What is culture?
Family Culture is a set of rules and traditions you may have in your family. Most of the time, you will not notice you have these rules until you break them, or someone else does. Family culture is not a bad thing, it can teach us to be better citizens and treat others with respect. Sometimes, we may feel that we can do better as a family and we can influence a new culture, or a new set of rules and traditions.
For example, a family tradition that my family has, is that we pray together every night before we go to bed. My siblings and I refused to sleep unless we prayed together as a family. A family rule that we have is that we all sit in our assigned seating at the dinner table. No one assigned these seats, but somehow we all have a chair for us. As you start to spend more time away from your family and surround yourself with people from other family cultures you will begin to see your families rules more and more often.
Sometimes there can be several circumstances in our lives that can affect the family culture. These major circumstances can include divorce, death of a family member, illegal immigration, premarital pregnancy, etc. An example of this is a woman in Ohio named Tammy. She was raising her two kids by herself on the salary of a minimum wage job. Having a husband around would have helped her immensely. Someone else would have helped her pay the bills, cope with stress, and raised the kids.
Not having a father figure around greatly affected her two boys as well. Since they would always see their mom doing most of the work by herself, they never thought about picking up much of the work. They didn't get a job the help with the bills, they cleaned some, and maybe they would have tried a little harder to be someone better.
There are three things that you need to do to not fall in the poverty line, get a full-time job, have kids after you are married, and finish high school. Her sons have the opportunity to break their family culture and complete all of these three things. They also have the opportunity to continue the tradition and fall into poverty as well. Many people have a achieved this, but it is still very difficult for those growing up in those conditions. It is a very conscious action that requires courage, patience, and consistency to break an unhealthy family culture. Poverty is not a money problem, it is a culture problem.
This is not only for families living in poverty. Wealthy families can suffer from unhealthy family culture as well. In fact in some cases they may be very similar in certain culture aspect. Families in poverty don't spend a lot of time together because the parents may be working all the time or other problems may be present. Similarly wealthy parents are not in the habit of spending a lot of time with their children either. They may hire a nanny so they can spend more time making more money, influence, or maybe because it is what their parents did with them and don't see anything wrong with it.
Both families may feel as if they are stuck. Families in poverty don't feel that their culture could get any better. WealThere may be many other factors and situations that I may not be aware of. Please comment and share your thoughts with us.
thy families may feel scared of leaving because they might not know how to function in a different socioeconomic status.
For example, a family tradition that my family has, is that we pray together every night before we go to bed. My siblings and I refused to sleep unless we prayed together as a family. A family rule that we have is that we all sit in our assigned seating at the dinner table. No one assigned these seats, but somehow we all have a chair for us. As you start to spend more time away from your family and surround yourself with people from other family cultures you will begin to see your families rules more and more often.
Sometimes there can be several circumstances in our lives that can affect the family culture. These major circumstances can include divorce, death of a family member, illegal immigration, premarital pregnancy, etc. An example of this is a woman in Ohio named Tammy. She was raising her two kids by herself on the salary of a minimum wage job. Having a husband around would have helped her immensely. Someone else would have helped her pay the bills, cope with stress, and raised the kids.
Not having a father figure around greatly affected her two boys as well. Since they would always see their mom doing most of the work by herself, they never thought about picking up much of the work. They didn't get a job the help with the bills, they cleaned some, and maybe they would have tried a little harder to be someone better.
There are three things that you need to do to not fall in the poverty line, get a full-time job, have kids after you are married, and finish high school. Her sons have the opportunity to break their family culture and complete all of these three things. They also have the opportunity to continue the tradition and fall into poverty as well. Many people have a achieved this, but it is still very difficult for those growing up in those conditions. It is a very conscious action that requires courage, patience, and consistency to break an unhealthy family culture. Poverty is not a money problem, it is a culture problem.
This is not only for families living in poverty. Wealthy families can suffer from unhealthy family culture as well. In fact in some cases they may be very similar in certain culture aspect. Families in poverty don't spend a lot of time together because the parents may be working all the time or other problems may be present. Similarly wealthy parents are not in the habit of spending a lot of time with their children either. They may hire a nanny so they can spend more time making more money, influence, or maybe because it is what their parents did with them and don't see anything wrong with it.
Both families may feel as if they are stuck. Families in poverty don't feel that their culture could get any better. WealThere may be many other factors and situations that I may not be aware of. Please comment and share your thoughts with us.
Personally, I really like my family culture. We
try to find the best of every family. Then we try to adopt it in our lives.
Through family councils we try to see what is keeping our family from being
happy. We then try, as a family, to get rid of that part of our family culture.
This may not be the best option for your family. Your family will not be the
same as mine and different things might work in different situations. This is
just what has worked for us and an idea to get you started.
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