Kinship

Kinship

            My interviewee this past weekend was my mother. She is a forty five year old Caucasian woman with three children. She was born in Los Angeles California in 1967 to a man named Gordon and a woman named Sharon. While being interviewed she was very informative and calm. I was comfortable during the interview process as well. I did not experience any awkwardness or discomfort with my mother. My interview was very thorough when it came to the facts about the family. Interviewing someone that was not related to me would have been completely different. It would have been much more uncomfortable and harder to understand. The easiest pattern to see but the hardest one to understand was that our family is completely alienated from one another. Our family is very secluded and most of us have no communication with extended family members. The older family members are mostly the reasons for the alienation being that they have all disrespected each other in some way resulting in fallout between the different tiers of the family. There is not a lot of ethnic differences within our family but the small amount that there is had no effect on the reasons why the family is split.

            I know the family members on my mother’s side much better than the ones on my father’s side due to the fact that my father and mother were divorced when I was young and my mother has full custody. I socialize more with my mom’s side because of my lack of knowledge about my father’s side but I don’t socialize very much with any of my extended family. My mother usually decides the most important decisions made by our family. The reason for this is because my mom is the head of the household and she tends to make the most mature decisions. Family members are very hard for me discuss because of my lack of them. The family members who marry into the family may be more family to me than the ones I have by blood in my eyes. This is because I believe that family is who loves you and who is there for you not necessarily just someone who shares your blood. To me there is no difference in how people are treated based on their gender everyone is treated equally. I have learned that my family may not be as big as I would like but the ones that I have are closer to me than anyone.