Blog 1
My experiences over the passed year, my first year at
Humboldt State, have given me the opportunity to make a ton of new discoveries
about myself and about this unfathomable thing we refer to as "life."
Incidentally, the epiphany that this blog is based on can be explained in one
cliché phrase, which you have probably heard countless times - "Mother is
always right."
Probably, a lot of us college students have figured out by
now that eating vitamin C or wearing a jacket when it's cold or getting things
done on time are pretty beneficial when it comes to a healthy, productive
lifestyle. Whether we listened to our parents initially or learned these things
through mistakes of our own is beside the point. In my opinion, families,
especially the members that are older than you, are there to support and to
teach. Humans have grown accustomed to relying on their families, sometimes
their whole lives, for shelter, sustenance, and advice.
Now, I recognize that every family dynamic is different. I
was lucky to grow up in a relatively functional family with levelheaded,
strong, loving parents. As a teenager, I definitely had difficulty seeing any
side to a story other than my own, but over the last few months I have grown to
find that almost every piece of advice my parents thought to give me has been
(or will be, I expect) helpful in years to come. Some of you, though, may disagree
with me completely, unable to think of a single valuable lesson that you
learned from your parents. What I would like to know is whether you truly
learned nothing, or if the differences in our upbringings have made it harder
to see that maybe those nagging, know-it-all, and sometime self-righteous
parents really do know a thing or two about life.
Blog 2
Many cultures view their kin very differently than we do
here in the United States. The Eskimos, for example, kill their babies if they
appear to be too weak to survive the harsh ways of living in Greenland
(Rachels), something that would be viewed as barbaric among Americans.
Likewise, a person with Japanese background might be appalled by our new-age
idea that a job or a friend could be held at the same level of importance as a
family member.
In the United States, we put a high value on
"good" parenting, and while adults seem to have very different ideas
of what that might entail, there are a few ground rules that every parent is
expected to follow. For instance, a good parent does not abuse his or her
child. The "future leaders of America" will not be harmed without
jail time- a social rule that is enforced by federal law. Adults are also
expected to support their children for 18 consecutive years in order to assure
that the child is well looked after, educated, and will become a functioning
member of society. There is a whole section of Human Services legislation, in
fact, that forces parents to take responsibility for the financial stability,
education, and overall well being of their child. Keeping a child from school
or failing to pay child support will put parents in prison by federal law
(NCSL). In many cultures, parents barely give their children a word of advice
before marrying them off at a (relatively young age), while Americans feel they
must walk their "babies" through everything, only letting go when
they know for sure that their children will survive on their own.
Just by observation, we can deduce that a healthy parent-child relationship is most beneficial to the growth of our country and its children. No human being benefits from a negative or abusive relationship, and with positive relationships and people come stable communities. America has decided to reinforce this idea by creating general laws that limit a child’s rights until they are considered mature enough to care for themselves, and which legally binds them to an adult until that time. This system has kept the youth of America relatively safe from harm. Yet each parent has their own ideas about how their children should be raised, and implements rules and punishments the way they see fit, despite what our society has deemed as "right." A child might be smacked because she ate a cookie before dinner, whereas many parents choose to discipline their kids without physical punishment. I have multiple friends whose parents join them in drug experimentation. In my household however, having a conversation about drugs was so rare that I thought there was a difference between marijuana, weed, dope, and pot until my sophomore year in high school...
From my gathered survey data, I would like to learn about
some of the different ways my peers have been raised and how effective they
think their parents were in teaching them how to lead successful lives. I will
be asking students questions about their specific types of upbringing, how
similar they believe they are to their parents, the best lessons they learned
from their parents, how they learned those lessons, and so-forth. I look
forward to learning about different ways to raise and teach children in
American culture, and about my peers' views on how their lives have turned out
because of their individual upbringing.
Blog 3
When I began to write the survey questions for this blog, I
started with very specific questions about family upbringing, but I realized
that each person’s relationship with their parents is so unique that I would
have had to write over a hundred questions to get a full view of each
interviewee’s background. I was finally able to come up with 15 questions,
except that after I began the interviews I became unsatisfied with them again.
The answers I got just did not paint the picture of the interviewees’
background and upbringing as I had hoped. But, whatcha gonna do, right?
The following has been edited to omit any information that
might breach the privacy of those interviewed.
I first interviewed my friend Eric who I met here at
Humboldt State. Overall, Eric seemed to believe his parents did teach him some
valuable lessons. He spoke highly of his mom, and did not mention anything that
might have made him less conscientious of his parents’ advice. However, he was
fairly vague and the most I understood was that he’d learned to be a logical,
reserved person. I felt that his ambiguity could have been a product of his
upbringing and could at least deduce that he’d learned well.
