Family Culture

     Every family has their own culture and each culture has it's own functions. One of the questions I am asked to ponder is if one culture is more functional and effective than another culture. At first I thought  "well of course, some family cultures could be abusive and another more supportive and loving", but it's not that cut and dry. I've noticed people are okay with the culture they are born in, regardless of what culture they are raised in(in most cases). The reason for this know nothing else, you can't miss something you never had. The culture is made from the parents and those families are as functional and effective and they are raised to believe it is. 

    A simple example for this is the way certain families show their love. Some Families show affection with kissing and hugging and saying I love you and other families aren't into physical closeness and just know that the family loves one another. One family would be okay with sitting shoulder to shoulder on a couch and another family rather sit on the floor than be that close. Now that doesn't mean one family is more functional than another, it just means that this family culture was made differently. Often enough there is a cultural shock when those two different types of families meet. For example there's the story of a girl from a "closed off" family dating a guy from the a super open and physically showing family. When they meet the other family they find the culture so different and strange because they are complete opposites.  Then later on when they go out for a walk in public the guy tries to hold the girls hand but since the girl was raised in a culture of not much physical contact she's a little squeamish and uncomfortable with showing physical affection in public. 

    Now that story is not to say one of those families is better than the other or that the girl is in the wrong for not being comfortable with holding hands in public, it's just the culture they were raised in. It takes awhile to get accustomed to other people's culture and one very unique thing people have a chance to do when married is to create their own family culture. During those circumstances it would be easy to revert to how you're own family culture was and just copy it but since you have a partner with a different culture (probably) you'll have to change and compromise on things. Or if you both were raised in similar cultures then you have the chance to create something new and possibly even better. That's another fun thing to ponder, what would be things you would keep the same from your own family culture and what would be things you would change or make new and unique to your own family with your spouse.

    Two things I would keep the same is having an authoritative parenting style, just being responsive to child's needs and also having high standards and being consistent with rules and boundaries. I would also have family dinner together and once Dad comes home from work it's then family time and the family does stuff together until bed time. Some new things I would add to my family culture is more physical closeness like hugging because my family isn't super into that and only do that when we are saying goodbye to each other or hug after long time after not seeing each other.  I'm not naturally a touchy person with my family but with a significant other I'm a touchy person. So being a hugging, kissing, cuddling person with a significant other would probably transfer to my family and would become part of my own family culture. Another thing I would add to my family culture is less electronic use. Less video games, less TV, more outdoors and board games which result in better and personal family time (in my opinion at least) which will make the family closer.