Family Systems and Family Lives PDF

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Instructor Liz Foshe...

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Caroline Greene Professor Foshe WS 200-005 10 December 2021

Mother Perspective – Family Systems and Family Lives

The definition of a “normal” family has changed dramatically over time. Truthfully, there are no normal families. Every family in America is unconventional in some way. However, there is something intriguing about what some people consider to be a normal family because people have different outlooks on it. When interviewing my mother for this paper, I asked what her thoughts were on a “normal” family, how this perspective has changed over the years, her thoughts on what the role of a wife should be, and which generation from her own family she thinks did things the most “right.”

My mother grew up in the 70s and 80s and considered her family to be “normal,” which was two parents, one male and one female married, with three children including herself. “The elementary school I attended in the 1970s was all white and every friend that I had, their family was exactly like mine.” However, she recalls one of her friends whose parents were divorced, and she was the only person my mom knew who had divorced parents. “I think that during that period, a family was 2 parents and a couple of kids. Anything outside of those parameters made you ‘different’ and people were ashamed if they were divorced or if there was a person who was pregnant without being married, etc. Anything outside of that nuclear family was considered odd

Greene 2 to me.” However, the normal that my mom grew up with has greatly changed over time. With the world changing, her perception of the “normal” family has also changed. Unconventional families are becoming increasingly more common. The number of two-parent households has been in steady decline, dropping from 87% in 1960 to 69% in 2014 according to an article on The New York Times.

When I asked my mother about how this perspective that she grew up with has changed over the years, she stated that nowadays, families are made up of all kinds of people. “Some kids have a mom and dad, some kids have two moms, some kids have two dads, or some kids don’t even live with their parents. Kids live with grandparents, extended family, there is no longer a normal family.” My mom told me that when she was growing up, things like this would have been unheard of and people wouldn’t have believed, much less considered, such a thing. An article by Haley Nahman gives more insight into nontraditional families and how it feels from their perspective. One of the families talks about how they are “unconventional by society’s standards,” but they see themselves as traditional. They talk about their family dinners, school events, and celebrating every holiday together. Their 12-year-old-son said: “A family doesn’t have to be related. A family is people who care for each other and stand up for each other.”

Although my mom works and has been a working mom all her life, I wanted to know more about if she thought that every household should be like this or if her choice to work was just a personal one. She told me that the generation before her was taught that the man goes to work, and the woman stays at home and raises the children. “The husband isn’t responsible for anything at home, and the wife isn’t responsible for anything outside of the home.” However, this generation was also the one that changed their perspective on this and believed that women

Greene 3 should and want to work. My grandmother worked her whole life and still does as a teacher here at the University of Alabama. My mom believes that, at least within where we live, that it wasn’t normal for women to stay home. My mom has four kids including myself and believes that it takes two people to support a family financially. “I have had a very flexible work schedule while my children were growing up and even now, but I personally have never wanted to be a stay-athome wife.” Pat Mainari’s “The Politics of Housework” text shows how the words of a man when it comes to things like staying at home or housework means something entirely different. One example is when man says, “I’ve got nothing against sharing the housework, but you can’t make me do it on your schedule.” This means passive resistance and he is saying he will do it whenever HE pleases if he wants to do it all.

Lastly, I wanted to get my mom’s perspective on the different generations and which one she believed had the right mindset. Although each generation has their own problems, when it came to family lives, my mom believed that the “children born in the 70s were the generation that were the best off.” She feels as if her and my dad attempted to make our lives easier than what they experienced growing up and, in the process, overdid it. “As the helicopter generation of parents, we protected our children from the world and now that they are out in the world, they don’t know how to handle it.” Because of this, she believes children born in the 50s felt like they were ignored by their parents and didn’t care enough while children born in the 90s had too much power in deciding what they wanted. An article on Family Education talks about the different generations and how they parented. When looking at past generations, the Greatest Generation (1901-1927) raised their kids to value hard work, the Silent Generation (1928-1945) raised their kids to be “seen and not heard,” and the Baby Boomers (1946-1964) actually cared about the perspective of how kids felt growing up.

Greene 4 Works Cited

The New York Times: What’s a ‘Normal’ Family, Anyway? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/style/the-edit-normal-unconventional-family.html Repeller – 3 Nontraditional Families on How it Feels to be “Different” https://repeller.com/modern-families/ Pat Mainari – The Politics of Housework http://www.laborhistorylinks.org/PDF%20Files/Politics%20of%20Housework.pdf Family Education – A Look at The Different Generations and How They Parent https://www.familyeducation.com/family-life/a-look-at-the-different-generations-and-how-theyparent...