Alex, a close friend from high school, was the most explicit
when answering his questions. He described a warm family, grounded and stable.
He mentioned that both of his parents taught him many life lessons, most to do
with how to approach life, and that the most valuable lesson he feels he
learned from them is to “THINK.” When asked whether he sees similarities
between the choices he makes and the choices his parents might make, he said
that although he does make decisions sometimes that he knows his parents would
not understand, he also lives by the lessons he’s learned from his upbringing
and holds in high regard his parents’ values and opinions. He explained that he
is not afraid to take advantage of any help his parents provide, but that he
feels he has become an independent person and a great product of his parents’
life teachings.
My third interviewee was Emma, my best friend from back
home. I am very close to both Emma and her mom, so it was interesting to hear
Emma’s perspective on her relationship with her parents. Although Emma is much
closer to her mom and described her with words that were much more positive
than the words used for her dad, she was able to come up with lessons learned
from both parents. She, like Alex, also mentioned appreciating her parents’
help and advice, but recalled that she was resistant to their advice until
after her teenage years. She was the only person I interviewed that expressed
worry that her parents might be disappointed in the decisions she makes,
although she says she values highly everything she has learned from them.
I know Brandon from high school as well. I was quite
surprised by some of his answers as I know a bit about his relationship with
his parents, and it was clear that he was not completely honest when answering
the questions. However, it is not my place to make this assumption, so I will
report only on what he said. Brandon put the most emphasis on how close he is
with his family. He was the only interviewee to say that he was never really
punished for his mistakes, yet he also said that the decisions he makes are
exactly the decisions his parents would make. Although he spoke of being part
of a “tight-knit” family, he was very unenthusiastic and vague when asked about
the life lessons he’s learned. Ironically, he claimed the most important thing
he’s learned from his parents is to try his best at everything.
I interviewed last my friend Stephen, who is a fairly close
acquaintance of mine here at Humboldt. Stephen was the only person who showed a
bit of disdain for his parents, although he still was able to come up with
lessons that both his mother and father had taught him. The most interesting
thing about Stephen’s interview was his difference in background compared to
the rest of the people I interviewed. To sum it up, when asked what aspect of
his upbringing stuck out to him the most, he replied, “Staying alive.”
Blog 4
After investigating my topic and attempting to understand
the differences in style of upbringing, I came to the conclusion that 1) In
order to come up with the type of data I was hoping for, my research needed to
be much more expansive, as I only asked questions of a small group of people
(my friends) who have relatively the same background as me, and 2) The survey
questions needed to be much more specific and numerous so that I could get a
better idea of each individual’s family life and background.
If I had, say, asked the interview questions of people I
didn’t know, I feel I would have gotten a better range of lifestyles and
parenting techniques. The issue was that the questions I wanted to ask were
quite personal, and I felt I couldn’t ask them of people I didn’t know.
Luckily, I was still able to make some conclusions based on the information
that I ended up with.
Most of the people I interviewed described decent, if not
great, childhoods and family lives. Each of them was able to identify a lesson
they had taken from home, whether the message was positive or negative. Most of
them also said that they make decisions that they know their parents might have
made or told them to make in the face of a challenge. Even Stephen, with
answers that suggested a rocky childhood, agreed that he left for college with
ideas about approaching life that he learned form his parents.
Emma reflected on difficulties with her parents as she
reached her teenage years. It appears that most American teenagers struggle at
this time and are most resistant to the values that their parents try to
instill in them. Sometimes, arguments that come up between a parent and child
can be quite detrimental to the relationship and therefore affect a lot of the
choices that the child makes as they become more independent. In these
situations, the child tends to make decision that are the opposite of what
their parents might tell them, however this fact reinforces the idea that
parents and the choices that they make when parenting have an extreme effect on
their children.
Because I asked questions of people with relatively good
family upbringings, they each were appreciative of the wisdom they felt they
gained from their parents. All but one expressed appreciation as well for any
advice they were given, and said that they will continue to seek help when
dealing with difficult situations.
We see examples every day of the positive and negative
effects that parents can have on their children. Still, there is evidence in
every culture that children would not survive without the knowledge they
receive as they grow.
Sources:
2012. <http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/human-services.aspx>.
Rachels, James. "The Challenge of Cultural Relativism." The Elements of Moral
Philosophy. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 1993. 55. Print.
