Family Roles and Rules

      

I do have to admit, I am very much so a “momma’s boy.” I grew up thinking very highly of my mother, and as time goes on, I realize more and more how amazing she really was in raising me and my brothers. My father was very complimentary to my mother in that they were both very compassionate. But, to be frank, my dad got the good end of the deal in my family structure. I was raised with five brothers, and zero sisters. My poor mother had to deal with living in a house with seven dirty boys. For those of you who have seen the musical, “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” you can probably guess why she loved this film. Like Milly, my mother had to bring order to our house. 

A couple weeks ago in a pre-class activity, we were asked to make a list of family rules that were incorporated in our own nuclear families. This made me think back to when all my brothers and I were all still living at home. I had to think back about how my family functioned and interacted. I made several connections to how I act now and how they came about through family rules.

                                                

I grew up out in the middle of no-where in Northern California. There my parents bought a good amount of property and decided to raise a variety of animals, not as a way of making money, but to give us boys something to do. We had chickens, rabbits, cows, horses, sheep, dogs, cats, and turkeys. There was always plenty of work to be done outside. When my mom thought that we were becoming too complacent with our work outside, she started a large garden. We lived on bluffs, so the dirt was a hard cement –like soil that required a lot of work to dig so keeping up with a garden was time demanding. In the summer, it got hot, and in the winter it got wet. Needless to say, we got dirty a lot.

                                                  

But, inside the house we had to treat it like it was a sanctuary. Everything was clean and proper. In a house full of boys, we had to live as if we had sisters. Even though we had four bathrooms in the house (two of which my mom never used) we had to keep the toilet seat down. Certain bodily functions that boys just naturally like to flaunt were taboo. We always had a formal dinner at the dinner table with napkins on our laps, and a table set even with wine glasses to drink from. We always had to say please and thank you. Negative terms such as “shut up” required 20 pushups per word. Needless to say, some of my brothers bulked up in the winter.

Now, there is a point to all this ranting. After I looked at how I was raised, and the rules that were in place, I looked at my wife’s upbringing. Needless to say, it was very different. They didn’t have as many rules and responsibilities. Do I think that is a bad thing? Of course not! Her family focused on different aspects. The things that I have realized sense I thought through the differences in our upbringing, is how we both see life differently. In my wifes family, they were often, what my family would consider rude to each other. They would do things that normal families would do and call each other stupid and point our each other’s flaws. In my family, we would make fun of each other in a different way. We would make implications. For example if I tried to cook rice, but ended up burning it, my wifes family would say, “don’t let him make the rice, he’ll just burn it.” And in my family they would more likely say, “Maybe we should let someone else cook the rice.” Both are insulting in different ways. The way I make fun of my wife offends her, and the way that my wife makes fun of me offends me. Both are due to our upbringings.

                                        

Now that was just one example of many things that I found of why we think things through differently. Other examples of differences are differences in priorities, order, and entitlement. With understanding how we were both brought up really helps us learn how to better communicate to each other in the other’s “language.” In our daily interactions, we make a lot of assumptions of how others interpret and understand us. If we actually take the time to try to understand one-another and see each other’s strengths and weaknesses, marriages will be stronger, and in turn, families will be closer.