “traditional family” myth which she describes as “an ahistorical amalgam of structures, values, and behaviors that never coexisted in time and place” (p.9). The notions derived from this myth are a compound of characteristics that resemble mid-nineteenth century and early 20th century paradigms concerning family life (Coontz, 1992, p.9). Coontz (1992) describes both components in detail in Chapter 1 describing the first as a mother-child oriented family…

    • 1998 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    I lived for a long time with my mother and my father. I was the only child in my family and I grow up with all the things I wanted. My father was a doctor of stomatology and he had a personal ordinance and he had a lot of money. My mother was a clothes designer and she dressed me really good always. I went to a karate and thai box school…

    • 254 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    My mother would prepare meals, get me ready for school, do housework, run errands, and manage bills. Meanwhile, my father completed more “masculine tasks” such as working everyday, completing yard work and making sure the doors were locked every night. In addition, attending private school my whole life, I was taught about these “traditional”…

    • 1290 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Family can help a person grow up to be negative or positive in life. My family means the world to me because we are a tight knitted community in our circle. We celebrate birthdays, holidays, take trips together and help one another in time of need. I honestly wouldn’t know what to do without my family. I noticed growing up or even now as an adult, many individuals doesn’t know the meaning of family or having a closed bond with at least one…

    • 662 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the U.S., the biggest changes in the family are in its structure and changing priorities. In the past century, and particularly in recent decades, the definition of the family has widened to be inclusive of a spectrum of family structures, not just nuclear or traditional families. Less people are getting married and the divorce rate has increased, as have single parent homes and cohabitation, while birth rates have decreased. Ideas about gender roles in families have also been challenged with the women’s rights movement and the legalization of same sex marriage. There has also been an increase in interracial and interreligious marriages.…

    • 2359 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Family: Cultural Norms

    • 753 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Comp 110 Final Essay All individual families all have cultures of their own. Each child is raised in two separate, often competing, cultures. The one their family presents and the culture that the surrounding society presents. This semester, we have read and analyzed many different cultural norms helping me to get a better look at the culture that I was raised up in.…

    • 753 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Social work is widely recognized as a helping profession that assesses client’s concerns, needs, promotes a healthy lifestyle, supports the importance of positive family structure and offers resources to ensure a better quality of life. As a student social worker it is important to understand the basic characteristics that helps develop an effective social worker. An efficient social worker has to be knowledgeable of social work practices, theories, and gain experience. As a social worker your role is very significant to a client, each person that you encounter may not have everything together and the client will need your expertise in order to learn how to create a strong family foundation that’s function adequately.…

    • 1583 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When we talk about “family” in todays, society, different types of families come to mind. They can be, a nuclear family, an extended family, a single family, foster family or an adoptive family. According to the Oxford University Press, “family” is defined as a group consisting of two parents and their children, living together as a unit. In actuality there are five types of families. Although families vary in appearance, their common purpose is to provide a loving, caring and constructive environment for their family members.…

    • 718 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    My Self Schema

    • 1171 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Self Schema Paper I have always believed myself to be a hard-working, financially responsible, and intelligent person. I believed that this was how children were to be raised until I was put into the position of being a step-parent. The role of the non-custodial step-parent is to be a supportive parental figure without imparting any developmental input, and was highly difficult for me to accept and adapt to. My family of origin held a non-traditional structure within the era in which I was raised.…

    • 1171 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    My mother stayed home cooking, cleaning, and raising my older brother and me. My father was always working, I barely remember him taking care of us, on his days off, he would lay on the couch and either watch movies or have his rock and roll…

    • 1837 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    My role in my family is really big and important. Being the oldest boy in my family is something I am really proud of. Especially because I am the role model of my brother and I am always there to help my mom with anything she needs. Since my father does not live with us i have to step up for being the role model for my brother which can be hard but having my mom by our sides can be really helpful. My parents divorced when I was really young and left my sisters,brother,and I which is something hard to experience when I was little.…

    • 989 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the home, my family followed the stereotypical gender roles; my mother was at home while my father provided for us by going to work everyday. His daughters were allowed to help their mother, and his son was allowed to do whatever he…

    • 1702 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Role Of My Family

    • 1884 Words
    • 8 Pages

    My family is remote, yet central to my life. We coalesce, and vanish, to and from each other’s lives. We have developed together, yet apart, and without copious restraint of each other’s opinions or views. We come together sometimes for family occasions, always with the expectation that some or none will show up. These family functions are merely an invitation, an invitation that family members attend arbitrarily.…

    • 1884 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays

Related Topics