Raised in a Tradition of Support and Gender Equality - Assignment Example

Raised in a Tradition of Support and Gender Equality (Insert First Middle Initial, (Insert of al Affiliation) (Course Title) (Name of Professor) (Date) Raised in a Tradition of Support and Gender Equality My childhood memories have left a great impact on me now that I am an adult. Living with a big family was sometimes chaotic but with three boys and two girls plus both our parents enveloped with love and understanding, joy was abundant. For this paper, I will recount our family’s routines and patterns of behaviors that reflected the values we uphold as a family. Let me share our family traditions. No matter how simple they seem, they reflect the values of love, support and equality. These traditions of having a regular routine, engaging in roles and activities like chores, hobbies or classes that may be associated with the opposite gender and being treated as equals no matter what age or gender have inculcated in all of us strong values that we carry out in our own lives as adults. One tradition we have is sticking to a daily routine as much as we can. I clearly remember, at 6:00 every weekday morning, alarm clocks ring in our bedrooms. As my siblings and I come down to the kitchen, dressed for school, we see our mother busily preparing breakfast for all of us. Like in any other family, this is the time when everyone is in a hurry as we race around the house to get what we need for school. Our parents, on the other hand, prepare for work. Our father drops us off in school before going to the office. Our mother is left at home as she cleans up the mess we have left behind before she herself goes to work. We all have our own different schedules during the day. After school, my siblings and I proceed to our own activities – ballet, art class, violin lesson and karate class. We all have a full day before assembling back home when we arrive at different times. We children rest in front of the television or take a nap in our rooms, then do our chores and homework. We take turns helping out in the kitchen as our parents prepare dinner. Even our parents take turns cooking dinner with Mom cooking on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and Dad cooking on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On weekends, we all pitch in cooking our meals or eat out. We usually have dinner together at 7:30. At the dinner table, everyone shares what happened to them during the day. Another special tradition we have at the dinner table is talking about our ‘up’ times and our ‘down’ times referring to the good and bad things that happened to us during the day. Sometimes, our talks are serious, but most of the time, we laugh and have fun with each other’s company. The dinner conversations we have keep us all updated with each other’s lives. I remember regarding dinner time with my family as the highlight of my day. After dinner, my siblings and I clean up and do the dishes before going back to our homework or whatever activity we choose. Before going to sleep, we make it a point to kiss and hug our parents good night and exchange “I love yous”. This tradition sends us all of to peaceful slumber. Still another family tradition is having solo quality time. We each have mom-and-me as well as dad-and-me one-on-one dates at least once a month apart from the times we go out as a family. We either have lunch or dinner, shop, go bowling, watch a show or anything else we want to do at that time. These “bonding” moments help our parents know us deeply as individuals. Family Roles All of the members of my family play different roles. Parents work to earn their livelihood as well as use their knowledge and skills in helping others. They both make it a point to prioritize us, their children. Their main role, especially our mother, is as caregiver to the family and homemaker. My siblings and I go to school to be educated and to develop and hone our skills. Extra-curricular activities are encouraged by our parents. We pursue activities that we are interested in without any bias. Our parents set aside a budget for these activities and lessons. They never dictated to us which classes to enrol in. We were not constrained in our choices or in what society expects from girls and boys. There was a time when the boys in our family took up cooking lessons and the girls took up archery and Karate, activities which were not usually associated with our genders. My siblings and I were used to being the minority gender in some classes we took but somehow, it was not an issue for us. Our parents supported our interests and were excited for us when we excelled at it. Although we lived comfortably, we were not spared from doing chores. All of us were trained to do all kinds of chores – cleaning, repairing, cooking, laundry, and cooking. We had our turns in the kitchen, experimented with recipes and discovered new ingredients. It was not surprising that the best cook among us was our youngest brother. Girls were not spared from learning skills associated as ‘men’s jobs’. Our father taught everyone how to repair switches or change car tires or tighten loose screws. All of us were familiar with the tools he used in his workshop. As our main caregivers, our parents did a great job. There was a time when our father quit his job for a principle he stood for, so he had the opportunity to be a stay-home dad for a month before he started working for another company. During that time, he made coming home from school a most anticipated event. He would have snacks prepared for us and even bought some new video games for us to play with him. Sometimes, he would pick us up from school, make us skip our after-school activities and just take us out for ice cream before fetching our mother at work. We enjoyed those times with Dad and felt a little disappointed when he had to go back to work. However, we understood that he needed to work not only to support our family’s needs but for his own self-esteem and confidence. To her credit, our mother was faultless in her