Our family and our culture

 This week we have discussed the topic of culture and families. I come from immigrant parents who went to study in Spain to obtain a better future. As a result, in our household, we have had a mixture of different cultures that have affected our relations. Last week I mentioned the bonds and rules that keep families together. Some of them can come from the culture you belong to. But first of all, what is culture. In a way, we could describe culture as the way of life of a specific group of people. Culture is not only associated with a particular country or region. It can also refer to the culture of a religious group, the school you go to, etc. In my house, for instance, my brother and I received influences from many different cultures. We received some Peruvian, Spanish, and Catalan traditions. That is why, probably, our family was not very conventional. Because of the family, we had we experienced some norms that maybe some of my classmates did not. For instance, we learned about more traditional roles, such as the father as the provider and mother as the caregiver. This was what was expected of a family from South America. Although we had equal roles in my household and both my parents worked, we knew what our grandparents expected of our parents. On the other hand, because of the fact that I was born in Catalonia, a region of Spain, I was also influenced by its culture. In fact, we were raised more in Catalan culture than Peruvian culture.

Culture can also be associated with a certain socioeconomic class. I have noticed how different the cultures and expectations are in different families. A couple of years ago, I used to work as a babysitter for this family who had a three-year-old son. I had never thought about this until we discussed it in class. But it is curious to see how the class we are born into will affect the way you see things and the relationship you have with your parents. We also commented in class that some wealthy families or those in the upper class tend to claim not to have time to be with their families because of different social needs. There is a movie called “The Nanny Diaries,” which is about a girl that becomes the babysitter for a family in the upper east side of New York. Now that I know more about families, I can see with more clarity the differences between families. I compare my family and the family in that movie. The boy had barely any relationship with his parents and sometimes did not even see his dad. Her mother, on the other hand, was always busy with social affairs, meetings, or just things that she wanted to do, such as going to a spa. This conditioned the boy to only create a bond with the babysitter. We could see that, for example, in a scene where the boy was sad and instead of approaching his mother, he sought his babysitter’s comfort. Then I think about my parents and the bond I have with them. Whenever I felt sad as a child, I knew that they would be there for me, and I know I still can.

There is something else we can call culture. For example, the things we do in our families can become our culture as well. We discussed this in class. Each of us has different traditions or even rituals that we sometimes do that other families don’t. I remember this one time when I was hanging out with my best friend at the park, we were having a picnic, and it was a fantastic day, and it suddenly reminded me of the family days we use to have with my parents. Then I said: “doesn’t this remind you of when you were a child, and you went to the park with your parents.” She said no. She never did any of those things with her family. This was a tradition that my family and I had. Every Sunday, we would do something different, whether it was having a picnic at the park or going to the museum.

Not only do our family relations affect who we are and what we do, but the environment can do that as well. The family we are born into, the class we belong to, or the country, can all affect the relationships we have within our families.