Blog 2

Most 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, 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. In many cultures, parents barely give their children a word of advice before marrying them off at age 15, 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.

Research suggests that a healthy parent-child relationship is most beneficial to the growth of our country and its children. America has also decided, apparently, that children should live with their parents until they are 18, should have limited rights until then, and that all of these rules are whats best for every child in the United States. 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.

Anthro Blog Part 1

Hey everyone! So ever since I started going to school here at Humboldt State in August 2011, I have made quite a few life-changing 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 level-headed, 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 be reading this and disagreeing 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.