Class and Culture vs The Family

 What I am going to talk about today is the effect that class and culture have on the family. So how does class affect a family structure and dynamic? Something that I found very interesting is that middle to upper class couples are deciding to wait to bring children into their home until after they are married. When hearing this and looking at their divorce rates it really goes hand and hand with each other. The divorce rates for these classes in America have dropped. So from this we are able to see that the couples who tend to have a higher class, are more successful with the quality of their families. Looking at lower class couples, we notice that they are bringing children into this world before the couple is married. The divorce rates of the lower class couples have not risen, but they have also not dropped. What I find interesting is that from this you really can see how different classes in America are already producing different family styles. Looking from a culture point of view in America, we see that marriage and parenthood are being pulled apart and separated. I know that for me I have even noticed how prevalent it is in today's world that people are having children before they are married. Looking back on class and how it is affecting families today, one big thing that sticks out to me is that when the family is a single parent household, this family is more likely to be lower class. This would be because there is only one income coming into the family rather than two incomes. How is being a single parent going to affect the family structure then? For example, if a family has a single mom, and the father is not in the picture, the children don't have that father figure to follow, this is especially true for young boys. Another way that this is affecting families is because since the single parent is the one bringing the income in, they're usually not making much, which requires them to work more hours, ultimately leading to that single parent not being around the family much. If we look at a married couple who has a higher income for example, the children in the family have the example of both of their parents to lead them throughout their life. The children in this family has more opportunities as well. They have better opportunities for post high school education, which can ultimately lead them and their future families to the same good opportunities. 

I also want to talk more about culture and family. A good example of the two related together is Mexican families who are immigrating to America. There was a study done that looked at how immigration to America was influencing family relationships. From this study, we found how a new and different culture affects their relationships. The main reasons the families were immigrating was to create better opportunities for their children. In most cases, the father in the family would leave to America to start making enough money for the family to be able to come over too. This would usually take months to years to accomplish. This changed a lot of the family dynamics in the family who was waiting back in Mexico. Some of the changes include that the mothers, who usually stayed home to be with their children and maintain the house, was now having to work, being taken out of her beloved role. This created a lot of stress on the mom, and also was making it to where the children rarely ever saw their mom because she was always working. This is a huge change for the family. Mexican culture is heavily family related. They love to do everything with their families, and are constantly together. So this is heavily impacting their relationships. They all start growing distant with each other since they are rarely seeing each other anymore. Then once the family is able to go to America, they are ripped away from all their family staying back in Mexico. When you grow up with everything surrounding around family, I can understand how depressing and difficult it would be for ones family to leave it all behind. Being in a new country now, they are under a lot of stress with the new language, and being illegal, and life is hard now. The sacrifice that they made for their family has now caused so much distance and hardship in their family. Relationships have now faded and the thing that is most important to them is falling apart. This is a very sad example of how culture, and even class, can greatly affect families. I think it is very admirable though how the Mexican culture is so family based, and how great the sacrifices can be for each other. I think this teaches a great lesson of how important families are, and how our culture and everything around us can greatly impact it.