My Family Structure

I grew up in a nuclear family. There are four people in my family, consists of my father, mother, my sister and me. My father is 62 years old. He’s working as a insurance agent. My mother is 10 years younger than my father. She used to work as a store manager before she gave birth to me. She quitted her job in order to take care of me and my sister because she believes that the mother daughter bond can grow stronger day by day by spending time with us. My sisters and I are four years apart. She is currently studying in Tsun Jin Independent School. Even though we fought a lot growing, got mad at each other, but she is still my one and only sister and that’s all that matters. I think is normal for siblings to fight despite the age difference as it can increase the bond between each other. I was brought up with a very typical view of what a ‘normal’ family is and does. Every night, my family eats dinner together. My parents always encourage us to go home early and have dinner together. Our family believes that it helps us stay connected and build better relationship.

During dinner, we would talk over the happenings of the day, about upcoming events or plans and share interesting stories together. There are a number of different subsystems in my family. My parents, they are obviously the dominant ones working together to make decisions for the family. Most of the time, my parents will have their private time planning trips and activities for the family. Most decisions are made during their one on one dates outside of home. My sister and I can express our thoughts about their decisions but ultimately our parents will have the last say. For instance, every year when my parents talk about family trips, my sister and I will give our thoughts and suggestions to our parents, but at the end of the day, none of our suggestions make it to be in our family trip plans. Another subsystem that exist in my family is the siblings subsystem. My siblings and I There was once we threw a house party when our parents were out of town and we kept it a secret between us two. It was fun and all, keeping secrets from our parents and getting away with our lies. But everything has its pros and cons. In this case, it’s about the trust we have in each other as sisters.

Once in a while, a secret broke out and none of us would like to take the blame for our doings, so we ended up pushing the blame to each other. Ever since the fallout, we’ve formed a boundary between each other. My sister is no longer allowed to enter my room and use my things without my permission. On the other hand, my parents also clearly define the boundary of a parental subsystem. I remembered there was once my father told me not to interfere when he was lecturing my sister about the assigned chores that she has left undone. I can say that the boundaries in my family are considered firm as we have not much freedom when we were young.

Every family has their own roles and rules within the family. Roles and rules are essential to the family growth, without a solid structure of roles and rules; families can easily be broken down. For my family, the roles and rules are very solid. My dad carries the role as the provider of the family. He does a pretty good job providing for my sister and my education, giving us a nice and cozy home to stay and furnish us with all our wants and needs. My mom, she’s a dedicated housewife. She works very hard and keeps the home in tiptop condition. Apart from all the cleaning and cooking, she also takes time to talk to us by getting to know the problems we face and advising us on how to solve them. Hence, there’s no doubt that my mom plays a big role in keeping us emotionally healthy. I understood my role in the family since I was in my primary days. My dad has always emphasized to me that I must take care of my younger sister no matter what the consequences are.

There was an incident during my primary school days, I left my 7-year-old sister with her friends in the playground after a few rounds of playing slides and went home. My dad later on found out about it and punished me for doing so, that was an incident that I’ll never forget about. I am also aware of my role as a student, studying and doing the best I can to score in my exams so that in the future I may provide a higher living standard to my family. For my sister, apart from also being a student like myself, she basically carries the role of the helper at home. Unlike myself, she spends a lot of time at home with mom while I’m out doing assignments and juggling college life. By spending a lot of time at home, she spends more time with my mom, helping her with house chores. With all these roles, comes rules as well, my parents have always given my sister and I curfews. It is understandable because of all the crime rates shooting sky high these days, our parents just wants us to be safe. Another important rule set by my parents is that all family members must have dinner together. This is so that all of us can have our bonding time as a family.

Communication is the knot that ties it all and it is no doubt the most important thing needed in any kind of relationship. For my family, the communication methods that we practice are pretty much very decent. My parents, after years and years of being together, they can understand each other very well. They can understand each other without even saying a word, just a face expression would do. My parents communicate differently as compared to when they communicate with my sister and myself. This is because of the hieratical order that my family has. Like a lot of Asian cultures, we pay a lot of respect to the elderly, and of course our parents. A simple example is every time when dinner is about to start, my sister and I would have to invite our dad to eat. It’s a simple example of paying respect to your parents that we do.

Between my dad to my sister and I, it is slightly harder when it comes to communicating things that are female related, gender differences will definitely affect the communication flow. This is where my mom steps in and helps out in conveying the message and the educational bit of it. Between my mom and I, I am basically transparent to her. Transparent in the way she knows all my deepest secrets and problems and I have no problems with revealing them to her. Because of the way she always spent time talking about my problems with me during my childhood days, now we have no problems when it comes to communication.

In every family, there will always be special bonding and attachment between certain members. Bonding and attachment is highly influenced by the interest of each individual and the time spent with each other. For myself, during my teenage years while growing up, I’ve spent minimal time with my family members. Missing family dinners, gatherings and not being at home most of the time. I was having my rebellious years, having this urge of going against every family rule. Because of that, the bond between my family and I gotten worse during that period of time. Luckily for the many years of heart to heart talks with my mom, I manage to salvage this bond between my mom and myself and subsequently helped me reconcile with all my family members. My sister is very attached to my mom, ever since the incident where she was lost in the mall during early childhood. She’s gets very paranoid when my mom is not with her in malls, she’s better now but somehow there’s more sense of comfort and security when my mom is around her. Bonding takes time, especially when the each individual shares different interest.

There was once my dad brought me fishing by a lake. I don’t really like fishing and lakes are quite frightening to me because the water is not transparent, I tend to imagine scary creatures under the lake. It definitely took a while for me to appreciate the art of fishing, and it took a lot of effort on my dad’s side to encourage me to pick up this hobby. At the end of the day, I didn’t manage to pick up the hobby and I felt that the bonding time was a bit forced upon so I didn’t really enjoy myself. It is easier for individuals with the same interest to bond, my mom and sister, they love shopping and food, so they would spend most times heading out to try new food and shop new clothes. They share the same taste and thinking too, and that really helped a lot in their bonding.

There are three types of rituals in my family. One of the rituals would be the routines ritual. Going to church every Sunday is a routine ritual to our family. As my parents are devout Christian, we have and must go to church every Sunday and it was what made me grow closer to God. I’ve been attending church every since I was six years old and later in life, I realized that it was my parents deep faith that influence me in the development of faith by embracing one another in our family. Another type of ritual would be my family’s tradition. We practice spring cleaning every year before Chinese New Year. The windows and curtains were washed, doors, wooden frames and tables were cleaned with a weird smelling eraser. My sister and I never look forward to this practice with enthusiasm as it was a very tiring thing to do. Yet, it was something rewarding as everything in the house were all clean and tidy and knowing the fact that we didn’t need to clean the house again until the following year. One of my celebration ritual in my family including celebrating holidays.

Every year, we would celebrate Chinese New Year and Christmas. I realized that all these family rituals and traditions foster a sense of belonging and security to us. As I grow up, I also understand that all these rituals create an opportunity for my family to have communication that might not take place.

In conclusion, a good family structure is very important because as we grow older, it’s easier for us to feel more alone. Sometimes I feel like things are always getting hard and they are forever not in phase. However, is my family member that remind me that no matter how far apart we get, how many years go by, I know that there are people who care, love and support me.