Volchansky 1 Diana Volchansky Running In The Family 5 December 2011 Family Dynamics Five months ago I wouldnt have

the slightest idea of how an English, ethnics and family and consumer science class all related. Through thorough reading and analyzing I can connect the classes by the concepts and theories discussed with the teachers and students. Family is a major concept and issue that is found in all the texts and lectures from the classes. What used to be a one-sentence definition for me is now more than a dad, mom and kids bounded by love, living under the same roof, it is a concept that is defined through the different dynamics that families of different race and ethnicities face. Family is the central element of contemporary life, and the variety of families creates dynamics where we are able to see how a specific ethnicity is compared to other families. Issues in families range from the constructed views and ideas arise from statistics that are able to give us a more clear view on such families. The topic of family is discussed in all three classes that gave me a more broad perspective on family, I am able to go deeper into the issues of families and have a better understanding of what really makes up a family. The different views on family from the classes creates a deeper understanding of what a family is truly made up of and how those views give a family dynamics. English class has a range of the different perspectives of the dynamics of families. The concept of family is seen right away in the first book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, where Okonkwos who is a father has a family dynamic where he is the head of the family, he is viewed as being on top of the pyramid with his family below. In such a culture the tribe values the family and sees the father as the provider and the ruler, the family is composed in different

Volchansky 2 manners because that is the way the culture views it. Reading this book I began to analyze how the family dynamic of Okonkwos family was different compared to those families I was reading about in the other classes. Right off the bat I was able to connect the concept of family to the other classes by analyzing Okonkwos family. His tribe is concentrated on the traditions and customs that the tribe obtains about family. The father is the head ruled above all other and is the provider, but reading about a single mother in the Cherlin book my concept of a family changed. I wasnt seeing a father head of the household concept, my view of family was now on a single mother who was taking care and raising her child by herself and was still considered a family. By comparing two different types of families made me realize that family was such a complex system, where the definition varies from one to the other and is based upon the situation of the people who make up a family even if it is just one child and a mother. Through comparing and contrasting two different family situation, my perspective of family was already evolving. Family and consumer science class provides insight to the different views of family that society provides. The public family is traditionally thought of the parents and the siblings. This is the most basic family arrangement where one or two adults are related by marriage or partnership and take care of dependents defined as children. The private family has two or more individuals who maintain an intimate relationship that they expect to last indefinitely. The Cherlin book offers these two definitions of family, but throughout the text we are able to read about the diversities of families and how each ethnicity of race has their own struggles and difficulties. Throughout the lectures I was able to identify with the other classes about family and the different dynamics, by comparing family to the other classes it gave me a broader perspective of how the different dynamics of family is much more constructed then just one definition. The Cherlin book offers a great insight to the diversities of families. When reading about the different

Volchansky 3 races and ethnicities of families in the Cherlin book, I started to compare families that were read about in the English texts. So many poems in English class talk about family and the different dynamics a family creates in a culture or race. I began to contrast the definition of families in the Cherlin book that are given to the poems and short stories discussed in English. What I realized was that cultures have there own outlook on family and the dynamics of a family, one culture might believe that the mother should stay home and do housework and the father works all day, but another may think that both parents should work the same hours and days. The difference in the family dynamics of cultures gives society a way of defining family within the culture, where each opinion is based only upon the cultures view on family. Ethnic studies was one of the most interesting classes to find out about the different views of family directly from the books about a specific ethnicity. Reading about MexicanAmericans in Mexican New York and Asian Americans in Home Bound, family was such an interesting topic in each book and the dynamics of family varied from one race to the other. Mexican- Americans are very family oriented they are constructed to define family as a whole where no one was left out. Compared to Asian Americans, they were more focused on work and future rather than being so concentrated on family. Such different perspectives from two ethnicities made me realize how much more ethnicities define family from their own views through their culture. Reading about these ethnicities made me compare to both the English and family and consumer class, both ethnicities have such concepts that relate both to Okonkwos family read in English class and the different definitions that were defined in the Cherlin book. Family is the center idea and concept for all three classes. Reading the different books for each class made me connect them through the concept of family. Before taking these classes family was just something defined by society as a definition found in the dictionary, now family

Volchansky 4 is a concept that never stops evolving. The family dynamics is made up from the concepts and ideas obtained from cultures and ethnicities. These three classes connect together through family and culture, in every class the idea of family is found within each story, poem and book. Taking the ALC made me better understand that family is rooted not from the definition that society provides but through the dynamic constructed by ethnicities and situations that occur within a family. So whether is be a single mother or father, a grandparent and a child, or just a wife and a husband, family if defined through love and found within the dynamic of the family itself.