family culture essay

Tools and Resources
Customer Services
Communication and Culture
Communication and Social Change
Communication and Technology
Communication Theory
Critical/Cultural Studies
Gender (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies)
Health and Risk Communication
Intergroup Communication
International/Global Communication
Interpersonal Communication
Journalism Studies
Language and Social Interaction
Mass Communication
Media and Communication Policy
Organizational Communication
Political Communication
Rhetorical Theory
Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

Family, culture, and communication.

V. Santiago Arias V. Santiago Arias College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University
and Narissra Maria Punyanunt-Carter Narissra Maria Punyanunt-Carter College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.504
Published online: 22 August 2017

Through the years, the concept of family has been studied by family therapists, psychology scholars, and sociologists with a diverse theoretical framework, such as family communication patterns (FCP) theory, dyadic power theory, conflict, and family systems theory. Among these theories, there are two main commonalities throughout its findings: the interparental relationship is the core interaction in the familial system because the quality of their communication or coparenting significantly affects the enactment of the caregiver role while managing conflicts, which are not the exception in the familial setting. Coparenting is understood in its broader sense to avoid an extensive discussion of all type of families in our society. Second, while including the main goal of parenting, which is the socialization of values, this process intrinsically suggests cultural assimilation as the main cultural approach rather than intergroup theory, because intercultural marriages need to decide which values are considered the best to be socialized. In order to do so, examples from the Thai culture and Hispanic and Latino cultures served to show cultural assimilation as an important mediator of coparenting communication patterns, which subsequently affect other subsystems that influence individuals’ identity and self-esteem development in the long run. Finally, future directions suggest that the need for incorporating a nonhegemonic one-way definition of cultural assimilation allows immigration status to be brought into the discussion of family communication issues in the context of one of the most diverse countries in the world.

parental communication
dyadic power
family communication systems
cultural assimilation

Introduction

Family is the fundamental structure of every society because, among other functions, this social institution provides individuals, from birth until adulthood, membership and sense of belonging, economic support, nurturance, education, and socialization (Canary & Canary, 2013 ). As a consequence, the strut of its social role consists of operating as a system in a manner that would benefit all members of a family while achieving what is considered best, where decisions tend to be coherent, at least according to the norms and roles assumed by family members within the system (Galvin, Bylund, & Brommel, 2004 ). Notwithstanding, the concept of family can be interpreted differently by individual perceptions to an array of cultural backgrounds, and cultures vary in their values, behaviors, and ideas.

The difficulty of conceptualizing this social institution suggests that family is a culture-bound phenomenon (Bales & Parsons, 2014 ). In essence, culture represents how people view themselves as part of a unique social collective and the ensuing communication interactions (Olaniran & Roach, 1994 ); subsequently, culture provides norms for behavior having a tremendous impact on those family members’ roles and power dynamics mirrored in its communication interactions (Johnson, Radesky, & Zuckerman, 2013 ). Thus, culture serves as one of the main macroframeworks for individuals to interpret and enact those prescriptions, such as inheritance; descent rules (e.g., bilateral, as in the United States, or patrilineal); marriage customs, such as ideal monogamy and divorce; and beliefs about sexuality, gender, and patterns of household formation, such as structure of authority and power (Weisner, 2014 ). For these reasons, “every family is both a unique microcosm and a product of a larger cultural context” (Johnson et al., 2013 , p. 632), and the analysis of family communication must include culture in order to elucidate effective communication strategies to solve familial conflicts.

In addition, to analyze familial communication patterns, it is important to address the most influential interaction with regard to power dynamics that determine the overall quality of family functioning. In this sense, within the range of family theories, parenting function is the core relationship in terms of power dynamics. Parenting refers to all efforts and decisions made by parents individually to guide their children’s behavior. This is a pivotal function, but the quality of communication among people who perform parenting is fundamental because their internal communication patterns will either support or undermine each caregiver’s parenting attempts, individually having a substantial influence on all members’ psychological and physical well-being (Schrodt & Shimkowski, 2013 ). Subsequently, parenting goes along with communication because to execute all parenting efforts, there must be a mutual agreement among at least two individuals to conjointly take care of the child’s fostering (Van Egeren & Hawkins, 2004 ). Consequently, coparenting serves as a crucial predictor of the overall family atmosphere and interactions, and it deserves special attention while analyzing family communication issues.

Through the years, family has been studied by family therapists, psychology scholars, and sociologists, but interaction behaviors define the interpersonal relationship, roles, and power within the family as a system (Rogers, 2006 ). Consequently, family scholarship relies on a wide range of theories developed within the communication field and in areas of the social sciences (Galvin, Braithwaite, & Bylund, 2015 ) because analysis of communication patterns in the familial context offers more ecological validity that individuals’ self-report measures. As many types of interactions may happen within a family, there are many relevant venues (i.e., theories) for scholarly analysis on this subject, which will be discussed later in this article in the “ Family: Theoretical Perspectives ” section. To avoid the risk of cultural relativeness while defining family, this article characterizes family as “a long-term group of two or more people related through biological, legal, or equivalent ties and who enact those ties through ongoing interactions providing instrumental and/or emotional support” (Canary & Canary, 2013 , p. 5).

Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the most relevant theories in family communication to identify frustrations and limitations with internal communication. Second, as a case in point, the United States welcomes more than 50 million noncitizens as temporary visitors and admits approximately 1 million immigrants to live as lawful residents yearly (Fullerton, 2014 ), this demographic pattern means that nearly one-third of the population (102 million) comes from different cultural backgrounds, and therefore, the present review will incorporate culture as an important mediator for coparenting, so that future research can be performed to find specific techniques and training practices that are more suitable for cross-cultural contexts.

Family: Theoretical Perspectives

Even though the concept of family can be interpreted individually and differently in different cultures, there are also some commonalities, along with communication processes, specific roles within families, and acceptable habits of interactions with specific family members disregarding cultural differences. This section will provide a brief overview of the conceptualization of family through the family communication patterns (FCP) theory, dyadic power theory, conflict, and family systems theory, with a special focus on the interparental relationship.

Family Communication Patterns Theory

One of the most relevant approaches to address the myriad of communication issues within families is the family communication patterns (FCP) theory. Originally developed by McLeod and Chaffee ( 1973 ), this theory aims to understand families’ tendencies to create stable and predictable communication patterns in terms of both relational cognition and interpersonal behavior (Braithwaite & Baxter, 2005 ). Specifically, this theory focuses on the unique and amalgamated associations derived from interparental communication and its impact on parenting quality to determine FCPs and the remaining interactions (Young & Schrodt, 2016 ).

To illustrate FCP’s focus on parental communication, Schrodt, Witt, and Shimkowski ( 2014 ) conducted a meta-analysis of 74 studies (N = 14,255) to examine the associations between the demand/withdraw family communication patterns of interaction, and the subsequent individual, relational, and communicative outcomes. The cumulative evidence suggests that wife demand/husband withdraw and husband demand/wife withdraw show similar moderate correlations with communicative and psychological well-being outcomes, and even higher when both patterns are taken together (at the relational level). This is important because one of the main tenets of FCP is that familial relationships are drawn on the pursuit of coorientation among members. Coorientation refers to the cognitive process of two or more individuals focusing on and assessing the same object in the same material and social context, which leads to a number of cognitions as the number of people involved, which results in different levels of agreement, accuracy, and congruence (for a review, see Fitzpatrick & Koerner, 2005 ); for example, in dyads that are aware of their shared focus, two different cognitions of the same issue will result.

Hereafter, the way in which these cognitions are socialized through power dynamics determined socially and culturally by roles constitutes specific interdependent communication patterns among family members. For example, Koerner and Fitzpatrick ( 2006 ) provide a taxonomy of family types on the basis of coorientation and its impact on communication pattern in terms of the degree of conformity in those conversational tendencies. To wit, consensual families mostly agree for the sake of the hierarchy within a given family and to explore new points of view; pluralistic families allow members to participate equally in conversations and there is no pressure to control or make children’s decisions; protective families maintain the hierarchy by making decisions for the sake of achieving common family goals; and laissez-faire families, which are low in conversation and conformity orientation, allow family members to not get deeply involved in the family.

The analysis of family communication patterns is quintessential for family communication scholarly work because it influences forming an individual’s self concept in the long run. As a case in point, Young and Schrodt ( 2016 ) surveyed 181 young adults from intact families, where conditional and interaction effects between communication patterns and conformity orientation were observed as the main predictors of future romantic partners. Moreover, this study concluded that FCPs and interparental confirmation are substantial indicators of self-to-partner confirmation, after controlling for reciprocity of confirmation within the romantic relationship. As a consequence, FCP influences children’s and young adults’ perceptions of romantic behavior (e.g., Fowler, Pearson, & Beck, 2010 ); the quality of communication behavior, such as the degree of acceptation of verbal aggression in romantic dyads (e.g., Aloia & Solomon, 2013 ); gender roles; and conflict styles (e.g., Taylor & Segrin, 2010 ), and parental modeling (e.g., Young & Schrodt, 2016 ).

This suggests three important observations. First, family is a very complex interpersonal context, in which communication processes, specific roles within families, and acceptable habits of interactions with specific family members interact as subsystems (see Galvin et al., 2004 ; Schrodt & Shimkowski, 2013 ). Second, among those subsystems, the core interaction is the individuals who hold parenting roles (i.e., intact and post divorced families); the couple (disregarding particular sexual orientations), and, parenting roles have a reciprocal relationship over time (Le, McDaniel, Leavitt, & Feinberg, 2016 ). Communication between parenting partners is crucial for the development of their entire family; for example, Schrodt and Shimkowski ( 2013 ) conducted a survey with 493 young adult children from intact (N = 364) and divorced families (N = 129) about perceptions of interparental conflict that involves triangulation (the impression of being in the “middle” and feeling forced to display loyalty to one of the parents). Results suggest that supportive coparental communication positively predicts relational satisfaction with mothers and fathers, as well as mental health; on the other hand, antagonist and hostile coparental communication predicted negative marital satisfaction.

Consequently, “partners’ communication with one another will have a positive effect on their overall view of their marriage, . . . and directly result[ing in] their views of marital satisfaction” (Knapp & Daly, 2002 , p. 643). Le et al. ( 2016 ) conducted a longitudinal study to evaluate the reciprocal relationship between marital interaction and coparenting from the perspective of both parents in terms of support or undermining across the transition to parenthood from a dyadic perspective; 164 cohabiting heterosexual couples expecting their first child were analyzed from pregnancy until 36 months after birth. Both parents’ interdependence was examined in terms of three variables: gender difference analysis, stability over time in marriage and coparenting, and reciprocal associations between relationship quality and coparenting support or undermining. The findings suggest a long-term reciprocal association between relationship quality and coparenting support or undermining in heterosexual families; the quality of marriage relationship during prenatal stage is highly influential in coparenting after birth for both men and women; but, coparenting is connected to romantic relationship quality only for women.

Moreover, the positive association between coparenting and the parents’ relationship relates to the spillover hypothesis, which posits that the positive or negative factors in the parental subsystem are significantly associated with higher or lower marital satisfaction in the spousal subsystem, respectively. Ergo, overall parenting performance is substantially affected by the quality of marital communication patterns.

Dyadic Power

In addition, after analyzing the impact of marital interaction quality in families on marital satisfaction and future parental modeling, it is worth noting that marital satisfaction and coparenting are importantly mediated by power dynamics within the couple (Halstead, De Santis, & Williams, 2016 ), and even mediates marital commitment (e.g., Lennon, Stewart, & Ledermann, 2013 ). If the quality of interpersonal relationship between those individuals who hold parenting roles determines coparenting quality as well, then the reason for this association lies on the fact that virtually all intimate relationships are substantially characterized by power dynamics; when partners perceive more rewards than costs in the relationship, they will be more satisfied and significantly more committed to the relationship (Lennon et al., 2013 ). As a result, the inclusion of power dynamics in the analysis of family issues becomes quintessential.

For the theory of dyadic power, power in its basic sense includes dominance, control, and influence over others, as well as a means to meet survival needs. When power is integrated into dyadic intimate relationships, it generates asymmetries in terms of interdependence between partners due to the quality of alternatives provided by individual characteristics such as socioeconomic status and cultural characteristics such as gender roles. This virtually gives more power to men than women. Power refers to “the feeling derived from the ability to dominate, or control, the behavior, affect, and cognitions of another person[;] in consequence, this concept within the interparental relationship is enacted when one partner who controls resources and limiting the behavioral options of the other partner” (Lennon et al., 2013 , p. 97). Ergo, this theory examines power in terms of interdependence between members of the relationship: the partner who is more dependent on the other has less power in the relationship, which, of course, directly impact parenting decisions.

As a case in point, Worley and Samp ( 2016 ) examined the balance of decision-making power in the relationship, complaint avoidance, and complaint-related appraisals in 175 heterosexual couples. Findings suggest that decision-making power has a curvilinear association, in which individuals engaged in the least complaint avoidance when they were relatively equal to their partners in terms of power. In other words, perceptions of one another’s power potentially encourage communication efficacy in the interparental couple.

The analysis of power in intimate relationships, and, to be specific, between parents is crucial because it not only relates to marital satisfaction and commitment, but it also it affects parents’ dyadic coping for children. In fact, Zemp, Bodenmann, Backes, Sutter-Stickel, and Revenson ( 2016 ) investigated parents’ dyadic coping as a predictor of children’s internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, and prosocial behavior in three independent studies. When there is a positive relationship among all three factors, the results indicated that the strongest correlation was the first one. Again, the quality of the marital and parental relationships has the strongest influence on children’s coping skills and future well-being.

From the overview of the two previous theories on family, it is worth addressing two important aspects. First, parenting requires an intensive great deal of hands-on physical care, attention to safety (Mooney-Doyle, Deatrick, & Horowitz, 2014 ), and interpretation of cues, and this is why parenting, from conception to when children enter adulthood, is a tremendous social, cultural, and legally prescribed role directed toward caregiving and endlessly attending to individuals’ social, physical, psychological, emotional, and cognitive development (Johnson et al., 2013 ). And while parents are making decisions about what they consider is best for all family members, power dynamics play a crucial role in marital satisfaction, commitment, parental modeling, and overall interparental communication efficacy in the case of postdivorce families. Therefore, the likelihood of conflict is latent within familial interactions while making decisions; indeed, situations in which family members agree on norms as a consensus is rare (Ritchie & Fitzpatrick, 1990 ).

In addition to the interparental and marital power dynamics that delineates family communication patterns, the familial interaction is distinctive from other types of social relationships in the unequaled role of emotions and communication of affection while family members interact and make decisions for the sake of all members. For example, Ritchie and Fitzpatrick ( 1990 ) provided evidence that fathers tended to perceive that all other family members agree with his decisions or ideas. Even when mothers confronted and disagreed with the fathers about the fathers’ decisions or ideas, the men were more likely to believe that their children agreed with him. When the children were interviewed without their parents, however, the majority of children agreed with the mothers rather than the fathers (Ritchie & Fitzpatrick, 1990 ). Subsequently, conflict is highly present in families; however, in general, the presence of conflict is not problematic per se. Rather, it is the ability to manage and recover from it and that could be problematic (Floyd, 2014 ).

