My family does not conform to the images, ideals, and myths of past American families such as the myth of the monolithic family form, the unified family experience, and family consensus. Instead my family can be analyzed from the sociological perspective. Both macro and micro forces have influenced the development and interior dynamics of my family. My parents and two younger siblings (1 brother and 1 sister) make up the nuclear part of my family and they are all biologically related to me. My aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents make up my extended biological family. The focus of this paper will be on five key concepts from a sociological perspective that I have derived from classroom lectures and assigned readings in relation to my family.
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Growing up, I witnessed members of my extended family come to my house to give food, money, and offer babysitting for my parents during tough economic times. Lillian Rubin’s classic 1976 study Worlds of Pain acknowledge the importance of kin network help. Rubin demonstrated that kin network helps to reduce financial stress among working class families. Certainly, the kinship help from my grandmother when it came to babysitting my siblings and I helped my father and mother overcome the financial stressors that working-class families struggle with when it comes to finding affordable daycare. Although blue-collar families are more prone to having kin ties compared to middle-class families, they are substantially vulnerable to economic …show more content…
My brother was the middle child. Jerome Kagan suggests that the ordinal position of a child is a significant variable that affects family structure. According to Kagan, having a younger or older sibling has a tremendous influence on psychological development, despite the corrective actions of parental behavior. I can say that I had a tremendous influence on my brother during our adolescent years. By the time my brother and I were in high school, we were spending a lot of time together. Often, I had a negative influence on my brother. I would encourage him to skip class, drink alcohol, and smoke marijuana. Despite what my parents would say about the negative components of my adolescent behavior to my brother, he would continue to look up to me. This demonstrates Kagan’s belief that older siblings can have an overt influence on their younger
Growing up, I witnessed members of my extended family come to my house to give food, money, and offer babysitting for my parents during tough economic times. Lillian Rubin’s classic 1976 study Worlds of Pain acknowledge the importance of kin network help. Rubin demonstrated that kin network helps to reduce financial stress among working class families. Certainly, the kinship help from my grandmother when it came to babysitting my siblings and I helped my father and mother overcome the financial stressors that working-class families struggle with when it comes to finding affordable daycare. Although blue-collar families are more prone to having kin ties compared to middle-class families, they are substantially vulnerable to economic …show more content…
My brother was the middle child. Jerome Kagan suggests that the ordinal position of a child is a significant variable that affects family structure. According to Kagan, having a younger or older sibling has a tremendous influence on psychological development, despite the corrective actions of parental behavior. I can say that I had a tremendous influence on my brother during our adolescent years. By the time my brother and I were in high school, we were spending a lot of time together. Often, I had a negative influence on my brother. I would encourage him to skip class, drink alcohol, and smoke marijuana. Despite what my parents would say about the negative components of my adolescent behavior to my brother, he would continue to look up to me. This demonstrates Kagan’s belief that older siblings can have an overt influence on their younger