Family culture

Hi everyone! I am very excited to share with you some things that I learned.  In this week’s class, we talked about something that I never thought about before but that makes a lot of sense to me. We discussed “family culture”. This concept refers to all the ideas, costumes, morals, traditions, and behavior that people can inherit from their immediate family or extended family and ancestors. Although we may think that we are absent from this kind of impact on our personality, Consciously or unconsciously, family culture influences our way of thinking and acting.   

Each family culture is unique because any family shares the same habits and beliefs. Having a healthy family culture is essential for the future of our kids because in the future they could follow all these attitudes and behaviors learned in their own families. We should seek to build a family culture based on high moral values and respect.  

Talking about family cultures in my class made me think about my own family culture. My dad is in the military and because of that, my family and I had to move to another city every year or two. I am a very shy person and changes made me feel anxious. Each time that we moved to another city everything was new for us; New neighborhood, new school, new friends, etc. But the only thing that never changed was my family. I think that due to that one of the aspects of my own family culture that I am very grateful for is that we are very close, and we have very assertive and open communication between us. Every time that I have a discussion with someone from my family, I know that although at first, we can feel angry, after a while and after talking, we will be able to overcome our differences without bad feelings. For this same reason, I have a very close relationship with my brother. He is my only brother and I consider him my best friend. We love to spend time with each other and hang out whenever we can. I really want to have this family culture when I have my own family. I want my kids to have a good relationship with me, my husband, and their siblings.

 

When we discussed this topic in class, it was very interesting for me to hear about all the different family cultures of my classmates. Some talked about the things that they like and things that they do not like about their family culture. We do not choose this, so I think that it is very important for us to be aware of our family culture and how we cannot repeat the bad aspects of that culture and how we can keep and improve the good aspects of it.  

One example of family relations that we talked about in class was that there are families more touchy-feely than others. For some families showing affection through physical contact is normal while for others this may seem strange and even uncomfortable. Most of my classmates affirmed to feel some discomfort with this kind of physical affection I grew up in Latinoamerica; people there are used to showing their affection with hugs or physical contact, so maybe for that reason it is very common that families there are touchy-feely in their family culture.  

I think that it is very interesting to learn these things in class because we usually are not used to hearing about these terms. But, in my opinion, it is important for us to know and understand how we can build a healthy and beautiful family.