One of the reasons for the role of emotions in interpersonal conflicts is explained by the Emotion-in-Relationships Model (ERM). This model states that feelings of bliss, satisfaction, and relaxation often go unnoticed due to the nature of the emotions, whereas “hot” emotions, such as anger and contempt, come to the forefront when directed at a member of an interpersonal relationship (Fletcher & Clark, 2002 ). This type of psychophysical response usually happens perhaps due to the different biophysical reactive response of the body compared to its reaction to positive ones (Floyd, 2014 ). There are two dimensions that define conflict. Conflict leads to the elicitation of emotions, but sometimes the opposite occurs: emotions lead to conflict. The misunderstanding or misinterpretation of emotions among members of a family can be a source of conflict, as well as a number of other issues, including personality differences, past history, substance abuse, mental or physical health problems, monetary issues, children, intimate partner violence, domestic rape, or maybe just general frustration due to recent events (Sabourin, Infante, & Rudd, 1990 ). In order to have a common understanding of this concept for the familial context in particular, conflict refers to as “any incompatibility that can be expressed by people related through biological, legal, or equivalent ties” (Canary & Canary, 2013 , p. 6). Thus, the concept of conflict goes hand in hand with coparenting.

There is a myriad of everyday family activities in which parents need to decide the best way to do them: sometimes they are minor, such as eating, watching TV, or sleeping schedules; others are more complicated, such as schooling. Certainly, while socializing and making these decisions, parents may agree or not, and these everyday situations may lead to conflict. Whether or not parents live together, it has been shown that “the extent to which children experience their parents as partners or opponents in parenting is related to children’s adjustment and well-being” (Gable & Sharp, 2016 , p. 1), because the ontology of parenting is materialized through socialization of values about every aspect and duty among all family members, especially children, to perpetuate a given society.

As the findings provided in this article show, the study of family communication issues is pivotal because the way in which those issues are solved within families will be copied by children as their values. Values are abstract ideas that delineate behavior toward the evaluation of people and events and vary in terms of importance across individuals, but also among cultures. In other words, their future parenting (i.e., parenting modeling) of children will replicate those same strategies for conflict solving for good or bad, depending on whether parents were supportive between each other. Thus, socialization defines the size and scope of coparenting.

The familial socialization of values encompasses the distinction between parents’ personal execution of those social appraisals and the values that parents want their children to adopt, and both are different things; nonetheless, familial socialization does not take place in only one direction, from parents to children. Benish-Weisman, Levy, and Knafo ( 2013 ) investigated the differentiation process—or, in other words, the distinction between parents’ own personal values and their socialization values and the contribution of children’s values to their parents’ socialization values. In this study, in which 603 Israeli adolescents and their parents participated, the findings suggest that parents differentiate between their personal values and their socialization values, and adolescents’ values have a specific contribution to their parents’ socialization values. As a result, socialization is not a unidirectional process affected by parents alone, it is an outcome of the reciprocal interaction between parents and their adolescent children, and the given importance of a given value is mediated by parents and their culture individually (Johnson et al., 2013 ). However, taking power dynamics into account does not mean that adolescents share the same level of decision-making power in the family; thus, socialization take place in both directions, but mostly from parents to children. Finally, it is worth noticing that the socialization of values in coparenting falls under the cultural umbrella. The next section pays a special attention to the role of culture in family communication.

The Role of Culture in Parenting Socialization of Values

There are many individual perceived realities and behaviors in the familial setting that may lead to conflict among members, but all of them achieve a common interpretation through culture; indeed, “all family conflict processes by broad cultural factors” (Canary & Canary, 2013 , p. 46). Subsequently, the goal of this section is to provide an overview of the perceived realities and behaviors that exist in family relationships with different cultural backgrounds. How should one approach the array of cultural values influencing parental communication patterns?

An interesting way of immersing on the role of culture in family communication patterns and its further socialization of values is explored by Schwartz ( 1992 ). The author developed a value system composed of 10 values operationalized as motivational goals for modern society: (a) self-direction (independence of thought and action); (b) stimulation (excitement, challenge, and novelty); (c) hedonism (pleasure or sensuous gratification); (d) achievement (personal success according to social standards); (e) power (social status, dominance over people and resources); (f) conformity (restraint of actions that may harm others or violate social expectations); (g) tradition (respect and commitment to cultural or religious customs and ideas); (h) benevolence (preserving and enhancing the welfare of people to whom one is close); (i) universalism (understanding, tolerance, and concern for the welfare of all people and nature); and (j) security (safety and stability of society, relationships, and self).

Later, Schwartz and Rubel ( 2005 ) applied this value structure, finding it to be commonly shared among over 65 countries. Nevertheless, these values are enacted in different ways by societies and genders about the extent to which men attribute more relevance to values of power, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, and self-direction, and the opposite was found for benevolence and universalism and less consistently for security. Also, it was found that all sex differences were culturally moderated, suggesting that cultural background needs to be considered in the analysis of coparental communication when socializing those values.

Even though Schwartz’s work was more focused on individuals and societies, it is a powerful model for the analysis of the role of culture on family communication and parenting scholarships. Indeed, Schwartz et al. ( 2013 ) conducted a longitudinal study with a sample of 266 Hispanic adolescents (14 years old) and their parents that looked at measures of acculturation, family functioning, and adolescent conduct problems, substance use, and sexual behavior at five time points. Results suggest that higher levels of acculturation in adolescents were linked to poorer family functioning; however, overall assimilation negatively predicted adolescent cigarette smoking, sexual activity, and unprotected sex. The authors emphasize the role of culture, and acculturation patterns in particular, in understanding the mediating role of family functioning and culture.

Ergo, it is crucial to address the ways in which culture affects family functioning. On top of this idea, Johnson et al. ( 2013 ) observed that Western cultures such as in the United States and European countries are oriented toward autonomy, favoring individual achievement, self-reliance, and self-assertiveness. Thus, coparenting in more autonomous countries will socialize to children the idea that achievement in life is an outcome of independence, resulting in coparenting communication behaviors that favor verbal praise and feedback over physical contact. As opposed to autonomy-oriented cultures, other societies, such as Asian, African, and Latin American countries, emphasize interdependence over autonomy; thus, parenting in these cultures promotes collective achievement, sharing, and collaboration as the core values.

These cultural orientations can be observed in parents’ definitions of school readiness and educational success; for Western parents, examples include skills such as counting, recognizing letters, or independently completing tasks such as coloring pictures, whereas for more interdependent cultures, the development of obedience, respect for authority, and appropriate social skills are the skills that parents are expecting their children to develop to evaluate school readiness. As a matter of fact, Callaghan et al. ( 2011 ) conducted a series of eight studies to evaluate the impact of culture on the social-cognitive skills of one- to three-year-old children in three diverse cultural settings such as Canada, Peru, and India. The results showed that children’s acquisition of specific cognitive skills is moderated by specific learning experiences in a specific context: while Canadian children were understanding the performance of both pretense and pictorial symbols skillfully between 2.5 and 3.0 years of age, on average, Peruvian and Indian children mastered those skills more than a year later. Notwithstanding, this finding does not suggest any kind of cultural superiority; language barriers and limitations derived from translation itself may influence meanings, affecting the results (Sotomayor-Peterson, De Baca, Figueredo, & Smith-Castro, 2013 ). Therefore, in line with the findings of Schutz ( 1970 ), Geertz ( 1973 ), Grusec ( 2002 ), Sotomayor-Peterson et al. ( 2013 ), and Johnson et al. ( 2013 ), cultural values provide important leverage for understanding family functioning in terms of parental decision-making and conflict, which also has a substantial impact on children’s cognitive development.

Subsequently, cultural sensitivity to the analysis of the familial system in this country needs to be specially included because cultural differences are part of the array of familial conflicts that may arise, and children experience real consequences from the quality of these interactions. Therefore, parenting, which is already arduous in itself, and overall family functioning significantly become troublesome when parents with different cultural backgrounds aim to socialize values and perform parenting tasks. The following section provides an account of these cross-cultural families.

Intercultural Families: Adding Cultural Differences to Interparental Communication

For a country such as the United States, with 102 million people from many different cultural backgrounds, the presence of cross-cultural families is on the rise, as is the likelihood of intermarriage between immigrants and natives. With this cultural diversity, the two most prominent groups are Hispanics and Asians, particular cases of which will be discussed next. Besides the fact that parenting itself is a very complex and difficult task, certainly the biggest conflict consists of making decisions about the best way to raise children in terms of their values with regard to which ethnic identity better enacts the values that parents believe their children should embrace. As a result, interracial couples might confront many conflicts and challenges due to cultural differences affecting marital satisfaction and coparenting.

Assimilation , the degree to which a person from a different cultural background has adapted to the culture of the hostage society, is an important phenomenon in intermarriage. Assimilationists observe that children from families in which one of the parents is from the majority group and the other one from the minority do not automatically follow the parent from the majority group (Cohen, 1988 ). Indeed, they follow their mothers more, whichever group she belongs to, because of mothers are more prevalent among people with higher socioeconomic status (Gordon, 1964 ; Portes, 1984 ; Schwartz et al., 2013 ).

In an interracial marriage, the structural and interpersonal barriers inhibiting the interaction between two parents will be reduced significantly if parents develop a noncompeting way to communicate and solve conflicts, which means that both of them might give up part of their culture or ethnic identity to reach consensus. Otherwise, the ethnic identity of children who come from interracial marriages will become more and more obscure (Saenz, Hwang, Aguirre, & Anderson, 1995 ). Surely, parents’ noncompeting cultural communication patterns are fundamental for children’s development of ethnic identity. Biracial children develop feelings of being outsiders, and then parenting becomes crucial to developing their strong self-esteem (Ward, 2006 ). Indeed, Gordon ( 1964 ) found that children from cross-racial or cross-ethnic marriages are at risk of developing psychological problems. In another example, Jognson and Nagoshi ( 1986 ) studied children who come from mixed marriages in Hawaii and found that the problems of cultural identification, conflicting demands in the family, and of being marginal in either culture still exist (Mann & Waldron, 1977 ). It is hard for those mixed-racial children to completely develop the ethnic identity of either the majority group or the minority group.

The question of how children could maintain their minority ethnic identity is essential to the development of ethnic identity as a whole. For children from interracial marriage, the challenge to maintain their minority ethnic identity will be greater than for the majority ethnic identity (Waters, 1990 ; Schwartz et al., 2013 ) because the minority-group spouse is more likely to have greater ethnic consciousness than the majority-group spouse (Ellman, 1987 ). Usually, the majority group is more influential than the minority group on a child’s ethnic identity, but if the minority parent’s ethnicity does not significantly decline, the child’s ethnic identity could still reflect some characteristics of the minority parent. If parents want their children to maintain the minority group’s identity, letting the children learn the language of the minority group might be a good way to achieve this. By learning the language, children form a better understanding of that culture and perhaps are more likely to accept the ethnic identity that the language represents (Xin & Sandel, 2015 ).

In addition to language socialization as a way to contribute to children’s identity in biracial families, Jane and Bochner ( 2009 ) indicated that family rituals and stories could be important in performing and transforming identity. Families create and re-create their identities through various kinds of narrative, in which family stories and rituals are significant. Festivals and rituals are different from culture to culture, and each culture has its own. Therefore, exposing children to the language, rituals, and festivals of another culture also could be helpful to form their ethnic identity, in order to counter problems of self-esteem derived from the feeling of being an outsider.

To conclude this section, the parenting dilemma in intercultural marriages consists of deciding which culture they want their children to be exposed to and what kind of heritage they want to pass to children. The following section will provide two examples of intercultural marriages in the context of American society without implying that there are no other insightful cultures that deserve analysis, but the focus on Asian-American and Hispanics families reflects the available literature (Canary & Canary, 2013 ) and its demographic representativeness in this particular context. In addition, in order to acknowledge that minorities within this larger cultural background deserve more attention due to overemphasis on larger cultures in scholarship, such as Chinese or Japanese cultures, the Thai family will provide insights into understanding the role of culture in parenting and its impact on the remaining familial interaction, putting all theories already discussed in context. Moreover, the Hispanic family will also be taken in account because of its internal pan-ethnicity variety.

An Example of Intercultural Parenting: The Thai Family

The Thai family, also known as Krob Krua, may consist of parents, children, paternal and maternal grandparents, aunts, uncles, grandchildren, in-laws, and any others who share the same home. Thai marriages usually are traditional, in which the male is the authority figure and breadwinner and the wife is in charge of domestic items and the homemaker. It has been noted that Thai mothers tend to be the major caregivers and caretakers in the family rather than fathers (Tulananda, Young, & Roopnarine, 1994 ). On the other hand, it has been shown that Thai mothers also tend to spoil their children with such things as food and comfort; Tulananda et al. ( 1994 ) studied the differences between American and Thai fathers’ involvement with their preschool children and found that American fathers reported being significantly more involved with their children than Thai fathers. Specifically, the fathers differed in the amount of socialization and childcare; Thai fathers reported that they obtained more external support from other family members than American fathers; also, Thai fathers were more likely to obtain support for assisting with daughters than sons.

Furthermore, with regard to the family context, Tulananda and Roopnarine ( 2001 ) noted that over the years, some attention has been focused on the cultural differences among parent-child behaviors and interactions; hereafter, the authors believed that it is important to look at cultural parent-child interactions because that can help others understand children’s capacity to socialize and deal with life’s challenges. As a matter of fact, the authors also noted that Thai families tend to raise their children in accordance with Buddhist beliefs. It is customary for young Thai married couples to live with either the wife’s parents (uxorilocal) or the husband’s parents (virilocal) before living on their own (Tulananda & Roopnarine, 2001 ). The process of developing ethnicity could be complicated. Many factors might influence the process, such as which parent is from the minority culture and the cultural community, as explained in the previous section of this article.

This suggests that there is a difference in the way that Thai and American fathers communicate with their daughters. As a case in point, Punyanunt-Carter ( 2016 ) examined the relationship maintenance behaviors within father-daughter relationships in Thailand and the United States. Participants included 134 American father-daughter dyads and 154 Thai father-daughter dyads. The findings suggest that when quality of communication was included in this relationship, both types of families benefit from this family communication pattern, resulting in better conflict management and advice relationship maintenance behaviors. However, differences were found: American fathers are more likely than American daughters to employ relationship maintenance behaviors; in addition, American fathers are more likely than Thai fathers to use relationship maintenance strategies.

