The Relationship between the Family Members under the Saudis Culture - Essay Example

We don’t know each other personally, but at least the Sheik who connects us. If someone from the tribe has a problem, he will collect money from people who want to contribute. The role of everyone in the tribe is to support his\her relatives because the more together we are, the stronger we become. In America, however, people’s family usually just refers to their immediate, “nuclear” family – or maybe to grandparents. Many people with the same name do not consider themselves related.

So Saudis have a broader conception of the family than Americans do.Another different thing is a wedding. Saudi Arabia’s weddings cost men an arm and a leg because they have many obligations before and after the marriage. For example, men must pay a dowry for women, who they want to marry, which costs them at least seventy thousand riyal (more than seventeen thousand dollars). Also, the expense of the honeymoon is all on men which is going to cost around twenty thousand Rails (six thousand dollars).

In America, however, weddings can be whatever the couple wants and can afford, and often costs are split amongst the people getting married. It is less formal (sometimes) and also subject to a lot of different cultural or religious values, whereas in Saudi Arabia things tend to operate in a similar way every time.People there get married at earlier ages. The average age of marriage is between 23 and 25 years old, so this amount of money is not easy to get. In other words, when a starting salary is your primary income, this dowry is difficult to make.

In this situation, you need support from your relative, and they always do help. For instance, when my brother got married three years ago, he received a total of sixty thousand Rails (sixteen thousand dollars) from our relatives. We call that marriage support. Without needing this money, American people can get married whenever they can afford the wedding they want – however many Americans do consider financial concerns and put off getting married until they are old enough to afford everything associated with a family.

We believe that a healthy family life requires both the father and the mother working together to raise a successful generation and have a happy home. Since the government gives higher salaries and free houses to married couples, people in Saudi Arabia think that women should stay home to take care of children. If the mother works then the family will need a baby sitter or a “temporary mother” who might cause problems in the family because most of the baby sitters are foreign and don’t even speak our language or understand our culture.

We believe the mother is more important than the father since she spends more time with the children in the home, and the education of the basic necessities such as ethics, culture, values, and traditions are taught at home by the mother. The mother should be well educated to be more beneficial to the children. On the other hand, the father has to take care of the income of the family and be accountable for the problems facing the family. America tends to have much broader conceptions of what a healthy family can be, giving more respect to single mothers, single fathers, divorced couples and so on.

But both societies do tend to recognize a special and important role is played by the mother that can be hard to replace.We always try to look at life from the positive side, so we can make our lives happier. In addition, we try to deal with problems in such a way to make useful things out of them. Just like what my favorite writer “Dr. Alqarni” said “Convert a lemon into a sweet drink. Intelligent and skillful parents transform losses into profits; whereas, the unskilled parents aggravate their own predicament, often making two disasters out of one” (Dr .

Aaidh al-Qarni 42). This saying is similar to an American one – “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” This shows that both cultures value ability the ability to face adversity and to make the best out of a bad situation.To summarize, the relatives must be together in their happiness and dolefulness because nobody is going to help them unless they help each other. The ideal Saudi family is when the parents are harmonious and everyone concentrates on his/her role in the family.

Seeing the glass half full is what most of the Saudis families trying to deal with their problems. In my opinion, the tribe society is very helpful to avoid or solve problems. American society tends to be much more insular, with each person operating without the kind of elaborate connections that exist in Saudi society – I believe that Americans may be missing out on important connections by valuing independence and individualism so highly.You have a good first draft, but you are missing one major point – the comparison between S.A. and the U.S. How are things different?

You must make this explicit for the reader.