My Family: A Sociological Analysis

My family does not conform to the images, ideals, and myths of past American families such as the myth of the monolithic family form, the unified family experience, and family consensus. Instead my family can be analyzed from the sociological perspective. Both macro and micro forces have influenced the development and interior dynamics of my family. My parents and two younger siblings (1 brother and 1 sister) make up the nuclear part of my family and they are all biologically related to me. My aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents make up my extended biological family. The focus of this paper will be on five key concepts from a sociological perspective that I have derived from classroom lectures and assigned readings in relation to my family. These five concepts are associated with working-class families, gendered labor--including second shift and split-shift parenting, immigration, Chicanos and familism, and personality related to sibling birth order. My family has always been on the lower rungs of the socio-economic hierarchy and is considered part of the working class (blue-collar families). According to the classroom textbook, blue-collar families make up the largest group of working class families in the U.S., they are dependent on income, have more kin ties than middle-class families, and are vulnerable to economic changes. Indeed, a recent conversation with my parents confirmed this concept of blue-collar families and the dependency on income. My parents indicated to me that that they have always held jobs that they did not necessarily enjoy, but felt that they needed to do in order to provide for the family. Most of the jobs that my parents held exemplified blue collar work. These jobs were low paying and part of the service sector of the economy. My mother would usually work as a maid/janitor cleaning homes and my father typically worked as a restaurant cook. Often, my father would work two jobs to support my family. Classroom readings suggest working class families continued to be labeled as “traditional,” but blue collar wives typically work outside the home to keep families above the poverty level. My family was not an exception to this. Equally important to being dependent on income for blue-collar families, is the need to maintain kinship ties. The ability to keep kinship ties has proven to be important for my family to stay above the poverty line. …show more content…
Growing up, I witnessed members of my extended family come to my house to give food, money, and offer babysitting for my parents during tough economic times. Lillian Rubin’s classic 1976 study Worlds of Pain acknowledge the importance of kin network help. Rubin demonstrated that kin network helps to reduce financial stress among working class families. Certainly, the kinship help from my grandmother when it came to babysitting my siblings and I helped my father and mother overcome the financial stressors that working-class families struggle with when it comes to finding affordable daycare. Although blue-collar families are more prone to having kin ties compared to middle-class families, they are substantially vulnerable to economic changes. Economic changes have devastated my family. During the economic recession of the late 2000’s, some members of my extended family were affected. My aunt and uncle lost their home during the housing bubble of 2007, because they could no longer make their home mortgage. The classroom textbook acknowledges that subprime housing loans were disproportionately given to African Americans and Latinos who were buying homes for the first time. Indeed, members of my extended families fell victim to these drastic economic changes. During this time my nuclear family was affected as well. …show more content…
My brother was the middle child. Jerome Kagan suggests that the ordinal position of a child is a significant variable that affects family structure. According to Kagan, having a younger or older sibling has a tremendous influence on psychological development, despite the corrective actions of parental behavior. I can say that I had a tremendous influence on my brother during our adolescent years. By the time my brother and I were in high school, we were spending a lot of time together. Often, I had a negative influence on my brother. I would encourage him to skip class, drink alcohol, and smoke marijuana. Despite what my parents would say about the negative components of my adolescent behavior to my brother, he would continue to look up to me. This demonstrates Kagan’s belief that older siblings can have an overt influence on their younger