As a consequence, knowing the process of ethnic identity development could provide parents with different ways to form children’s ethnic identity. More specifically, McCann, Ota, Giles, and Caraker ( 2003 ), and Canary and Canary ( 2013 ) noted that Southeast Asian cultures have been overlooked in communication studies research; these countries differ in their religious, political, and philosophical thoughts, with a variety of collectivistic views and religious ideals (e.g., Buddhism, Taoism, Islam), whereas the United States is mainly Christian and consists of individualistic values.

The Case of Hispanic/Latino Families in the United States

There is a need for including Hispanic/Latino families in the United States because of the demographic representativeness and trends of the ethnicity: in 2016 , Hispanics represent nearly 17% of the total U.S. population, becoming the largest minority group. There are more than 53 million Hispanics and Latinos in the United States; in addition, over 93% of young Hispanics and Latinos under the age of 18 hold U.S. citizenship, and more than 73,000 of these people turn 18 every month (Barreto & Segura, 2014 ). Furthermore, the current Hispanic and Latino population is spread evenly between foreign-born and U.S.-born individuals, but the foreign-born population is now growing faster than the number of Hispanic children born in the country (Arias & Hellmueller, 2016 ). This demographic trend is projected to reach one-third of the U.S. total population by 2060 ; therefore, with the growth of other minority populations in the country, the phenomenon of multiracial marriage and biracial children is increasing as well.

Therefore, family communication scholarship has an increasing necessity to include cultural particularities in the analysis of the familial system; in addition to the cultural aspects already explained in this article, this section addresses the influence of familism in Hispanic and Latino familial interactions, as well as how immigration status moderates the internal interactions, reflected in levels of acculturation, that affect these families negatively.

With the higher marriage and birth rates among Hispanics and Latinos living in the United States compared to non-Latino Whites and African American populations, the Hispanic familial system is perhaps the most stereotyped as being familistic (Glick & Van Hook, 2008 ). This family trait consists of the fact that Hispanics place a very high value on marriage and childbearing, on the basis of a profound commitment to give support to members of the extended family as well. This can be evinced in the prevalence of extended-kind shared households in Hispanic and Latino families, and Hispanic children are more likely to live in extended-family households than non-Latino Whites or blacks (Glick & Van Hook, 2008 ). Living in extended-family households, most likely with grandparents, may have positive influences on Hispanic and Latino children, such as greater attention and interaction with loving through consistent caregiving; grandparents may help by engaging with children in academic-oriented activities, which then affects positively cognitive educational outcomes.

However, familism is not the panacea for all familial issues for several reasons. First, living in an extended-family household requires living arrangements that consider adults’ needs more than children’s. Second, the configuration of Hispanic and Latino households is moderated by any immigration issues with all members of the extended family, and this may cause problems for children (Menjívar, 2000 ). The immigration status of each individual member may produce a constant state of flux, whereas circumstances change to adjust to economic opportunities, which in turn are limited by immigration laws, and it gets even worse when one of the parents isn’t even present in the children’s home, but rather live in their home country (Van Hook & Glick, 2006 ). Although Hispanic and Latino children are more likely to live with married parents and extended relatives, familism is highly affected by the immigration status of each member.

On the other hand, there has been research to address the paramount role of communication disregarding the mediating factor of cultural diversity. For example, Sotomayor-Peterson et al. ( 2013 ) performed a cross-cultural comparison of the association between coparenting or shared parental effort and family climate among families from Mexico, the United States, and Costa Rica. The overall findings suggest what was explained earlier in this article: more shared parenting predicts better marital interaction and family climate overall.

In addition, parenting quality has been found to have a positive relationship with children’s developmental outcomes. In fact, Sotomayor-Peterson, Figueredo, Christensen, and Taylor ( 2012 ) conducted a study with 61 low-income Mexican American couples, with at least one child between three and four years of age, recruited from a home-based Head Start program. The main goal of this study was to observe the extent that shared parenting incorporates cultural values and income predicts family climate. The findings suggest that the role of cultural values such as familism, in which family solidarity and avoidance of confrontation are paramount, delineate shared parenting by Mexican American couples.

Cultural adaptation also has a substantial impact on marital satisfaction and children’s cognitive stimulation. Indeed, Sotomayor-Peterson, Wilhelm, and Card ( 2011 ) investigated the relationship between marital relationship quality and subsequent cognitive stimulation practices toward their infants in terms of the actor and partner effects of White and Hispanic parents. The results indicate an interesting relationship between the level of acculturation and marital relationship quality and a positive cognitive stimulation of infants; specifically, marital happiness is associated with increased cognitive stimulation by White and high-acculturated Hispanic fathers. Nevertheless, a major limitation of Hispanic acculturation literature has been seen, reflecting a reliance on cross-sectional studies where acculturation was scholarly operationalized more as an individual difference variable than as a longitudinal adaptation over time (Schwartz et al., 2013 ).

Culture and Family Communication: the “so what?” Question

This article has presented an entangled overview of family communication patterns, dyadic power, family systems, and conflict theories to establish that coparenting quality plays a paramount role. The main commonality among those theories pays special attention to interparental interaction quality, regardless of the type of family (i.e., intact, postdivorce, same-sex, etc.) and cultural background. After reviewing these theories, it was observed that the interparental relationship is the core interaction in the familial context because it affects children from their earlier cognitive development to subsequent parental modeling in terms of gender roles. Thus, in keeping with Canary and Canary ( 2013 ), no matter what approach may be taken to the analysis of family communication issues, the hypothesis that a positive emotional climate within the family is fostered only when couples practice a sufficient level of shared parenting and quality of communication is supported.

Nevertheless, this argument does not suggest that the role of culture in the familial interactions should be undersold. While including the main goal of parenting, which is the socialization of values, in the second section of this article, the text also provides specific values of different countries that are enacted and socialized differently across cultural contexts to address the role of acculturation in the familial atmosphere, the quality of interactions, and individual outcomes. As a case in point, Johnson et al. ( 2013 ) provided an interesting way of seeing how cultures differ in their ways of enacting parenting, clarifying that the role of culture in parenting is not a superficial or relativistic element.

In addition, by acknowledging the perhaps excessive attention to larger Asian cultural backgrounds (such as Chinese or Japanese cultures) by other scholars (i.e., Canary & Canary, 2013 ), an insightful analysis of the Thai American family within the father-daughter relationship was provided to exemplify, through the work of Punyanunt-Carter ( 2016 ), how specific family communication patterns, such as maintenance relationship communication behaviors, affect the quality of familial relationships. Moreover, a second, special focus was put on Hispanic families because of the demographic trends of the United States, and it was found that familism constitutes a distinctive aspect of these families.

In other words, the third section of this article provided these two examples of intercultural families to observe specific ways that culture mediates the familial system. Because one of the main goals of the present article was to demonstrate the mediating role of culture as an important consideration for family communication issues in the United States, the assimilationist approach was taken into account; thus, the two intercultural family examples discussed here correspond to an assimilationist nature rather than using an intergroup approach.

This decision was made without intending to diminish the value of other cultures or ethnic groups in the country, but an extensive revision of all types of intercultural families is beyond the scope of this article. Second, the assimilationist approach forces one to consider cultures that are in the process of adapting to a new hosting culture, and the Thai and Hispanic families in the United States comply with this theoretical requisite. For example, Whites recognize African Americans as being as American as Whites (i.e., Dovidio, Gluszek, John, Ditlmann, & Lagunes, 2010 ), whereas they associate Hispanics and Latinos with illegal immigration in the United States (Stewart et al., 2011 ), which has been enhanced by the U.S. media repeatedly since 1994 (Valentino et al., 2013 ), and it is still happening (Dixon, 2015 ). In this scenario, “ask yourself what would happen to your own personality if you heard it said over and over again that you were lazy, a simple child of nature, expected to steal, and had inferior blood? . . . One’s reputation, whether false or true, cannot be hammered, hammered, hammered, into one’s head without doing something to one’s character” (Allport, 1979 , p. 142, cited in Arias & Hellmueller, 2016 ).

As a consequence, on this cultural canvas, it should not be surprising that Lichter, Carmalt, and Qian ( 2011 ) found that second-generation Hispanics are increasingly likely to marry foreign-born Hispanics and less likely to marry third-generation or later coethnics or Whites. In addition, this study suggests that third-generation Hispanics and later were more likely than in the past to marry non-Hispanic Whites; thus, the authors concluded that there has been a new retreat from intermarriage among the largest immigrant groups in the United States—Hispanics and Asians—in the last 20 years.

If we subscribe to the idea that cultural assimilation goes in only one direction—from the hegemonic culture to the minority culture—then the results of Lichter, Carmalt, and Qian ( 2011 ) should not be of scholarly concern; however, if we believe that cultural assimilation happens in both directions and intercultural families can benefit both the host and immigrant cultures (for a review, see Schwartz et al., 2013 ), then this is important to address in a country that just elected a president, Donald Trump, who featured statements racially lambasting and segregating minorities, denigrating women, and criticizing immigration as some of the main tenets of his campaign. Therefore, we hope that it is clear why special attention was given to the Thai and Hispanic families in this article, considering the impact of culture on the familial system, marital satisfaction, parental communication, and children’s well-being. Even though individuals with Hispanic ancentry were in the United States even before it became a nation, Hispanic and Latino families are still trying to convince Americans of their right to be accepted in American culture and society.

With regard to the “So what?” question, assimilation is important to consider while analyzing the role of culture in family communication patterns, power dynamics, conflict, or the functioning of the overall family system in the context of the United States. This is because this country is among the most popular in the world in terms of immigration requests, and its demographics show that one out of three citizens comes from an ethnic background other than the hegemonic White culture. In sum, cultural awareness has become pivotal in the analysis of family communication issues in the United States. Furthermore, the present overview of family, communication, and culture ends up supporting the idea of positive associations being derived from the pivotal role of marriage relationship quality, such that coparenting and communication practices vary substantially within intercultural marriages moderated by gender roles.

Culture is a pivotal moderator of these associations, but this analysis needs to be tethered to societal structural level, in which cultural differences, family members’ immigration status, media content, and level of acculturation must be included in family research. This is because in intercultural marriages, in addition to the tremendous parenting role, they have to deal with cultural assimilation and discrimination, and this becomes important if we care about children’s cognitive development and the overall well-being of those who are not considered White. As this article shows, the quality of familial interactions has direct consequences on children’s developmental outcomes (for a review, see Callaghan et al., 2011 ).

Therefore, the structure and functioning of family has an important impact on public health at both physiological and psychological levels (Gage, Everett, & Bullock, 2006 ). At the physiological level, the familial interaction instigates expression and reception of strong feelings affecting tremendously on individuals’ physical health because it activates neuroendocrine responses that aid stress regulation, acting as a stress buffer and accelerating physiological recovery from elevated stress (Floyd & Afifi, 2012 ; Floyd, 2014 ). Robles, Shaffer, Malarkey, and Kiecolt-Glaser ( 2006 ) found that a combination of supportive communication, humor, and problem-solving behavior in husbands predicts their wives’ cortisol and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)—both physiological factors are considered as stress markers (see 2006 ). On the other hand, the psychology of individuals, the quality of family relationships has major repercussions on cognitive development, as reflected in educational attainment (Sohr-Preston et al., 2013 ), and highly mediated by cultural assimilation (Schwartz et al., 2013 ), which affects individuals through parenting modeling and socialization of values (Mooney-Doyle, Deatrick, & Horowitz, 2014 ).

What Is a Family Culture? Definition and Examples

Michele is a writer who has been published both locally and internationally.

Learn about our Editorial Policy .

You may know what family values are and even know the different types of family structures, but defining your family culture is a little more complex. A family culture is basically defined as the set of customs and morals your family subscribes to, but it's also much more than that.

Definition of Family Culture

Family culture can relate to just your immediate family or be representative of your extended family and ancestors. To understand the definition of family culture, it's best to break apart these two words.

One broad definition of family is "a social group in society consisting of people related to each other by various means."
The definition of culture is "a particular set of customs, morals, codes and traditions from a specific time and place."
Put these words together and the definition of family culture is "a particular set of customs, morals, codes, and traditions shared by a social group of related people."
Understanding What Is Considered Immediate Family (and Why It Matters)
What Life in a 1950s Family Was Really Like

Characteristics of a Family Culture

Each family culture is as unique as the family who exemplifies it. While it's impossible to define uniform characteristics of a family culture, there are some things that typically make up family culture.

Unspoken - Families don't often discuss their culture, they just know what's expected and accepted.
Elder Expectations - Older generations have a high expectation that younger generations will keep the same values, customs, and overall family culture.
Reciprocal Relationships - All family members are held to the same standard and expected to reciprocate what's given to them or how they are treated.

Types of Family Cultures With Examples

In 2012, the University of Virginia completed a longitudinal study and identified four types of family cultures common in America. Each type of family culture is almost equally represented by American families from all walks of life, with roughly 20%-25% of families identifying with each type.

Faithful Family Culture

These families take their cues from church or religious communities, including Christianity, Judaism, or Islam.

They are defined by a strong moral compass that requires all members to have a powerful sense of right and wrong as defined by their belief system.
Individual happiness and success is not as important as reflecting your God's purpose.
An example would be a traditional Arab family where grandparents are always consulted for big decisions like marriage because the Koran says the elderly are esteemed.

Engaged Progressive Family Culture

This type of family culture is all about personal responsibility and personal freedom.

Family members operate off The Golden Rule and what feels right to each person.
Kids from this type of family culture generally have more freedom at younger ages than other kids.
This type of family culture is the least religious of all four types.
A traditional Brazilian family could be an example of this family culture because personal values are important and people respect and expect honesty from each other.

Detached Family Culture

Detached families don't spend a lot of time together because they generally believe all the bad influences of the world will overshadow their influence.

Low income families are more likely to fall in this category.
This type of family culture includes a hands-off strategy to parenting and relationships where the belief is that whatever will be, will be.
Parents who don't keep tabs on their child's grades or school work and families that only eat together when they're watching TV are examples of detached family cultures.

American Dreamer Family Culture

American dreamer family cultures are the most common in the U.S., but only slightly more common than all the others.

This type of family culture features an optimistic attitude about the abilities of and opportunities for individual members.
These families have very close relationships where parents pour all their energy into helping their kids succeed in life and avoid as many negative social influences as possible.
A family where both parents attend every practice and game for their son's basketball team would be an example of American Dreamers.

Importance and Impact of Family Culture

Family culture influences the way each family member thinks, feels, and acts on a daily basis. Your family culture influences things like your moral compass, beliefs, values, and traditions. You might choose a career based on your family culture by picking something you know your family values. You might get really upset if your spouse doesn't get you a birthday gift because your family culture made a big deal out of each person's birthday. From big life choices and actions to small details, family culture is important because it is a big part of what makes you, you.

