Family Interpretations 1

Family is for interpretation.

To me, a family is a group of people that support each other. They laugh together. They

have dinner together. They all respect each other’s beliefs even if they aren’t their own. A family

doesn’t haven’t be blood related, just related in some way or another. Kin, people in which you

have emotionally connected to, is family and so is your mom, dad, brothers, sister, aunts, etc.

I asked three people whom are at different stages of their lives what a family was to them.

Here were the responses; Teri Showers, a 25 year old female recovering from life setbacks said

that a family is “People who love and support one another no matter what they’re going through.

They pick you up when you fall and share their happy moments with you too.” James Bracken, a

senior at Copper Hills, stated “Well, so a family is when two loved ones love each other, they

are gonna have a kid. When that kid is born, it’s a family. They share DNA. They are a group of

people consisting of parents, or a group of people living together in a household. Descendants of

a common ancestor.” And the final person, a mother of four kids Sharon Sharp(age 56) said that

a family is “A house full of people who tolerate each other. Just kidding, a family is a group of

people, usually related, who love and care for each other.” It is interesting to see how we all have

the some what the same type of idea of what a family is, or what a basic family looks like.

In the textbook by Strong & Cohen(2014) it states, “being related by blood or through

marriage is not always suffiecient to be counted as a family member or kin. Emotional closeness

may be more important than biology or law in defining family”(p. 11). The book has a lot to say

about what a family is, but one thing that we all understand is that family is people who matter to

us. In my life, most of the people that I have come across, myself included, we have the idea of a

nuclear or traditional family. Which those two families have a mom, dad, and children. In the
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traditional family, the mother stays at home to cook and clean.(Strong & Cohen, 2014, p. 11) In

reality, there is so much more to a family than just a mom, dad, and kids. It could be two moms

and a child or the opposite with two dads and a child. Maybe the child’s parents are divorced and

have since then remarried. Maybe your family has passed away, which they are still family, but

you can always have more family through kin. A family isn’t just a group of people living

together, it is a group of people loving each other.

References

Strong, B, & Cohen, T. F. (2014). The Marriage and Family Experience: Intimate
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Relationships in a Changing Society (12th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

What is a family? [Telephone interview]. (2018, February 03).

What is a family? pt.2 [Personal interview]. (2018, February 05).

What is a family? p. 3 [Personal interview]. (2018, February 04).