September 3, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
The world seems smaller because we can get to parts of it much more easily. Even compared to our grandparents, our ability to move to another country is a lot less complicated than it used to be. Globalization means that people can and do move away from the hometowns. This has widened our reach and allowed us to meet cultures and have experiences that were unthinkable two generations ago.
This has come at a cost. We may have gotten wings to span the world but at the cost of our roots. We are becoming disconnected with our family. Worse, we have started to undervalue the importance of family. Family is the best support structure we can have. The family is comprise of individuals who are predisposed to love you and encourage you and help you. What people have forgotten is that these relationships are not automatic. Like everything else, these relationships must be worked on and maintained.
Fifty years ago, if a young man and his wife left, say, Albany in New York and moved to Sydney, he was in effect, starting over. He will acknowledge that he has relatives back in the US but the chances of them meeting will be slim unless he can afford traveling the distance. At any rate, it will be visits that will happen rarely.
In our world now that is not quite the case. The cost of traveling has not necessarily become more affordable but the means of staying in touch has. News that could have taken a week or more would be received in a matter of seconds. Birthdays, anniversaries and other familial milestones can be acknowledged and celebrated much more easily. This does not replace actually sharing these milestones in person, but it does not diminish it either.
The easiest way to do this is to make a website devoted to the family. A free website where news can be exchanged and photographs and videos can be shared. This creates a touchstone where family members can stay in touch and maintain their relationships despite their distance from each other. Because news is received almost immediately, people don’t seem as remote.
It doesn’t even have to be a complicated affair, either. A free website builder can be downloaded and different family members can maintain the site so the responsibility and effort can be shared.
It’s important to tend to one’s roots. The family does not have to be left behind while we’re zooming across the world. We have the tools to keep up.
February 21, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, family is defined as a group of individuals living under one roof and usually under one head.
While this is a rather vague way of defining what normally constitutes a family, widespread assumption at one time was that a family was made up of a married couple and children produced by the two of them.
With the changes in usual American families over the past fifty years or so comes the realization that the traditional family of times past has nearly become a minority.
How, exactly, have families changed? Lets take a brief at some of these common family changes.
A half-century ago, divorce in in the United States was very uncommon, and those who chose to get a divorce were often shunned as social outcasts. Today, more than half of of marriages in the US end in divorce. Couples dont stay together just for the kids anymore. In addition, is that women arent often limited to staying in an unhappy marriage since they have more opportunities to work and support themselves and their kids. Further, divorce has become so common that it isnt unexpected any more.
Nowadays, many couples who divorce share custody of their children and the odds are that each will remarry. The second marriage of each person may produce children that are half-siblings to those from the first marriage. For any of these kids from either marriage, there are numerous brothers and sisters, half-brothers and sisters, a mother, a father, step-parents. All of these people can be considered family since they are close relatives that spend time together as a family.
Adoptingkids is also more common now and the adopted children are considered a part of the family that has adopted them. Foster children may live in homes for a short period of time or indefinitely. Some couples have numerous children from different parents living under their roof at one time and may consider this to be their family.
There is also a whole new world that has opened up in society with the controversy involving gay marriage. Gay couples live openly in committed relationships and have children either through adoption or surrogates. These are as far from the traditional definition of family as you can get, yet they are growing in number and are considered by most people to be families.
It is also inadequate to define a family as any group of people who live under one roof since your close family members may live far away from you and you can share a residence with someone as a roommate that you arent even close friends with.
Perhaps the best way to define the word family is by naming the thing that it is not limited to. A family is not limited to those who are genetically related. A family is not defined by its social status or name. A family is not limited to the number of people within its hold. It is not confined to certain religious beliefs, social acceptance, or similarity in interests or behaviors, similarity in color, or origin.
A family is made up of two or more people who have feelings towards each other that are based on what they have in common whether it is blood or respect or anything that matters to the people involved.