How to Determine Family Culture

Determining what type of family culture you're from could be simple or seem impossible. The trick is to look at similarities between the lives of the majority of your family members. Do many of you work in the same occupational field? Do you have certain family obligations that can never be missed? Do many of you act the same way when you're happy, sad, or angry? Do you view certain groups of people in an overly negative or positive way? These similarities in values, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and customs make up your family culture.

Define Your Family Culture

A healthy family culture highlights the importance of family values that are shared amongst the group. Those who veer away from the family culture may encounter culture and family issues . Families are influenced by all kinds of factors, so you'll find different family cultures around the world.

school Campus Bookshelves
menu_book Bookshelves
perm_media Learning Objects
login Login
how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
hub Instructor Commons

Margin Size

Download Page (PDF)
Download Full Book (PDF)
Periodic Table
Physics Constants
Scientific Calculator
Reference & Cite
Tools expand_more
Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

4: Influences of Family, Society, and Culture on Childhood

Last updated
Save as PDF
Page ID 64519

Susan Eliason
Bridgewater State University

$ \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } $

$ \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} $

$ \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}$ $ \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}$

( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) $ \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}$

$ \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}$ $ \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}$

$ \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}$ $ \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}$

$ \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}$

$ \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}$

$ \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}$

$ \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}$

$ \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}$

$ \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}$

$ \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}$

$ \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}$

$ \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}$

$ \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}$ $ \newcommand{\AA}{\unicode[.8,0]{x212B}}$

$ \newcommand{\vectorA}[1]{\vec{#1}} % arrow$

$ \newcommand{\vectorAt}[1]{\vec{\text{#1}}} % arrow$

$ \newcommand{\vectorB}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } $

$ \newcommand{\vectorC}[1]{\textbf{#1}} $

$ \newcommand{\vectorD}[1]{\overrightarrow{#1}} $

$ \newcommand{\vectorDt}[1]{\overrightarrow{\text{#1}}} $

$ \newcommand{\vectE}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash{\mathbf {#1}}}} $

Learning Objectives

This week you will:

Describe and analyze the influences of family, society, and culture influence the lives of children.

Introduction

How are childhoods influenced by nature and nurture? This week we will consider how family society and culture influence the lives of children. You will explore how the natural sciences (biology) and social sciences (anthropology, psychology, social work, and sociology) study these influences on children. We will use an interdisciplinary approach to learn more about the topic of sexuality. I like to use Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory to illustrate how the influences of nurture impact childhood. Watch Urie Bronfenbrenner Ecological Theory explained on You Tube on Blackboard to learn more about this model . How might Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological theory help you study your research question or childhood in general ?

Terms and Definitions

Important concepts to look for in this chapter:

Socialization: the process where children learn to meet the expectations of and how to fit into a society.
self-chosen and self-directed
an activity in which means are more valued than end
structure, or rules determined by the players
imaginative, non-literal, mentally removed in some way from “real” or “serious” life
involves an active, alert, but non-stressed frame of mind. (Gray, 2008)
Competence: The ability, capacity, or qualification to perform a task, fulfill a function, or meet the requirements of a role to an acceptable standard.
Cultural Relativism : a person’s beliefs and activities should be understood based on that person’s own culture.
Developmentalism : The behavior of children is shaped by physical, psychological, and emotional development. Maturity is determined by age and stage of development.
Diversity : There are many different types of childhood.
Ethnicity : The culture of people in a given geographic region, including their language, heritage, religion and customs. To be a member of an ethnic group is to conform to some or all of those practices. Race is associated with biology, whereas ethnicity is associated with culture.
Familialization : the caring of children in individual households and homes by family members rather than in state institutions.
Gender : The condition of being male, female, or neuter. In a human context, the distinction between gender and SEX reflects the usage of these terms: Sex usually refers to the biological aspects of maleness or femaleness, whereas gender implies the psychological, behavioral, social, and cultural aspects of being male or female (i.e., masculinity or femininity.) [American Psychological Association, 2015]
Friendship : Children’s affective social relations with their peers and others.

American Psychological Association. (2015). APA dictionary of psychology (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

Ecological Systems Theory – used often in Social Work

Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005) developed the ecological systems theory to explain how everything in a child and the child’s environment affects how a child grows and develops. The theory is illustrated in the figure below. This chapter will concentrate on the the Micro and Mesosystem levels. I find this model helpful in understanding the influences of nurture on childhood.

Bronfenbrenners_Ecological_Theory_of_Development_English.jpg

The microsystem is the small, immediate environment the child lives in. How these groups or organizations interact with the child will have an effect on how the child grows; the more encouraging and nurturing these relationships and places are, the better the child will be able to grow. Furthermore, how a child acts or reacts to these people in the microsystem will affect how they treat her in return. Each child’s special genetic and biologically influenced personality traits, what is known as temperament, end up affecting how others treat them.

The mesosystem , describes how the different parts of a child’s microsystem work together for the sake of the child. For example, if a child’s caregivers take an active role in a child’s school, such as going to parent-teacher conferences and watching their child’s soccer games, this will help ensure the child’s overall growth.

The exosystem includes the other people and places that the child herself may not interact with often herself but that still have a large effect on her, such as families workplaces, extended family members, the neighborhood,.

The macrosystem , which is the largest and most remote set of people and things to a child but which still has a great influence over the child. The macrosystem includes things such as the relative freedoms permitted by the national government, cultural values, the economy, wars, etc.

Chronosystem developmental processes vary according to the specific historical events that are occurring as the developing individuals are at one age or another. Moreover, cultures also are continually undergoing change.

As you read and explore the topics in the chapter, think about how the influences impact children.

Nature and Nurture Shape Childhood

Now, let’s use the concept of sexuality to see how nature and nurture are interconnected.

Nature and nurture, biology and culture, work together to shape human lives. Nature and nurture are intertwined, processes.

Do you assume biology (nature) is destiny that may be minimally modified by culture (nurture, or environment) throughout childhood?
Do you assume environment (nurture) is a more important factor in shaping individual psychology than biology (nature)?
Specifically, what is the relationship between biology and culture with respect to sexuality ?

The biological features of sex and sexuality are determined by chromosomes and hormones such as testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone. Biologically, there are more than 2 sexes – chromosomes which can be XX, XY, XXX, XXY, XO, XYY. XX is female and XY is male; usually if the Y exists the person is generally seen as male. O produces ambiguous sexual features. Hormones and sex are apparent at seven weeks in utero.

The difference between sex and gender is: sex is male or female and is biological . Gender is meaning given to biological sex by culture . We develop a gender identity which is how an individual identifies as masculine or feminine. Gender is a spectrum. We learn gender roles during childhood, such as, appropriate behaviors and work or division of labor

Can a male can be a female?
Is it only one or the other?
Are gender and sexuality fluid over a lifespan?
Can they change? Is sex a spectrum like gender?
nadleehi (born male functions in women roles)
Dilbaa (born female functions in male role)

I challenge you to reflect on gender and sexual diversity. Imagine you have a child who is born with an intersex anatomy [XXX, XXY, XO, XYY] You read up on diagnostic testing and the recommendations of the Intersex Society of North America , that suggest you give your child a binary gender assignment (girl or boy). Do you follow the advice of the ISNA? Why/why not? If not, what do you name your child? How do you dress your child? As your child acquires language, what pronouns do you use for your child? Would you use he, she, ze, or they? You inform yourself and read about current possibilities at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center’s article on Gender Pronouns What is ‘competency’?

Families should help children mature and become competent. The concept of competency is related to the concept of agency discussed in Chapter 2. Listening to children and respecting their opinions can contribute to their personal development. A supportive environment can lead to children to making better decisions, prepare them to participate in society and strengthen their accountability. Children’s competency or abilities may be recognized, ignored, encouraged or inhibited. The supporting adults’ willingness to respect children’s decisions will determine whether the children’s choices are honored Figure 1, described by Alderson (1992) and illustrated by Orr (1999), illustrate the internal and external variants that may influence a child’s competency. (van Rooyen, Water, Rasmussen, & Diesfeld, 2015)

When we consider competence, we should also think about cultural relativism, are there universal standards we can apply to childhood? Is the UNCRC a set of universal standards? Implementation of the UNCRC can be difficult when violations of the rights of children are justified on the basis of cultural practice. Think about the practice of female circumcision.

In 1996, a 17-year-old girl named Fauziya Kassindja arrived at Newark International Airport and asked for asylum. She had fled her native country of Togo, a small west African nation, to escape what people there call excision.

Excision is a permanently disfiguring procedure that is sometimes called “female circumcision,” although it bears little resemblance to the Jewish ritual. More commonly, at least in Western newspapers, it is referred to as “genital mutilation.” According to the World Health Organization, the practice is widespread in 26 African nations, and two million girls each year are “excised.” In some instances, excision is part of an elaborate tribal ritual, performed in small traditional villages, and girls look forward to it because it signals their acceptance into the adult world. In other instances, the practice is carried out by families living in cities on young women who desperately resist. For more information read the World Health Organization Fact sheet (2017) Female genital mutilation

Cultural relativism would accept the practice. Does the UNCRC allow the practice?

Role of families

As discussed during Week 1, we see the world through our cultural lens, we are cultural conditioned. Conditioning happens at different levels

Societal [Macrosystem in Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory]
Institutional [Exosystem in Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory]
Group [Microsystem in Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory]
Individual [The center of Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory]

The group level or microsystem in Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory includes families. One of the major influences on childhood is families. The family is the principal institution responsible for childbearing and childrearing so society assumes a more passive role in facing the commitments and costs connected to childhood. The UNCRC gives all children the right to a family. The right to a family allows children to be connected to their history, and it offers a protective perimeter against violation of their rights. Children separated from their families can become victims of violence, exploitation, trafficking, discrimination and all other types of abuse. However, sometimes the family which should be protecting the child is in fact inflicting the abuse.

Families are the first to have the power to act on behalf of the child and ensure their rights are respected. Hopefully, their objectives are to protect the child and to secure the child an education, development, security, health and morality. To achieve these objectives, a family should provide supervision by controlling the child’s comings and goings, relationships, and communications. For example, they may forbid the child from maintaining relationships with certain persons that they believe are not in his or her best interest. Families make educational decisions including religious and sex education and decide on the health care to give their child. Families are responsible for the needs of the child, such as food, clothing, shelter, educational costs, vacations (if possible), and health coverage. What happens to children when families find it difficult to provide basic needs? Families often struggle with finding time, money and resources to effectively parent. In the US, families may have difficulty earning a living wage, finding social supports, securing affordable housing, high-quality child care and paid family leave. It can be difficult to provide a nurturing environment all children need and may result in neglectful or abusive environment.

Did you know that in 2016 the relative poverty rate for children 0-5 in the U.S. was more than 25%; for ages 0-18 years the rate was about 22%. In other words about 1 out of 4 young children in the United States live in poverty. What changes in the US might lower the child poverty rate? How can we create environments that enrich the lives of all young children and their families, allowing them the opportunity to realize their full human potential?

A former student shared: So I definitely think that the Department of Children and Families (DCF) needs to be more pro-active in checking in on families, especially families living under the poverty line, to ensure they are receiving assistance if needed and that the child is living in a stable home where he/she is healthy and can thrive. I agree with the student that all children deserve a safe and healthy environment and our society should support them. I wonder why income often is the only resource considered when giving families assistance. To help you think about interacting with diverse families, please read the following scenario:

You are a teacher in the 4-year-old room at Kids Place child care center.Daequan and Mathew are two children in your class. Both were born at 30 weeks’ gestation and had hospital stays of about 6 weeks. Both are in generally good health and are monitored for respiratory illnesses. For the most part, the boys are reaching their developmental milestones, with slight delays in language/emotional development.

At the present time, Daequan and his mother, Shania, are living in a homeless shelter. Their home burned down 2 weeks ago and they had nowhere else to go. Matthew is part of an intact family. Ralph and Sue are his parents, and he has an older brother, Nick. The family lives in an affluent community a mile from Kids Place.

Which child would appear to be experiencing a greater number of risk factors that can affect his development?
With which family would it appear to be easier to develop a partnership? Why?

Then you learn:

Daequan and his mother have a number of extended family members available for support and will be moving into an apartment within a month’s time. Shania has contacted a number of local agencies for assistance to rebuild her and her son’s lives.

Matthew’s father travels 3 weeks out of the month. Sue is on medication for depression and has recently started drinking around the boys during the evenings and weekends. She turns down offers of help from her friends and family and tells them everything is fine with her marriage and her ability to raise her sons.

What questions might you or others ask to find out “the whole story”? Ruby Payne (2009) describes the nine resources by which one negotiates their environment. Poverty is when you need too many of these resources, not just financial.

Language (ability to speak formally)
Support systems
Relationships/role models
Knowledge of middle class rules

How do you and other discover what resources are available to children and families? How do you build on a families strengths. Everything that improves the economic security, safety and peace of mind of families improves parenting—and increases children’s chances for growing into healthy, compassionate and responsible adults. These include living wages and reliable hours, secure housing, high-quality childcare, paid family leave, safe neighborhoods, flex time, desegregation and social inclusion. Which disciplinary perspectives might help you understand family influences on childhood?

Friendships

Besides family and other adults in the culture, peers can be an influence on childhood. Recent research shows the importance of friendship, and its impact on mental and physical health. Preschool friendships are helpful in developing social and emotional skills, increasing a sense of belonging and decreasing stress. (Yu, Ostrosky, & Fowler, 2011). People who feel lonely or socially isolated tend to be more depressed, have more health issues and may have a shorter lifespan. (Lewis, 2016). Having a support system can help us handle hardships.

Selman and colleagues identified five successive stages in how children view friendships. The chart below illustrates the theory. Why might it be helpful to understand the stages of friendship? How would it inform your possible work with children and families?

Play in one way in which families and peers interact with the child. Play is essential to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth and is one of the rights in the UNCRC. Article 31 of the UNCRC states:

1. Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.

2. Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity.

It is through play that children engage and interact in the world around them at an early age. Play allows children to create and explore a world they can master, conquering their fears while practicing adult roles, developing new competencies that lead to enhanced confidence and the resiliency they will need to face future challenges.

Child-directed play allows children to practice decision-making skills, move at their own pace, discover their own areas of interest, and ultimately engage fully in the passions they wish to pursue. When play is controlled by adults, children follow adult rules and lose some of the benefits child-directed play offers them, such as developing creativity, leadership, and group skills. Play builds active, healthy bodies. Play is a simple joy that is a cherished part of childhood. However, play can be challenged by child labor and exploitation practices, war and neighborhood violence, living in poverty, over scheduling, and pressures on children to achieve. (Ginsburg, 2007)

A wonderful resource to learn more about play is available on the National Association for the Education of Young Children website . After reviewing the information on the website reflect on these questions:

How can we enhance the opportunities for balance in children’s lives that will create the optimal development to prepare them to be academically, socially, and emotionally equipped for future growth? How can we make sure we play enough?