care-giving duties. She knew all our food and taste preferences and adjusted them accordingly. For our Dad, she lessened the salt and sugar due to health reasons, and for us kids, she made flavors richer. She made sure we had everything we needed and anticipated when our supplies would run out. One summer, she went on a vacation with her friends for a week. She prepared everything for us beforehand, and organized a schedule for all of us in her absence –our chores, the summer courses we attended, our menu and shopping list. We missed her terribly during that time because we were accustomed to having her there whenever we needed her, but we managed, with the help of her organized planning. Although our home was mostly noisy with bickering, teasing, cheering and laugher, we all knew fun should be balanced with the seriousness of life. Our parents, being co-captains, made sure they have a tightly-run ship. Theoretical Analysis 1. Order Theory: Attachment Theory by John Bowlby Bowlby’s Attachment Theory (1969) posits that a person’s real relationships in the earliest stages of life shape his or her survival functions as he or she grows and develops throughout the life span. He conceptualized four kinds of attachment styles, namely secure, avoidant, ambivalent/anxious, and disorganized. People who have formed secure attachments do not have any difficulty getting close to others. They form healthy, happy and trusting personal relationships without fear of being too dependent on them or being abandoned. This is because they may have grown up in nurturing and responsive homes with early attachments having all three components of closeness, care and commitment. In contrast, some people establish negative, avoidant behaviors towards the people they have relationships with. Reluctant to open up emotionally, they feel uncomfortable getting close to other people. For these individuals, their independence and self-sufficiency should be maintained because from the time they were younger, they have been exposed to cold, unattached caregivers who did not provide them with the love and security they craved, hence, they learned to fend for themselves. People who have formed ambivalent attachments may be inconsistent in relating to others as they may have grown in an environment where their caregiver has also been inconsistent in giving them love and affection, and have developed insecurities due to this (Brodie, 2012). Secure attachments have been analyzed further and have the following types: Proximity Maintenance; Safe Haven; Secure Base; and Separation Distress (Cherry, 2014). Proximity Maintenance refers to one’s need to be with someone he or she is attached to. Safe Haven describes the tendency to return to the object of attachment for safety and comfort in times of distress. Secure Base considers the attachment figure as a necessary element in the foundation of his or her security; with such a strong base, he or she can explore the surrounding environment. Finally, Separation Distress is the emotion experienced when the attachment figure is absent. My siblings and I have been fortunate to have had secure attachments to our parents who served as strong anchors in our growth and development. Bowlby contended that secure attachments to significant people are formed early in life. Knowing that the attachment figure will always be available to them whenever needed develops trust and confidence in that person. Having a constant source of support aids in the child’s development of courage and self-esteem to explore life and face whatever challenges thrown at them without any fear. As soon as we wake up in the morning until the time we go back to sleep at night, our parents have always been reliable in addressing our needs. Food was ready on the table by the time we got hungry. Our daily routines were well-established and organized. Our parents were present at times when we needed to share our memorable experience. They are always available when we, as a family, want to build memories. It is not surprising that my siblings and I want to always be with them because it is there where we feel safest. It is as if nothing bad will happen when they are around. However, even when they are physically absent, they have already imparted in us a sense of security that we will be alright. This was with the steady assistance of their organizational skills and hovering support for each one of us. That is why we are unafraid to try new things. We have had the privilege of learning a variety of skills through the stream of classes and workshops and membership in different clubs in the pursuit of our multiple interests. Our dinner times were moments when we report on our day and the results of our mini-escapades in our young lives. Separation distress is still likely to happen when our parents are not around. We were saddened by our father’s return to work after a whole month of being constantly available to us to spend bonding sessions with. He was terribly missed during the day but that just made his nightly homecoming much sweeter. The same was true when Mom went on a vacation for a week. We would always look for her first thing in the morning only to realize in her place was a list of things to do for the day. Still, we managed despite the ache of longing for her because she and our father equipped us with independence skills to help us survive on our own. 2. Conflict Theory: Ecological Systems Theory by Urie Brofenbrenner Brofenbrenner (1979) contended that there are many different ecological spheres of influence that children deal with. His Ecological Model explains that the behavior and development of an individual is an interplay of the individual’s biological and personality factors, his environment and the society and culture he was born into. Brofenbrenner also claims that effects of interactions between the individual and his environment are two-directional or characterized by reciprocity. The growing child moves through five systems that inter-relate and affect his development. Each sphere is related to the other, as one change