Family Culture

Often times when we hear the word culture, we think of the differences of different countries. That statement may be true; however, there are different cultures within the same country, even within the same city. No matter what culture we call our own, there are distinct differences between that of other cultures around us. One of the major differences occurs in the realm of family; family affection to be more specific. When talking about family affection, we should consider many different aspects. It was my task and privilege to explore these aspects.

I consider myself having a strong American culture. My family has been here for many years and has adopted the "American Way". After being born and raised in Wisconsin, I now spend my summers in Hawaii with my relatives. Despite my being away from my family for the summers, my family and I are very close to all of our relatives, and family affection is a daily occurrence. I recently interviewed Teresa Tran, a student at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. Teresa was born and raised in Minnesota "after [her] parents emigrated from Vietnam. When [her] parents came to the United States, they brought with them their Vietnamese culture. [She] grew up in a culture mixed with mainly Vietnamese and some American from [her] surroundings." Even though we have different cultures, we have both differences and similarities in our family affection.

The first aspect that I explored was by which medians affection is portrayed in the family. When looking at my own culture, my family and I show affection verbally, through gestures and through voice tones. For example, every night before I go to bed, I give both of my parents hugs, and occasionally kisses, and I always tell them that I love them. As far as tonal affection goes, by not raising our voices at one another we are showing affection in a small way. We still fight, but instead of yelling, we choose words carefully and try to show our point of view without putting down the other person. One last way that we show affection is simply by remembering important dates, like mothers' day, fathers' day, birthdays, and anniversaries. Teresa's Culture differs very much from my own when comparing family affection. The differences come in all of the medians in which to show affection. "Affection towards my family members is rare," says Teresa, which is the biggest difference between our cultures. My culture is largely based on showing your affection for your family members. Teresa, however, does show a little affection towards her family "by teasing or making fun of them...the stupid things. By laughing together, that's how my family shows our affection toward each other." My family does tease each other too, however, we more of consider that having fun than showing affection. The simple act of showing affection is very different throughout different cultures.

Another aspect of our different cultures is our reactions to the affection that is shown to us. As my family members show affection to me, I feel good about it. To me there is nothing better than to know that my family cares about me. I usually show affection back to them after they have shown some affection towards me. However, this is not the case with Teresa. "If a family member did show affection I would probably just shrug it off and think they lost their mind for a moment or something," explains Teresa. Affection is very important in my culture, so if we showed affection toward a family member and that person just shrugged it off, we would think they are being rude or that something is wrong. A lot of how we treat each other as a family member depends upon reactions to affection and caring.

One thing to think about when talking about a family showing affection to one another is how the family interacts in public as compared to in private. In my culture, it does not really matter if we are in public. We show just as much affection for one another as we would in the privacy of our home. There is not really anything that we would do differently in public. Much the same as me, Teresa also does not change anything from private to public. However, we differ in what we do in public. As before, Teresa's culture does not really show affection in private, so if nothing changes from in private to in public, then they would not show any affection towards one another in public. In this instance, our cultures are similar in the fact that nothing changes from in the home to in public, however, they differ in the fact that my culture would show affection for one another in public, where as Teresa's culture would not.

Another aspect of family affection that comes up is face value, or whether or not you would twist the truth in order to preserve harmony or someone's face. To my culture, telling the truth is more important than preserving the harmony. However, we tell the truth in such a way so that nobody's feelings are hurt. Basically, we will tell the person the thing that would hurt their feelings or make them mad, but we say it in a way that would not hurt as much or not make them mad at all; more or less just disappointed. We found this way to be helpful, in fact so much that now it does not matter who we have to say it to, we will say it like this no matter what. In Teresa's culture, depending on what the lie would have to be determines on whether or not they would lie. She might "leave some parts of the story out and spare them the 'heartache'. In some instances, I might start out small, then see how they react, and then give them the big blow." Her culture is a little bit like mine in this case. Both of our cultures will "soften the blow as much as possible," as Teresa puts it. The difference in our cultures is who we choose to 'soften the blow' to. In my culture, we will try to say the