Genes make us human, but our humanity is a result of the complex interplay of biological and cultural factors. This week you read about the of the influences of family, society, and culture as they bear on the lives of children. As you discuss, try to answer: How are interactions between children and adults shaped, modified and redefined by overlapping institutional and organizational forces such as the economy, family, education, politics, religion, and so on? What is the impact of experiences in childhood later in life?

After reading this chapter and completing the activities you should be able to

Describe and analyze the influences of family, society, and culture influence the lives of children as seen the discussion and assumptions inventory

Reflection and Discussion

This week we explored the influences of family, society, and culture influence the lives of children. Reflect on your understanding of these ideas:

Now you are ready to type in Pages or in a Word document, a minimum of 3 paragraphs explaining your connections, extensions, and curiosities. Copy and paste your response in the Blackboard discussion or in class

Collaborative Research Project

So far during this course, you brainstormed a research question and should be using at least 2 disciplines to examine the question. Your work this week is to present your preliminary findings as a draft of the final project. Soon you will submit a video or some other oral report as well as written materials. You will likely use the same format as the Assumption Inventory. The report should

Summarize your research question ( What ). Remember to relate the question to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)
Present the research from different disciplines that help to answer or explain the question. ( So What )
Apply criteria listed in the grading rubrics to create a persuasive presentation
Discuss possible solutions. (This is the start of the Now What of the project)
Complete a peer feedback questionnaire.

Ginsburg, K. R. (2007) The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds. Pediatrics, 119, (1). doi: 10.1542/peds.2006-2697 Available at http://pediatrics.aappublications.or...1/182.full.pdf

Lewis, T. (2016). This common characteristic may be as big a risk to your health as smoking. Business Insider Website available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-social-isolation-affects-your-health-2016-1

Selman, R. (1981). The child as a friendship philosopher. In S. A. Asher & J. M. Gottman (Eds.), Development of Children’s Friendships. (pp. 250-251). (Original work published 1978) Retrieved from http://books.google.com

van Rooyen, A., Water, T., Rasmussen, S., and Diesfeld, K. (2015). What makes a child a ‘competent’ child? The New Zealand Medical Journal, 128, (1426). Available at www.nzma.org.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/46110/van-Rooyen-1628FINAL1426.pdf

Yu, S. Y., Ostrosky, M. M. & Fowler, S. A. (2011). Children’s Friendship Development: A Comparative Study. Early Childhood Research and Practice, 13 , (1).

Family Cultural

How it works

Since I was born, I have tried to learn much about my family, though I have yet to gather all the information. This is because I have not been able to meet most of my grandparents, and my parent had little time to divulge more information. My grandfather on my mother’s side is called Andrew, while my mother is called Yvette, and my father is called Donald.

My grandmother on my mother’s side died before I knew her. On the other hand, I have never met my grandparents on my father’s side; I have never seen them, and my father was not all that close to me.

Nevertheless, I tried to seek information concerning my family from various sources, including my grandfather on my mother’s side. The scant information I have is that all my grandparents and my parent were born in South America, while we currently live in North America. Oftentimes, I had questions in my mind that I needed answered, and I would make inquiries to the closest relatives and neighbors in order to get my questions answered. The distant relationship between my father and I intimidated me to the point where I could not gather the courage to ask him any questions.

My mother, on the other hand, could tell those tales but due to my determination, I managed to gather the relevant information about my family history and culture. This explained why my parent was not willing to disclose much information about our family history (Agnew, Matthews, Bucher, Welcher, & Keyes, 2008. p. 181). Culture is influenced by numerous factors: social class, religion, racial and ethnic discrimination, degree of assimilation, and gender politics, none of which can be defined within the boundaries of race and ethnicity. Each factor inevitably influences culture and behaviors. Based on the information I gathered, my mother was born into a devoutly religious family, while my father’s was from the middle class. These two families were close friends, despite my father’s family having a higher social status than my mother’s family; nevertheless, both were very dedicated to religious beliefs and the importance of education.

In society, my grandfather, on my father’s side, was one of the most trusted individuals because he gave credit to people within their residential area with no stipulated repayment period. My grandmother, on my father’s side, also commanded reverence thanks to her composure. They both made a significant contribution to the community. The relationship between my grandparents was facilitated by an association formed by both of my grandfathers in their business dealings.

My grandfather from my father’s side owned a hotel, while my grandfather from my mother’s side supplied cereals to the hotels and his potential customers. My mother and father were schoolmates and would visit each other for discussions, exchanging books, and tackling assignments given over the weekend (Casper & Bryson, 1999. p. 10). According to Americans, there are cultural beliefs that act as constructs influencing families. These constructs are based on family, religion, and spiritual beliefs. These targeted the four cultural groups in the United States of America: African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asians, establishing the similarities and differences that exist between them. Most of the differences in these cultural groups involve the definition of the term ‘family’ and who the members of that family are. According to the European-American perception, the term family refers to the traditional nuclear unit, while for African Americans, family refers to a wider net consisting of a broad network of kin and community. Asians consider family as a chain of individuals born following a certain ancestral origin since the beginning of creation (Cavanagh, 2008, pg. 944-980). These differences determined how individuals were treated in the region – from hospital treatment, to value placed on opinions, to who could act as a family spokesperson, to who was selected as a representative in matters pertaining to member treatment. African Americans and Asian Americans often included even the extended family.

Cultural beliefs at that time determined the services an individual could receive in society (Fomby & Cherlin, 2007, p.204). In South America, many believe that Native Americans, specifically those of mixed race, are the source of all crimes in the region – including Italian Americans and Asian Americans. As my father’s ancestors were from Asia, they were often victimized in the event of any crime committed in the region. One day, an attack was made on a senior government official in the region. Due to the prevailing beliefs, many Asian Americans and Italian Americans were killed, including my paternal grandparents. My father and his sister were left in despair, relying solely on help from those closest to them – my maternal grandparents (Heard, 2007, p.354). My maternal grandparents decided to migrate from the region to find a safer place for their family, as well as for my father and his sister (Heard, 2007, p.354).

The strong friendship built by my grandparents from both sides, combined with the strong beliefs of my maternal grandparents, led them to seek a better place, away from the malicious behavior of some Americans who were intent on victimizing Asian Americans and Italian Americans (Heard, 2007, p.354). The death of my father’s parents deeply affected him, reducing his self-esteem and confidence greatly. Despite this incident, both he and his sister continued schooling. My father put more effort into his studies, despite a lack of confidence about his future prospects. My mother, on the other hand, remained optimistic. During their schooling, each harbored hidden dreams of a brighter future: my father aimed to become a top government official to end racism within society and promote equal treatment of all communities, regardless of their origin. My mother wanted to reduce the disparity between social classes since she was deeply affected by the way people were being treated by their teachers in school (Fomby & Cherlin, 2007, p.204). Both of them managed to join public universities, and that is when they opened their hearts to each other. Their spiritual beliefs helped them deal with the adversity of the institution, gain enough experience to control pain and suffering, gather emotional support, and provide comfort to each other. As devout believers, my parents relied on the church’s guidance to refine their behavior and make decisions. Family practices depend mostly on attention given by parents to cultural differences (Cavanagh, 2008, p. 980).

The interaction of my parents with different cultural groups in higher learning institutions has influenced our family behavior compared to the practices I witness from other families. Some families randomly assign family responsibilities or emphasize collective responsibility, while others focus on individual accountability. From my mother, I learned that when they were young, they were assigned family responsibilities collectively. However, I’ve never seen her assign responsibilities in this manner (Agnew et.al, 2008, p. 181). I was curious and decided to ask why this practice is not currently observed.

According to her, these changes resulted from the western system of education. In the past, teachers did not favor giving assignments to individual students, feeling it was tiresome and cumbersome. Instead, they preferred assigning work to a group of students. They later realized that this practice fostered laziness because some students did not participate in discussions or complete their assignments, relying instead on a few individuals. Consequently, they altered their assignment methodology, giving tasks to individual students. The same paradigm shift applied to family responsibilities (Casper & Bryson, 1999, p. 10).

Education has greatly impacted our family history. When my parents were young, their mothers did not handle any responsibilities; only their fathers provided for their needs, including clothes, food, and school fees. Their mothers took charge of meal preparation. Now, due to the education system encouraging gender equality, both my parents share responsibilities to ensure my wellbeing (Ball et al., 2003, p. 446).

In conclusion, our family’s way of life has drastically changed from how our parents lived. These changes have been influenced by factors like education, the need for gender balance, and political issues such as racial discrimination. This implies that family history will continue evolving, leading to different historical events.

Works cited

Agnew R, Matthews SK, Bucher J, Welcher AN, Keyes C. “Socioeconomic status, economic problems, and delinquency.” Youth and Society. 2008;181.
Ball J, Armistead L, Austin B-J. “The relationship between religiosity and adjustment among African-American, female, urban adolescents.” Journal of Adolescence. 2003;446.
Casper LM, Bryson K. “Coresident grandparents, and grandchildren.” Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau; 1999. p. 10.
Cavanagh SE. “Family structure history and adolescent adjustment.” Journal of Family Issues. 2008;980.
Fomby P, Cherlin AJ. “Family instability and child well-being.” American Sociological Review. 2007;204.
Heard HE. “The family structure trajectory and adolescent school performance.” Journal of Family Issues. 2007;354.

Cite this page

Family Cultural. (2019, Oct 08). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/family-cultural/

"Family Cultural." PapersOwl.com , 8 Oct 2019, https://papersowl.com/examples/family-cultural/

PapersOwl.com. (2019). Family Cultural . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/family-cultural/ [Accessed: 8 Jun. 2024]

"Family Cultural." PapersOwl.com, Oct 08, 2019. Accessed June 8, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/family-cultural/

"Family Cultural," PapersOwl.com , 08-Oct-2019. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/family-cultural/. [Accessed: 8-Jun-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2019). Family Cultural . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/family-cultural/ [Accessed: 8-Jun-2024]

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Hire a writer to get a unique paper crafted to your needs.

Our writers will help you fix any mistakes and get an A+!

Please check your inbox.

You can order an original essay written according to your instructions.

Trusted by over 1 million students worldwide

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

African American Family Cultural Background Essay (Critical Writing)

To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
As a template for you assignment

Introduction

The african american heritage experience, childhood memories about identity development, reflections about african american oppression, third generation african american with grandparents from the united states, conclusions.

Cultural background is essential in determining how an individual interact with others. The United States comprises of many different cultures. These include Whites, Africans, Mexicans, and Latinos, among others. Cultural heritage has influenced each of the races in different ways. Consequently, the cultural mix has been met with suspicion as cultural conflict dominates. For a long time, mainstream whites have dominated cultures in the United States. Their culture has become a lifestyle. However, most communities have continued with essential aspects of their culture. In this paper, I will explore my family’s cultural background. I will also relate it to other cultures in the United States.

Culture has different facets. It includes aspects such as language, morals, art, traditions, customs, and beliefs. These aspects are essential in shaping an individual’s habit (Hunter, 1992). Moreover, they differ from one place to another. It is essential to note that cultural background defines an individual. The behavioral pattern in individuals is a direct result of cultural aspects. African Americans have a rich culture. They derive their culture from a mixture of West African and American cultures. Notably, African Americans have a strong cultural foundation which is fostered from generation to generation. They form more than 14% of the United State’s population (US Census Bureau, 2011). They have a unique culture that is characterized by a unique parenting style, structure of the family, the role of gender in the family, and their views on marriage. Moreover, they utilize their unique cultures to manage adversities. However, it is also necessary to note that their experiences during slavery integrated foreign culture that greatly affected family structures in African American society (McGoldrick, 2005).

Moreover, slavery also brought with it poor economic status, inequality, and racism amongst other complications to African American society. Previously, these cultural norms were derived from West African families. West African cultures, just like other African cultures, valued strong family relations. Nuptials were also regarded highly in African societies. Marriage was considered special and specific to given individuals at a certain age (McLoyd, Hill &Dodge, 2005). Notably, children were associated with women which is in contrast to current views. Moreover, whenever a woman could not give birth, she was solely to blame. This trend has persisted in most West African societies even with the advent of technological advances in the health sector. In this regard, African Americans borrowed much of their heritage from West Africa. Besides, paternal parents were not responsible for their children. For instance, this happened in my family too. For instance, my family developed a rebellious attitude after he was deserted by his father and other members of his extended family. Nonetheless, it is important to note that most African American cultural norms have been deserted. For instance, paternal parents are increasingly concerned wt the well being of their children. Additionally, they have developed artistic lifestyles drawn from both African and American culture (Walker, 1996).

My childhood memories of identity were influenced by evidence of racism, rebellion, and distrust among peoples of different colors. I noted that our family members had a black complexion while others were had brown and white complexion. I also listened to stories of how West Africans were stripped of their identities and made them their master’s properties. However, they kept their family relations despite hardships to overcome difficulties. They tried all they could to adapt to American life with the desire to hold on to their morals. Of great essence to them were their cultural norms which they valued and wanted to hold on to. Unfortunately, this was not possible on whole. In the past, I used to wonder why our generation was socially, economically, and physically considered inadequate. This was strengthened by the fact that whites saw themselves as superior and powerful (Gaines, 2002). Moreover, due to discrimination, I thought that were the lowest cast. However, this changed when I witnessed various gains with regards to equality, citizenship, and racism (Hattery & Smith, 2007).

Other incidences that shaped my memory of identity occurred during my stay with my father who narrated to me how he had been abandoned by his father. He also talked about the difficulties he faced during that period since he was a breadwinner at a tender age (McAdoo, 2007). I compared this to the lifestyles of whites and other cultures in American society like the Latinos. I realized that we were in a precarious situation given the challenges we faced. This developed the real challenges of our identity in America. Further references from historical boos also helped develop my identity as African American. I also realized that we had ditched some of our cultures and instead acquired those of our ‘masters’ (Abatso & Burchett, 1991).

African oppression was both painful and agonizing. It was a disgrace to our identity. Those who carried it out should be sorry for what happened. Our ancestors were denied the rights to be descent humans (Lee, 1991). This was terrible; it brought about groaning and rebellion. Sometimes I wondered if ignorance meant slavery. Africans who were enslaved were very essential to the establishment of the United States of America, yet they were discriminated against (Hornes, 2006). Our ancestors were enslaved against their wishes. This was characterized by tyrannical lordships over them. Against their will, they worked for their masters and they were separated from their loved ones. They faced discrimination from all corners of their surroundings. Fellow members, we used to hurt them. This was mean to destroy their strong bonds. In some instances, it succeeded. However, in general, it never succeeded. Many lessons were learned from these experiences. Moreover, a course of action was taken to gain human rights and citizenship.

