Personal Narrative: The Gallagher Family

As we’ve learned in this class, and in classes I’ve been in before, there are many different kinds of families. Some are big, some are small, and some decide not to have children at all. For the purpose of this assignment, I chose to interview the first family that came to my mind. The Gallagher family is a cute little family that I have known for more than five years now. I was at their wedding and I’ve watched them raise their three beautiful girls. And as they’re eagerly awaiting their fourth, they were happy to sit and answer my questions. For this essay, I spoke to them about their decision to become parents, their parenting style, how their family communicates and interacts, and concerns they have for their children. In my research of …show more content…
After they were engaged, they knew that they wanted to start having children shortly after they were married. However, they found themselves pregnant with Emma before their wedding. Jason mentioned that with the way the world was headed, he wasn’t quite ready to raise children. But with more conversations and lots of prayers, he had become more open to the idea. I asked the couple to describe to me the challenges of transitioning to parenthood from the lifestyles they led before. Because Emma wasn’t necessarily planned, there was a lot happening all at once. Kelli had finished graduate school two years prior, moved twice, and changed jobs with each move. While she was used to those transitions, she admitted that she wasn’t ready for the lack of sleep that seems to come with having a child. Jason was in the middle of football season, so he wasn’t really around as much as Kelli would’ve liked. Along with these challenges, having Emma so soon didn’t allow them time to just be them as a newlywed couple. The challenges didn’t stop there for Kelli. They continued when she returned to work. Never in her life did she dream that she wanted to be that typical stay-at-home mom, but after Emma, she wanted it more than anything even though she was so career driven. She mentioned that financially, it was necessary for her to return to work. When I asked Jason about his transition, he told me he really needed to back off on his hobbies to be able to be home more often to help with the girls. It was necessary for his to give up a lot of things if he wanted to spend quality family time with Kelli and the