in a system ripples through the others, directly or indirectly affecting the child. The microsystem is where direct contacts between the child and his immediate surroundings result in behaviors, such as dependence or independence and cooperation or competition. An example of this is the home base of the child and his relationship with his family. The culture of the society this family lives in greatly influences how this family lives and how the child imbibes the values of his family as he expresses it in his developing personality. Other structures in the microsystem include the school, neighbourhood or childcare environments (Paquette & Ryan, 2001). The mesosystem comprises the linkages and processes that take place between two or more settings with the child in common. A perfect example is how learning in school is supported by activities in the home. The third level comprising linkages and processes taking place between two or more settings is the exosystem. This includes at least one setting that does not directly involve the child, but still influences the processes within the immediate setting of the child (Berk, 2000). An example is the parents’ occupation. The workplace of this parent does not contain the child, but processes at work may affect his development, such as the hours spent there by the parent may affect the parent-child bond. The fourth and outermost layer in the child’s environment is the macrosystem which includes the customs, values and laws considered important in the child’s culture and upbringing (Paquette & Ryan, 2001). The prevailing values and principles of the macrosystem have cascading influences in the interactions within the other layers of the ecological system. One example is society’s regard for gender equality. If it advocates that men are superior to women, then such belief may be carried down to all the other systems, and behaviors would be geared to prioritizing males over females in some aspects of life. Finally, the chronosystem refers to the time that transpires as the child relates in his various environments. An example is the change that happens to the child while he grows up moving from one system to another. As he gets older, his reactions to environmental changes may differ and he becomes more in a position to make the necessary adjustments to it. In my family’s ecological system, our parents hold on to their principle that everyone is equal regardless of age or gender, which is opposed to the prevailing values in the Middle East, where we come from. The macrosystem in our culture puts women in a lower position that they are constrained in their activities. It is not culturally acceptable for women to pursue a career dominated by men, and gender roles are very much delineated. However, in my family’s microsystem, this is not the case. Our parents instilled in us the principles of equality as my siblings and I were given opportunities to pursue our own interests no matter if they are related to activities for the opposite gender. In our microsystem, boys were taught feminine skills, like cooking and house cleaning, and were enrolled in dance or cooking classes in the mesosystem if that was their preference. Girls were taught masculine skills, such as tinkering with tools for house repairs and enrolled in Karate or Archery classes, which are associated more with boys. Our mesosystem includes parallel expectations of gender equality in our home and outside it. Our parents are also not afraid to defy societal norms by trying out roles not expected of their gender such as the wife working outside the home or even leaving her family for a vacation with her friends or the husband staying home to do domestic chores. Our exosystem included our parents’ jobs. Our mother has a career of her own outside the home. When our father lost his job, it affected us in a positive way because he was comfortable caring for the home at a time when he was jobless. Over time, or chronosystem reflected our family’s steadfast commitment to each other and our values. Our chronosystem was filled with happy family memories from our childhood to our adulthood. It witnessed our growth and how our traditions have kept us whole as a family and as individual persons. Reflection This assignment has made me even more grateful for having been raised in a very supportive family. My parents have done an amazing job allowing our individualities to shine. They have ensured us that they will always be there to support us no matter what happens. Our strong attachment to them helped keep order in our family’s growth and development as a system. Conflicts with societal values with regards to gender equality were not an issue with our family. It was because of our parents’ strong beliefs that regardless of gender we can follow our dreams that my siblings and I were successful in becoming the people we have always wanted to be. Since I have been empowered by the influences of my family traditions’ influences on my own value system, I do intend to follow suit with my own family. Reading about the different theories on order and conflict and understanding my own family traditions have made me more knowledgeable about families and aware that family issues may be resolved upon understanding its origins. It makes me more confident in understanding family dynamics. References Berk, L. E. (2000). Child development (5th ed.). Needham Heights, MS: Allyn & Bacon. Bowlby, J. (1969) Attachment. Attachment and Loss:  Vol. 1. Loss. New York: Basic Books. Brodie, R (2012) John Bowlby: The Father of Attachment Theory, Child Development Media, Retrieved on February 12, 2014 from http://www.childdevelopmentmedia.com/john-bowlby-the-father-of-attachment-theory.html Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cherry, K. (2014) Attachment Styles, retrieved on February 12, 2014 from http://psychology.about.com/od/loveandattraction/ss/attachmentstyle.htm Pacquette, D. & Ryan, J. (2001) Brofenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, Retrieved on February 10, 2014 from www.cms-kids.org Read More