African American oppression destroyed their hopes and family structures. Their norms were destroyed and greatly despised. This brought about poverty, unemployment, early age pregnancies, addiction to drugs, psychological issues, low literacy levels, and broken families. Effects of slavery and discrimination have brought about economic, social, and political difficulties. The realization of the American dream was increased when Barack Obama became president. However, this will be complete when other races and gender also take the helm of the State. For instance, women have not had enough representation in politics. Spirituality was essential in helping African Americans overcome these difficulties. Moreover, the gains of the American constitution helped them feel that they belonged to American society. This has helped them to cope with atrocities committed during slavery. They are working hard to improve their livelihoods (Lassiter, 1999).

Third generation Americans have had a unique experience. Despite experiencing some form of racism, they have been forefront in minimizing it. Also, they have maintained some of their heritage from West Africa. However, this has been eroded with an influx of different cultures from different parts of the world. US census 2010 statistics showed that over 73% of children lived with both of their parents. This stresses the fact that most African Americans value strong familial bonds (Johnson, 2005). This generation has also experienced unemployment, addiction, mental illness, and poor economic status. These are some of the problems that have worked to discourage marriage among the African American community. Moreover, women who have good earnings nowadays prefer to remain single. This was not possible in African societies. Marriage was compulsory for a woman. However, these have changed; third-generation African Americans enjoy unlimited freedom that has disjointed their once strong cultural norms (Lassiter, 1999).

The cultural mix has led to the reshaping of cultural norms amongst communities in the United States. However, it is important to note that African Americans have conveyed strong familial bonds ever since they were enslaved. Despite the challenges that have transpired besides the ever-changing cultural dynamics, my family has maintained a strong familial bond. This is a strong characterization of African American society. Besides, parents are involved in their children’s activities. Besides, they have continued to improve self-esteem and priced in their culture and race. My family has a strong orientation for success. Contemporary African Americans have ditched some of the heritage they once valued. For instance, children are nowadays born outside wedlock, parents are less involved in their children’s affairs and inclination to spirituality has been abandoned. However, my family’s inclination towards spirituality is strong; we also value marriage and children inside wedlock. Besides, we have strong kinship as well as strong involvement of parents in their children’s affairs. In essence, as much as we have acquired the American way of life, we still value our heritage and identity.

Abatso, Y., & Burchett, C. (1991). How to Equip African American Family: Issues and Guidelines for Building Strong Families (1 st ed.). Chicago: Urban Ministries.

Gaines, S. O. (2002). Discredited and Discreditable Identities: One Black American’s Experiences in the United States, Jamaica, and England. The Western Journal of Black Studies , 26(3), 159. Web.

Hattery, A., & Smith, E. (2007). African American Families . Missouri: Sage

Horne, G. (2006). Toward a Transnational Research Agenda for African American History in the 21st Century. The Journal of African American History , 91(3), 288. Web.

Hunter, J. (1992). Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America- Making Sense of the Battles Over the Family, Art, Education, Law, and Politics . New York: Pursues Books

Johnson, L., & Staples, R. (2005). Black Families at the Cross Roads: Challenges and Prospects . New Jersey: John Wiley

Lassiter, E. (1999). African Culture and Personality: Bad Social Science, Effective Social Activism, or a Call to Reinvent Ethnology. African Studies Quarterly , 3(1). Web.

Lee, J., & Parker, M. (1991). The Black Family: Past, Present and Future . Michigan: Zondervan.

McAdoo, H. (2007). Black Families . New York: Sage

McGoldrick, M., Giordano, J., & Garcia-Preto, N. (2005). Ethnicity and family therapy (3 rd ed.). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

McLoyd, V., Hill, N., & Dodge, K. (2005). African American Family Life- Ecological and Cultural Diversity (2 nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press

US Census Bureau (2011). The Black Population 2010 . Web.

Walker, C. (1996). Breaking Strong Holds in African American Family: Strategies for Spiritual Warfare . Michigan: Zondervan.

Spirituality in the Workplace
LPD Receptor and Familial Hypercholesterolemia
Enslaved Women in the United States
The Value of Orientalism: France, Britain, and the US
Importance of Cultural and Anthropological Knowledge
Indonesia: Environmental and Indigenous Issues
Cooties Tag as a Children's Fictional Disease
Life in the Modern United States of America
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, February 21). African American Family Cultural Background. https://ivypanda.com/essays/african-american-family-cultural-background/

"African American Family Cultural Background." IvyPanda , 21 Feb. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/african-american-family-cultural-background/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'African American Family Cultural Background'. 21 February.

IvyPanda . 2021. "African American Family Cultural Background." February 21, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/african-american-family-cultural-background/.

1. IvyPanda . "African American Family Cultural Background." February 21, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/african-american-family-cultural-background/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "African American Family Cultural Background." February 21, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/african-american-family-cultural-background/.

Mission, Vision, and Core Beliefs
2021-2025 Strategic Direction
Ethical Principles
Press Releases
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Commitment
Our Supporters
Work at the Council
Board of Directors
President and CEO
Council Staff
Grantmaker Salary and Benefits Report
Disaster Grantmaking and Response to Specific Disasters
Values-Aligned Philanthropy
Mastering Foundation Law
Sample Documents
Legal Resources Team
Asia & Oceania
Community Foundation Locator
Philanthropic Infrastructure
COVID Resources & Pledge
Response to Ukraine
CF Insights
Open Exchange
Role-Focused Peer Communities
Foundation-Specific Peer Communities
Peer Learning Circles

Philanthropy Exchange Basics

Learn how to get started on the exchange and the basics of posting.

Action Alerts
Policy and Advocacy Training Center
Public Policy Action Network
Advocacy Toolkit
Advocacy and Lobbying Resources
Policy Agenda for the 118th Congress
Charitable Giving
Federal Tax Policy
Federal Partnerships
Federal Liaisons
HUD Secretary's Award
FEMA National Disaster Recovery Program Database
Public Policy Advisory Committee
Regulatory Engagement
Amicus Briefs
Council Letters to Congress & Administration
Career Pathways
Community Foundations National Standards
Council Awards
Global Philanthropy
Community Foundations
Corporate Philanthropy
Private Foundations
Public Grantmaking Charities
Building Common Ground
Executive Leadership
Locally Led Development
Narrative Shift
Sustainable Development Goals

Building Together

Peer Events

Leading Collaboratively Across Differences

May 6-9, 2024 | Chicago, IL

The Effects of Family Culture on Family Foundations

Most people do not think of their family as having a “culture.” For many, it's a group of familiar people doing what they always do.

Yet it is exactly this—a characteristic way of thinking, feeling, judging, and acting—that defines a culture. Both in direct and subtle ways, children are molded by the family culture into which they are born. Growing up, their assumptions about what is right and wrong often reflect the beliefs, values and traditions of their family culture. Most take for granted their family’s ways, and they carry into adulthood numerous attitudes and behaviors acquired in childhood.

Even those who later reject all or part of the family culture often discover that they are not entirely free of their early influences. No matter that they promise themselves they will never repeat the mistakes of their own family—certain cultural attitudes and responses are so ingrained in family members that they continue to affect their thinking and behavior, whether or not those individuals are aware of such influence.

To say that families have identifiable cultures, however, is not to suggest that they are static. Families are in a constant state of transition as each member moves through the cycles of life and the family itself moves from one stage of development to the next. Marriages, births, divorces, and deaths change the family constellation and, in profound ways, alter the family culture. Simultaneously, larger political, economic, and social forces also impinge on the family culture. The social revolution that began in the 1960s, for example, changed—among other things—attitudes and expectations about the roles of men and women. The boy or girl raised in a family in which mother and aunts are professional women are exposed to a very different family culture from the one their grandparents knew.

Organizational Cultures

In the 1980s, management theorists and consultants popularized the concept of organizational culture. They described corporations in anthropological terms, pointing to their social structure, norms and laws, language, dress codes, and even their artifacts. Organizations with distinct cultures invariably bore the imprint of their founders. The corps of clean-shaven IBM executives dressed in white shirts and blue suits reflected the personality, beliefs, and style of Thomas Watson, Sr., just as the bearded Apple employees wearing jeans, T-shirts, and Birkenstock sandals reflected those of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

Like corporations, family foundations have distinct organizational cultures, and they are as varied as the families that generate them. They run the gamut from formal, with tightly run meetings held in foundation boardrooms, to informal, with gatherings around a family member’s dining room table. As in corporations, the values and norms of the founders and their families determine the focus of the foundation as well as how it is governed, how conflicts are handled, and how emotions are expressed.

To recognize the effects of family culture on the style and direction of a family foundation, Chapter 1 will look at four particular cultural attributes: values, norms, traditions, and conformity . Each is examined below.

The values of the family set the basic tone for the family foundation. They inspire the choice of mission as well as the foundation’s policies and practices. Typically, the values of the individuals who have created the family’s wealth predominate. Entrepreneurs with the single-mindedness and drive to amass fortunes often have powerful and compelling personalities to match. Not surprisingly, then, they shape foundations in their image and according to their values, philosophy, and preferred style of management—just as they did their business.

One such man was A. Lincoln Filene, who founded the Lincoln and Therese Filene Foundation in 1946. Born shortly after the assassination of President Lincoln, he was named by his immigrant parents in honor of the fallen president. Filene remained true to his namesake; throughout his life, he held progressive political views and acted on them.

Innovative businessman Lincoln Filene and his brother Edward built a major retail business, Filene’s department store in Boston, which had been started by their father. Later, Lincoln Filene joined with other store owners to form Federated Department Stores. The Filene brothers were the first to employ a full-time nurse in their store as an employee benefit in an era when most workers could not afford good medical care. They also promoted the creation of credit unions to help workers generate purchasing power.

Lincoln Filene was as engaged in the world as he was in his store. In the 1930s, he established programs for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany with the dual purpose of helping them get jobs and learn what it means to be an American. In the 1950s, he created the Filene Center for Civic Participation at Tufts University, and he also helped establish the first public broadcasting station in Boston.

Fifty years after the family foundation was founded, Filene’s social and political commitments still prevail. Lincoln Filene would be pleased that today, members of the third, fourth, and fifth generations of the family serve side by side on the board and on program committees carrying out the work he began on issues involving civic education, public broadcasting, and job training.

The values of entrepreneurs who have created their family’s wealth do not always inspire family members to follow in their footsteps. In some cases, they motivate them to take an opposite course. Charles Demeré, the founder of the Debley Foundation in St. Mary’s City, Maryland, is one who took a different path from that of his father and brothers.

Demeré grew up hearing the story of his father Raymond’s rise from rags to riches. Forced to leave school to support his family, Raymond began delivering oil from a single barrel on the back of a truck. He eventually built his one-man business into the largest oil company in the Southeast. Yet even as a young man, Demeré recognized that his father was unhappy.

“I’d see my father reading books about how to gain peace of mind,” says Demeré, “but I could see that he didn’t have it. He spent his health in gaining wealth, and then spent his wealth to regain his health. I realized that wealth alone didn’t make life satisfying. I decided to look for meaning elsewhere.”

While his brothers followed careers in business, Demeré turned to spiritual pursuits. Ordained as an Episcopal priest, he and his wife, Margaret, chose to raise their family in modest circumstances. In 1962, after Demeré and his brothers dissolved a business partnership they had inherited from their father, Demeré used 10 percent of his money to endow the Debley Foundation. The name Debley, which combines the surnames of his father (Demeré) and his mother (Mobley), symbolizes the family philanthropic effort that Demeré hoped the foundation would foster. He invited his brothers, along with his cousins from the Mobley side of the family, to sit on the board.

“My idea was to pool our money and ideas,” says Demeré, “and in the process, to strengthen ties between the two sides of the family. It never happened. They’d just ask me what I wanted to give to, and then they’d rubber-stamp it and adjourn the meeting.”

Demeré’s dream of involving the extended family in creating a family culture built on philanthropic values never took hold. Later, he would try again, inviting his children on the board when they came of age. Today, two of Demeré’s four children serve on the board, along with his wife and two cousins.

It is not only the values of the person who creates the family wealth that stamp the family culture. The O’Neill family in Cleveland traces the value it places on family unity to Hugh O’Neill, who emigrated to the United States in 1884. Settling in Ohio, Hugh O’Neill raised his children to respect and maintain family ties. His grandson, William (Bill) J. O’Neill, Jr., explains that when he was growing up, “all the branches of the family lived nearby. We were almost as close to our cousins as were to our own brothers and sisters. My grandfather passed on his value of family cohesiveness to his children, who passed it on to us. Now my generation is doing the same for the next generation.”

O’Neill family members worked together in the family business, Leaseway Transportation, a publicly traded company started by Bill’s father and his two uncles. They, with Bill and some of his cousins, built the trucking and warehouse business into a billion-dollar-a-year operation. After the family sold its shares in Leaseway, Bill set up a family office to manage the family’s investments.

In 1987, the family discovered yet another way to tie its members together. Bill and his mother, Dorothy, the principal donor, established the William J. and Dorothy K. O’Neill Foundation. In keeping with the clan mentality, their goal was to involve every family member in the foundation at whatever level they could participate. Bill and his mother are the only trustees, but his five siblings sit on the disbursement committee, along with Bill’s wife and three members of the third generation. Whether or not they are active on committees, adult members of the family’s six branches are invited to attend meetings, and all receive detailed minutes of each foundation meeting explaining what was decided and why.

Norms are the spoken and unspoken rules of cultures. Reinforced over time, they operate as invisible constraints on family members’ behavior. Norms set standards for how family members dress, talk, and act. They also set limits on what is permissible or impermissible behavior under different circumstances and conditions. More than just rules of etiquette, norms provide family members with a guide for living both within the home and without.

When families establish foundations, they bring with them the rules of behavior that have governed the family culture. In 1985, John and Marianne Vanboven (not their real names) set up the Theodore Vanboven Family Foundation in honor of John’s father, a Dutch immigrant who built the family fortune. Originally, the board was composed of John and Marianne and their two children, Thomas and Alexandra. Then, two years, ago, the children’s spouses Joan and Michael, were added to the board.

“In our family, good manners count for everything,” says Thomas. “As children, my sister and I learned not to raise our voices, never to ask personal questions, and to avoid dissension at all costs. If we violated those rules, my parents would only have to raise their eyebrows to let us know that our behavior was out of line.”

When Thomas and Alexandra went away to college in the 1970s, they encountered a different set of norms. There, free expression was not only encouraged but considered healthy. Both Thomas and Alexandra spent several years in therapy learning how to express their feelings, and both married spouses who grew up in family cultures in which arguing and shouting were commonplace. Nonetheless, when Thomas and Alexandra are in the company of their parents, they still follow the rules of behavior they were taught as children.

Before the spouses joined the board, meetings to discuss allocations ran smoothly. The foundation funds higher education and church-run social services programs. Although Thomas and Alexandra wanted to be more adventurous grantmakers, they were reluctant to introduce proposals outside their parents’ purview.

