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A dear friend is going through a crisis in her relationship with one of her birth family members, and it has me thinking about family.
I've always seen family dynamics as a kind of three dimensional geometrical design, something that's always changing, morphing into this shape and that. When a person begins to interact as a parent to the next generation, the shape changes in a different way.
Right now, I'm thinking about a discussion about (was it![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vito_excalibur's blog?) about family and culture. I'm wondering where the idea of cutting children out of the family support network, withholding resources from them, came from. In my family, it was kind of a joke that we got luggage for our 18th birthday.
In contrast, my brother Greg is married to a woman who is Mexican. Letty has one sister, but over 100 first cousins. The family is, compared to American families, incredibly dynamic. They are each other's best friends -- they socialize weekly at one of the family's two properties (what would be called a 'camp' up here), they celebrate and mourn together, they watch each other's back. Right now, my brother and his wife are struggling a bit with their finances because Letty's mother has been sick, and it is Letty and Greg's responsibility to help as much as they can.
I recently asked my brother if the family had any stereotypical 'lazy brother-in-law' who lived off the family as a leech. His response was that the family would try to find a job for such a guy, and if he didn't shape up, the other men would get together with him (with a tutorial baseball bat, if necessary) and make it clear that he needed to get his act together. Such men would either shape up or be run off.
Women are given the same treatment by the other women, though, as keeper of the children, they are more carefully screened before marriage.
It's a trade off, certainly, between personal freedom and familial support. I've had help from my family over the years, but it's always been with a sense of grudging exasperation; adults are not supposed to need help. I don't socialize with my family. I haven't seen one of my sisters for years. We are friendly with each other, but we don't call on each other to celebrate our little victories or share our little failures.
I don't think that our love of individualism and the nuclear family has made us stronger. Tougher, maybe, and less trusting. More alone. Family-of-choice, anyone? Yeah.
I've always seen family dynamics as a kind of three dimensional geometrical design, something that's always changing, morphing into this shape and that. When a person begins to interact as a parent to the next generation, the shape changes in a different way.
Right now, I'm thinking about a discussion about (was it
vito_excalibur's blog?) about family and culture. I'm wondering where the idea of cutting children out of the family support network, withholding resources from them, came from. In my family, it was kind of a joke that we got luggage for our 18th birthday. In contrast, my brother Greg is married to a woman who is Mexican. Letty has one sister, but over 100 first cousins. The family is, compared to American families, incredibly dynamic. They are each other's best friends -- they socialize weekly at one of the family's two properties (what would be called a 'camp' up here), they celebrate and mourn together, they watch each other's back. Right now, my brother and his wife are struggling a bit with their finances because Letty's mother has been sick, and it is Letty and Greg's responsibility to help as much as they can.
I recently asked my brother if the family had any stereotypical 'lazy brother-in-law' who lived off the family as a leech. His response was that the family would try to find a job for such a guy, and if he didn't shape up, the other men would get together with him (with a tutorial baseball bat, if necessary) and make it clear that he needed to get his act together. Such men would either shape up or be run off.
Women are given the same treatment by the other women, though, as keeper of the children, they are more carefully screened before marriage.
It's a trade off, certainly, between personal freedom and familial support. I've had help from my family over the years, but it's always been with a sense of grudging exasperation; adults are not supposed to need help. I don't socialize with my family. I haven't seen one of my sisters for years. We are friendly with each other, but we don't call on each other to celebrate our little victories or share our little failures.
I don't think that our love of individualism and the nuclear family has made us stronger. Tougher, maybe, and less trusting. More alone. Family-of-choice, anyone? Yeah.