When the spouses joined the board, however, they had a different understanding of what their roles would be. They expected that as trustees, they would be free to debate ideas and grant proposals. Joan quickly caught on to the Vanbovens’ unspoken norms and backed away from controversy. But Michael persisted in arguing his positions, sometimes quite aggressively and long after they were voted down by the board.

“It was evident from my parents’ silence and body language,” says Thomas, “that they were uncomfortable when Michael raised his voice or banged his fist on the table, but Michael seemed oblivious to their signals. When I mentioned his behavior to my mother, she denied that anything was wrong. That’s the way my parents are. They close their eyes to what they don’t want to see, and then hope that the problem will clear up by itself.”

As hard as the Vanboven family tries to avoid controversy, the Jacobs family welcomes it. They refer to themselves as a “loud and feisty bunch,” and there is no mistaking who inspired that image. Joe Jacobs, a child of Lebanese immigrants, grew up in poverty in Brooklyn. After earning a degree in chemical engineering, he started a small consulting business in 1947 that he built into the billion-dollar Jacobs Engineering Group.

As an undergraduate student, Joe was trained in Socratic dialogue, and this discipline sparked a love of intellectual sparring that he passed on to his three daughters. Over the years, the family has had plenty of opportunities to practice its debating skills. Joe is a political conservative and advocate of the free enterprise system, and his daughters are liberals. One rule guides the family’s arguments: say what you have to say with passion and heat, and then give others the same opportunity.

Once, in a particularly fiery argument between Joe and his daughter Linda, an exasperated Joe asked Linda what made her so opinionated. Her instant reply was, “Where do you think I learned that, Dad?” A few days later, Linda gave her father another answer. She presented him with a plaque imprinted with a quote from Jonathan Swift: “We love each other because our ailments are the same.” Joe hung it on the kitchen wall.

In 1989, Joe and his wife, Violet (Vi), set up the Jacobs Family Foundation in San Diego, California, and invited their daughters, and later their two sons-in-law, to serve on the board. Until the family discovered a common interest, funding microenterprises, their arguments over the foundation’s mission were long and furious. But they all agreed that they wanted their foundation to break new ground in philanthropy; and once again, the norms of the family culture prevailed. Joe had taken risks in building his business and wanted the foundation to do the same in philanthropy. For years, he kept on his desk a cartoon of Babe Ruth at bat; its caption read “Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times.” As Joe says, “Defeat can’t be avoided. It’s part of daring. That’s why I tell my family: Listen kids, we may get knocked on our behinds fighting the system, but we’re going to do it.”

The Jacobs Family Foundation has had many successes as well as its share of disappointments. In sticking its neck out, it has made mistakes and misjudged the capacity of certain individuals for leadership. But what some families might regard as failures, the Jacobs see as valuable lessons. Undaunted, they are confident they are on the right track.

All families have traditions that are passed down from one generation to the next. In the past, when the extended family all lived in one place, traditions were built into the routines of daily life and kept alive by family elders. As family branches diverged and the elders died, the traditions often died with them.

With family members scattered around the country, families now have to work hard to create and maintain their traditions. The O’Neill family, for example, holds reunions every three years for the entire clan—some 235 relatives who live in the United States. For one family branch of the clan whose members want to meet more regularly, there is also an annual weekend gathering every summer, which nearly half the family attends. Typically, one person in the family takes the initiative in organizing family events; in the O’Neill family, that person is often Bill O’Neill. To keep track of this large family, he prints and distributes a clan telephone directory, which he updates annually.

Several trustees interviewed for this guide mentioned traditional summer gathering places where the family comes together for fun and relaxation, usually at the summer home of the grandparents or at a family camp. It was through childhood experiences of those places, some say, that they first developed the sense of belonging to something larger than their immediate family.

For example, the Pardoe family has maintained a family farm in New Hampshire for 200 years. Purchased in 1796, the farm had been continually occupied by family members until the death of the family matriarch, Helen Pardoe, in 1988. Now the ownership and management of the farm have passed to the younger generation. Although younger family members live on both coasts, they still regard the farm as their symbolic family home.

“My grandmother was a large presence in the family,” says Charles Pardoe II, “and we were all close to her. The farm symbolizes the values my grandmother lived by and passed on to us: tight-knit family, hard work, and a positive attitude.”

The farm continues to be a family gathering place, and because the current owners of the farm are also the directors of the Samuel P. Pardoe Foundation in Washington, DC, at least one of the foundation's meetings is held there annually. The family foundation is now exploring ways to fund educational and charitable programs that use the farm’s fields, barns, and livestock in their activities.

Not all traditions are formal practices or celebrations; some are customary ways of doing things that go unquestioned. Often family members think and behave in certain ways because “that’s how it’s always been.” When families set up family foundations, they generally structure those foundations according to the same traditions. Foundations that do not have private offices, for example, often hold meetings in the home of the family elders (the traditional meeting place). Similarly, families with a tradition of vesting authority for business and investment decisions exclusively in the hands of the men in the family or the family elders generally set up a similar hierarchy in the foundation.

However, traditions respected within the context of the home may be challenged when carried over to the foundation. Coming together under different circumstances and in a wholly different arena, family members who have been excluded from decision making may no longer be as willing to abide by the usual traditions when they become trustees. Sometimes, even the family leaders themselves recognize that a different management structure is needed for the foundation.

Family cultures vary greatly in their tolerance of differences. Some demand total allegiance to the values of the culture and regard any divergence from the norm as threatening to the well-being of the family. Some even go as far as to cut off all contact with family members who embrace different philosophies or styles of living.

When families of this cultural type set up foundations, they impose the same demand for conformity on trustees. Typically, little if any debate takes place, and new voices or perspectives on issues are discouraged. One trustee, the granddaughter of the founder of a large foundation in the South, tells of her experience of joining the board when she was well into middle age. Married at age nineteen to escape what she described as an oppressively proper family life, she lived on the West Coast until her divorce several years ago. Back in her hometown, she was eager to serve on the family board, seeing the foundation as a way to reintegrate into the community.

In her absence, the control of the board had passed from her grandmother, the founder, to her father, and then to her three brothers, who, for the past eight years, had followed the same “cookie-cutter” approach to broaden the foundation’s grantmaking. She began meeting with members of the community to learn more about the foundation’s funding areas and to explore new approaches that the board might take in supporting local groups. Excited by her findings, she recommended that some of these individuals be invited to speak to the board at its next meeting. The board turned down her suggestion.

“They reacted as if I were a traitor to the family,” she says. “They regard any changes from the way my grandmother and father did things as betrayal. It’s frustrating that they shut the door to new ideas because with the amount of money we give away each year, this foundation could be a real force for change in this town.”

Other families, like the Stranahans, go to great lengths to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard. In 1956, Duane and Virginia Stranahan formed the Needmor Fund in Boulder, Colorado, with money earned from the family business, Champion Spark Plug, started by Duane’s father and uncle. The Stranahans are a large family (Duane and Virginia had six children who had sixteen children of their own), and their politics run the gamut from conservative to progressive. Despite their diversity, they place great value on inclusiveness.

“My grandfather is a quiet man who set an example of not imposing his views on others,” says Abby Stranahan, the current board chair. “He wants the family to work together, and he trusts them to make good decisions.”

The family’s tolerance for diversity was tested during the 1970s when the family and the foundation were in turmoil. Duane and Virginia divorced, as did several other family members, and others moved away from the family home in Toledo, Ohio. Meanwhile, Virginia left the board, and members of the third generation, politicized by the events of the times, had their own ideas on how to give money away.

To preserve unity and encourage family participation, the foundation revised the trust agreement. Under the new guidelines, any family member who contributed $1,000 to the foundation was considered a voting member of the foundation. Moreover, the family felt a need to develop a broad mission that would include the wide sweep of political philosophies. To that end, they hired a strong and experienced executive director who helped them cut through their political differences to find a common interest in funding grassroots empowerment.

“Ironically,” says Stranahan, “the board’s impulse to move toward a more unifying and less politicized mission led us to more progressive funding. What was dividing the family was not values but rhetoric. Once family members discovered they had similar concerns and that those concerns cut across political differences, they were able to focus on foundation goals.”

This brief introduction to family culture points at the many strands that weave together two systems, the family and the foundation. As will become clearer in later chapters, that influence does not move in one direction but rather is reciprocal. The family is changed by the experience of running the foundation, and the foundation, in turn, is influenced by the changes in the family. Founders die, and with them often go their styles of leadership and management. In-laws join the family, importing beliefs, norms and traditions from their own family cultures, The younger generation comes on board, reflecting a new set of values and experiences and, often, different funding agendas. Conflicts erupt, circumstances change, and new challenges arise that require trustees to rethink their old ways or to devise different strategies for managing situations.

And so life moves inexorably forward as both internal and external forces continuously shape and influence the cultures of the two systems—the family and the foundation.

Natalie Ross

Vice president, membership, development and finance.

Community Foundation Excellence (CFE) Fundamentals Course - Virtual - July 2024

Legal matters for corporate foundations and giving programs - virtual - august 2024, legal matters for community foundations - september 2024, community foundation excellence (cfe) fundamentals course - virtual - november 2024.

Philanthropy's New Voice: Building Trust With Deeper Stories and Clear Language

2023 Grantmaker Salary and Benefits Report

2023 grantmaker salary and benefits report: key findings.

Shortform Books

The World's Best Book Summaries

The Importance of Family Culture: Examples and More

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "How Will You Measure Your Life?" by Clayton M. Christensen. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here .

What is the importance of family culture? How can you create one in your own home?

A family culture is made up of the priorities, values, and attitudes that help a child know how to behave. In this article, you’ll find out about the importance of family culture, how you can create one, and examples of family cultures.

Learn about the importance of family culture below.

The Importance of Family Culture, Explained

In this article, you’ll find out about the importance of family culture and how you can create one that reflects your values. Ultimately, family culture is important because it gives your children a framework for how to behave.

A family culture ensures that your children know how to do the right thing and behave in a way that reflects your values. When understanding the importance of family culture, this is a key element.

Read on if you want to understand more about the importance of family culture.

How to Create a Family Culture

Parents need to proactively develop a family culture, or way of doing things, so children instinctively do the right thing when their parents aren’t around because they know that “this is the way our family behaves.” In doing so, children will behave in a way that reflects your values.

Building a culture involves knowing your priorities and designing a culture around them by demonstrating how problems are solved the right way and repeating the process until it becomes embedded. The example below shows the importance of family culture, and how it can foster positive traits in your children:

If kindness is a family value, help your child choose kindness in a situation where it’s warranted. Make sure he repeats the decision on subsequent occasions; if he doesn’t choose to be kind, discuss how he should have acted differently. Next time, he will be guided by a sense of “this is how we do it.” For example, Christensen and his wife Christine helped their son be kind to a bullied classmate, and praised him when he did it.

Of course, parents need to live by the priorities they articulate. For example, Christensen and his wife wanted their children to love work, so they created opportunities for their children to work with them on home remodeling projects. The kids not only had fun and learned a value, but also developed a sense of accomplishment from the work they did—for instance, they took pride in the rooms they’d helped paint.

You have to build the culture you want and reinforce it so it becomes automatic. If you don’t dictate the standard, negative behaviors will form the culture.

Outsourcing Values

In addition to process capabilities, children need to learn their parents’ priorities and values. You convey your values, often without realizing it, while doing things with your children.

Kids pick up this information when they’re ready to learn it—you can’t predict when that will be, which is why it’s important to “be there” for them as much as possible. If you’ve filled your children’s time with activities you’re not involved in, they’re likely to pick up the values of the other adults around them when they’re ready to learn.

While providing children with resources is part of a parent’s job, so too is developing their capabilities through chances to develop processes and values. If you outsource this, you’ll lose the opportunity to develop your children into the kind of adults you want them to be.

———End of Preview———

Like what you just read read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of clayton m. christensen's "how will you measure your life" at shortform ..

Here's what you'll find in our full How Will You Measure Your Life? summary :

How economic theories that help businesses succeed can also help individuals make better life decisions
How to build a career that makes you happy
How to deepen your relationships with your spouse and children
← Witty Ticcy Ray: Oliver Sacks’ Tourette’s Patient
The 4 Parts of a Good Sales Pitch Structure →

Elizabeth Shaw

Elizabeth graduated from Newcastle University with a degree in English Literature. Growing up, she enjoyed reading fairy tales, Beatrix Potter stories, and The Wind in the Willows. As of today, her all-time favorite book is Wuthering Heights, with Jane Eyre as a close second. Elizabeth has branched out to non-fiction since graduating and particularly enjoys books relating to mindfulness, self-improvement, history, and philosophy.

What Makes a Good Mother? Only You Can Decide

Autoimmune Inflammation: If Your Body Turns on You

Smile by Raina Telgemeier: Book Overview

The Truth About Love: What Unselfish Love Teaches Us

Rupi Kaur’s Poems About Love in The Sun and Her Flowers

How to Compliment a Friend Without an Ulterior Motive

Jon Bon Jovi pokes fun at Kelly Clarkson for singing wrong ‘Blaze of Glory’ lyrics during ‘Kellyoke’

Just when you thought Kelly Clarkson could sing anything, she's been taken down by a Jon Bon Jovi song.

On June 6, "The Kelly Clarkson Show" shared a blooper-filled video of its host repeatedly mixing up the lyrics to Bon Jovi's 1990 hit "Blaze of Glory" for a "Kellyoke" segment.

Later that day, the talk show shared another clip of Clarkson sitting down for an interview with Bon Jovi, who teased her about getting the lyrics wrong.

"How's your life? How's everything going right now? How's summer?" Clarkson asked the rockstar, who jokingly replied, "It's as hectic as your morning has been."

Clarkson, who laughed at his response, then explained that she got the lyrics wrong because she couldn't read the words properly.

"I love that that's never happened ever, but sometimes you have days where you're like, 'Oh, I can't hit that note' or something," she described. "But you never have days where you're like, 'No, I can hit the notes, but I can't actually read, or I can't say the words.' And you were here for it, I'm so happy for that."

Bon Jovi playfully joked about her performance again and said it took her "all four takes" to get through "Blaze of Glory."

"There might've been more than four, Jon. You're being kind," she laughed.

Later on in the interview, Bon Jovi made another joke about Clarkson's performance when she asked him if he feels "pressure" being on stage

"Not like you did this morning," he quipped while looking away with a smile.

"That's my favorite kind of human," Clarkson replied.

At the beginning of the blooper-filled video , which showed her butchering "Blaze of Glory," she told her fans that this song is the one that "almost killed" her.

"Not even because I can't sing it, I just can't read," she joked.

The "Chemistry" singer then explained that the song's high notes weren't the problem. Its lyrics? That's another story.

"Here's the thing. I grew up on that song, I know that song. But in rehearsal, I messed it up, like, a gazillion times," the Grammy winner said. "Not even because I wasn't hitting the notes. I just couldn't read. I just kept saying the wrong words."

Clarkson added that the situation became "so ridiculous" that she had to "let it go like Elsa," referring to the "Frozen" character's signature song.

The video then showed how Clarkson mangled her way through the lyrics of "Blaze of Glory" while performing it with her backing band.

The first time she blundered, Clarkson stopped and told her studio audience, "Oh, man, my learning disability kicked in and I said, 'Let the boy like die a man.' Yep. And it's definitely not that."

After another mistake moments later, she raised her hand in frustration, uttering an obscenity.

Clarkson paused to work out her frustration by emitting a blood-curdling scream before diving back into the song .... only to screw up its lyrics again.

"Let me fake —" she sings, catching herself. Then, to her audience, she yells, "Let me fake my final stand?!" before sliding down to the floor in embarrassment.

The fourth time she derails the song, Clarkson raises her hands to her head in anger. "I can't say the right words!" she told her audience.

The video's footage then switched to a moment when Bon Jovi arrives.

"Look who it is, Jon Bon Jovi," the show's announcer tells the audience as the rocker walks over to greet Clarkson.

Clarkson falls to her feet, bowing before the singer. "I can't say the right words!" she tells him after the two hug each other.

Gina Vivinetto is a writer for TODAY.com.

Joyann Jeffrey is a trending news reporter based in New York City

What Pat Sajak said about ‘professional other half’ Vanna White during his last ‘Wheel of Fortune’ show

Nicola Coughlan praised for her response when told she was ‘very brave’ for 'Bridgerton' role

Who are Pat Sajak's 2 kids? What to know about ‘Wheel of Fortune’ host’s family

Did ‘Bluey’ introduce its first gay couple? The history of LGBTQ+ representation in animated series

‘90 Day Fiancé’ exclusive: Liz’s mom confronts Ed for the first time since canceling his wedding to Liz

Who was Scott Scurlock? The true story of ‘How to Rob a Bank’

What to know about the NBA Finals, including the schedule and how to watch

I’m 48 and my husband is 29. That won’t stop us from having a baby

How to watch the 2024 Stanley Cup Final

Pat Sajak’s daughter honors him ahead of his final ‘Wheel of Fortune’ episode: ‘It’s been such a gift’

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Impact — A Look at the Impact of Culture Change on Family

A Look at The Impact of Culture Change on Family

Categories: Impact

About this sample

Words: 1445 |

Published: Sep 12, 2018

Words: 1445 | Pages: 3 | 8 min read

Types of families, culture construction of the family, works cited.

Bane, M. J. (1976). The family in America: Searching for social harmony in a changing society. Routledge.
Giddens, A. (2006). Sociology (5th ed.). Polity Press.
Graemem, B. (2013). The effects of culture change on the family. The Journal of Social Sciences Research, 9(1), 25-32.
Haralambos, M., & Holborn, M. (2008). Sociology: Themes and perspectives (7th ed.). Collins.
Murdock, G. P. (1949). Social structure. Free Press.
Nam, C. B. (2004). The changing structure of American families: A thirty-year perspective. Population Research and Policy Review, 23(5-6), 475-497.
Zeitlin, I. M., Meglin, D., & Laird, J. D. (1995). American families: Issues and relationships. Allyn & Bacon.
Bianchi, S. M., & Casper, L. M. (2000). American families. Population Bulletin, 55(1), 3-44.
Harkness, S., & Super, C. M. (1992). Parents' cultural belief systems: Their origins, expressions, and consequences. Guilford Press.
Van Den Berghe, P. L. (1979). Human family systems: An evolutionary view. Elsevier.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Karlyna PhD

Verified writer

Expert in: Life

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 703 words

3 pages / 1172 words

2 pages / 702 words

2 pages / 990 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

A Look at The Impact of Culture Change on Family Essay

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Impact

Television in the 1950s was a transformative force that revolutionized American culture and society. With the post-World War II economic boom, television ownership skyrocketed, becoming a staple in households across the nation. [...]

Progressivism in education has brought about a paradigm shift in teaching and learning, moving away from traditional methods towards a more student-centered and experiential approach. By prioritizing personalized instruction, [...]

Racial prejudice has been a longstanding issue in society, affecting individuals of various ethnic backgrounds. In the short story "Brownies" by ZZ Packer, the theme of racial prejudice is explored through the interactions [...]

Noise is a term commonly used to describe unwanted sound or disturbance that interferes with communication, concentration, or overall well-being. It can also refer to unwanted signals or interference within a system or process. [...]

Color is helpful in communicating your message because it draws attention, sets the tone of the message, and guides the eye where it needs to go. It presents a sense of direction and recognition that people can identify and [...]

Prior to watching the talk given by Marian Spier, I have viewed social impact as a simple concept; to me, it was simply the influence or effect of people or groups of people towards our society as a result of their actions that [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

IMAGES

Essay On Family Traditions
My family essay in english writing || Essay on about my family
Traditional Family Essay Example
family orgin essay examples
Describe Your Family of Origin Essay
Confucianism vs Daoism Dbq (500 Words)

VIDEO

My Family and Culture || Thankful Project || Anna
My Family Essay writing in English
Traditions Culture and Language
Mobile Culture Essay in English || Essay on Mobile Culture in English
Family culture
Essay on My Wonderful Family

COMMENTS

My Family Cultural Background: [Essay Example], 762 words
Family cultural background encompasses the traditions, beliefs, values, and practices that have been passed down through generations within a family. It plays a significant role in shaping an individual's worldview, behavior, and interactions with others. In this essay, I will delve into my family's cultural background, exploring the traditions ...
Family Culture And Traditions Free Essay Example
Download. Essay, Pages 5 (1015 words) Views. 27147. In our family, there are several cultures and traditions that play a very important role in defining our family values and cultures. These traditions and cultures have been passed to our parents from our grandparents. The two most vivid cultural patterns that are present in our family have ...
Family, Culture, and Communication
Introduction. Family is the fundamental structure of every society because, among other functions, this social institution provides individuals, from birth until adulthood, membership and sense of belonging, economic support, nurturance, education, and socialization (Canary & Canary, 2013).As a consequence, the strut of its social role consists of operating as a system in a manner that would ...
family culture Essay
family culture Essay. Good Essays. 1736 Words. 7 Pages. Open Document. Often times when we hear the word culture, we think of the differences of different countries. That statement may be true; however, there are different cultures within the same country, even within the same city. No matter what culture we call our own, there are distinct ...
What Is a Family Culture? Definition and Examples
One broad definition of family is "a social group in society consisting of people related to each other by various means." The definition of culture is "a particular set of customs, morals, codes and traditions from a specific time and place." Put these words together and the definition of family culture is "a particular set of customs, morals ...
The Importance of Family: a Foundation for Life
Family plays a pivotal role in shaping our personal development and identity. From the moment we are born, our family environment exerts a profound influence on our values, beliefs, and behaviors. Our early interactions with family members help form the foundation of our character and worldview. Parents, in particular, serve as our first ...
Family and Culture: Major Problems Facing Families Around the World Essay
We will write a custom essay on your topic. The most notable changes in families include changes in the dress fashions, ways of living, and a drastic change in birth rate, among others. Lifestyles of families are changing significantly while family ties are gradually losing their strength.
Family and Culture
Decent Essays. 1010 Words. 5 Pages. Open Document. "Family culture is a unique way that a family forms itself in terms of rules, roles, habits, activities, beliefs, and other areas" ("What is family culture?", 2002). The perception of family is an aspect of family culture; this includes the interactions within the family and with others.
The Importance Of Family Culture
The Importance Of Family Culture. Your family identity is who you are as a family, the values or beliefs learned from parents, daily routine of habits, religious activities, and special traditions created that is celebrated or conducted year after year is the family culture you create. Knowing who you are and where you came from is an important ...
Family Culture Matters: How to Create a Lasting Impression
From these two definitions, we can define a family culture as a collection of shared knowledge, values, beliefs, rules and practices that characterize a family and guides each member's behavior, attitudes and goals. Simply put, it's a family's way of life. There are many factors that make up a family culture.
Essay About Family Background
family culture Essay. Often times when we hear the word culture, we think of the differences of different countries. That statement may be true; however, there are different cultures within the same country, even within the same city. No matter what culture we call our own, there are distinct differences between that of other cultures around us.
4: Influences of Family, Society, and Culture on Childhood
One of the major influences on childhood is families. The family is the principal institution responsible for childbearing and childrearing so society assumes a more passive role in facing the commitments and costs connected to childhood. The UNCRC gives all children the right to a family.
Family Cultural
Essay Example: Since I was born, I have tried to learn much about my family, though I have yet to gather all the information. ... African Americans and Asian Americans often included even the extended family. Cultural beliefs at that time determined the services an individual could receive in society (Fomby & Cherlin, 2007, p.204). In South ...
The Role of Family and Culture in Shaping My Identity
According to experts, society and culture play a major role in forming a person's identity. I believe that my family has a big of an impact on my current identity. But despite of that, I could not deny that the people that I encountered or the environment that I had been do influenced my perspective in different aspects.
African American Family Cultural Background Essay (Critical Writing)
Introduction. Cultural background is essential in determining how an individual interact with others. The United States comprises of many different cultures. These include Whites, Africans, Mexicans, and Latinos, among others. Cultural heritage has influenced each of the races in different ways. Consequently, the cultural mix has been met with ...
Personal Culture And My Family Culture Essay
2114 Words. 9 Pages. Open Document. While looking upon my personal culture and my family's culture in an attempt to find appropriate dishes for this assignment, it became apparent to me that I have no definite culture. Whereas I have lived in Canada my whole life, my family's background has engaged me in varying cultures, though I have ...
The Effects of Family Culture on Family Foundations
Families are in a constant state of transition as each member moves through the cycles of life and the family itself moves from one stage of development to the next. Marriages, births, divorces, and deaths change the family constellation and, in profound ways, alter the family culture. Simultaneously, larger political, economic, and social ...
Traditions And Values Of Family Culture
Family Culture describes the values, traditions and customs of a family. These attributes are originated from the ethnicity that they were born into. Its fundamental role ultimately shapes the attitudes, personalities and characteristics of one family member to the next. The values and traditions that originated from one parent's generation ...
Essay About Filipino Family
Essay About Filipino Family. 2135 Words9 Pages. The family is the most important unit in our society. It is where people first learned how to communicate, interact and be a contributor to the society they are living in (Wilson, 2013). Filipinos are traditionally close to their families and children who are reared and brought up in a traditional ...
Preserving Family Culinary Traditions: A Connection to My Cultural
Growing up, my family's kitchen was always filled with the smells of delicious home-cooked meals, and the recipes that have been passed down through generations have helped me connect with my cultural roots. In this essay, I will explore my family's culinary traditions and share how the dishes we prepare have shaped my identity and cultural roots.
The Importance of Family Culture: Examples and More
A family culture is the set of values and behaviors that guide your children. Learn how to build a family culture that reflects your priorities and helps your children make good choices.
Jon Bon Jovi Teases Kelly Clarkson for Fumbling 'Blaze of Glory ...
"Here's the thing. I grew up on that song, I know that song. But in rehearsal, I messed it up, like, a gazillion times," the Grammy winner said.
Family Tradition Essay
970. Pages: 2. This essay sample was donated by a student to help the academic community. Papers provided by EduBirdie writers usually outdo students' samples. Cite this essay. Download. My inspiration in life is my family traditions. My family serves as a lifeline to whom I can run, whatever may be the situation I am facing.
A Look at The Impact of Culture Change on Family
Culture change has affected the family in that the industrial revolution has had a great impact to the family as an institution. For example in Kenya, the patriarchal nature of the family. In the pre-modern families, men went out to work as the wives did household chores. The husband was regarded as the breadwinner.

Article contents

Introduction

Family: Theoretical Perspectives

Family Communication Patterns Theory

Dyadic Power

The Role of Culture in Parenting Socialization of Values

Intercultural Families: Adding Cultural Differences to Interparental Communication

An Example of Intercultural Parenting: The Thai Family

The Case of Hispanic/Latino Families in the United States

Culture and Family Communication: the “so what?” Question

Further Reading

Related Articles

What Is a Family Culture? Definition and Examples

Definition of Family Culture

Characteristics of a Family Culture

Types of Family Cultures With Examples

Faithful Family Culture

Engaged Progressive Family Culture

Detached Family Culture

American Dreamer Family Culture

Importance and Impact of Family Culture

How to Determine Family Culture

Define Your Family Culture

Margin Size

4: Influences of Family, Society, and Culture on Childhood

Introduction

Ecological Systems Theory – used often in Social Work

Nature and Nurture Shape Childhood

Role of families

Friendships

After reading this chapter and completing the activities you should be able to

Reflection and Discussion

Collaborative Research Project

Family Cultural

Works cited

Cite this page

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

African American Family Cultural Background Essay (Critical Writing)

Introduction

Philanthropy Exchange Basics

Building Together

Leading Collaboratively Across Differences

The Effects of Family Culture on Family Foundations

Organizational Cultures

Natalie Ross

Community Foundation Excellence (CFE) Fundamentals Course - Virtual - July 2024

Philanthropy's New Voice: Building Trust With Deeper Stories and Clear Language

2023 Grantmaker Salary and Benefits Report

Shortform Books

The Importance of Family Culture: Examples and More

The Importance of Family Culture, Explained

How to Create a Family Culture

Outsourcing Values

———End of Preview———

Elizabeth Shaw

You May Also Like

What Makes a Good Mother? Only You Can Decide

Autoimmune Inflammation: If Your Body Turns on You

Smile by Raina Telgemeier: Book Overview

The Truth About Love: What Unselfish Love Teaches Us

Rupi Kaur’s Poems About Love in The Sun and Her Flowers

How to Compliment a Friend Without an Ulterior Motive

Jon Bon Jovi pokes fun at Kelly Clarkson for singing wrong ‘Blaze of Glory’ lyrics during ‘Kellyoke’

What Pat Sajak said about ‘professional other half’ Vanna White during his last ‘Wheel of Fortune’ show

Nicola Coughlan praised for her response when told she was ‘very brave’ for 'Bridgerton' role

Who are Pat Sajak's 2 kids? What to know about ‘Wheel of Fortune’ host’s family

Did ‘Bluey’ introduce its first gay couple? The history of LGBTQ+ representation in animated series

‘90 Day Fiancé’ exclusive: Liz’s mom confronts Ed for the first time since canceling his wedding to Liz

Who was Scott Scurlock? The true story of ‘How to Rob a Bank’

What to know about the NBA Finals, including the schedule and how to watch

I’m 48 and my husband is 29. That won’t stop us from having a baby

How to watch the 2024 Stanley Cup Final

Pat Sajak’s daughter honors him ahead of his final ‘Wheel of Fortune’ episode: ‘It’s been such a gift’

A Look at The Impact of Culture Change on Family

Table of contents

Cite this Essay

Related Essays

Still can’t find what you need?

Related Essays on Impact

Related Topics