Kinship and Family go Hand-in-hand

Kinship – whether that means “blood relatives” or a close knit group of people is up for interpretation. Families can shape your personality, teach you your societal roles, statuses, values, and morals. Kinship and family go hand-in-hand; they are the social relationships that form an important aspect of our lives as humans. Definitions of family vary across cultures. Is a normal family only defined as a married mother and father and their biological children all living together in one household? Or is this definition evolving as our ways of thinking change. Perhaps a normal family today resembles something out of the television series Modern Family; two married men living with their adopted daughter. One may consider a distant relative to be family while another may not. Some even classify their college roommates or their pets as family; a term coined “fictive kin”. Like culture kinship is complex and intangible, yet flexible. Kinship exists only because humans have an inherent need for it to. Factors such as economics, ethnics, generations, and gender may cause some cultures to claim some as relatives but not others. Throughout the course of this essay I will attempt to address who I classify as kin, my family.
During the process of creating my family tree I began by asking myself the questions, “who am I closest with?” and “who has influence me most as a person?” The answers to these questions consisted of lines of bilateral decent; just as the Euro-American system of lineage tends to do these days. Even though I am an only child my extended family tree is quite large. Contrary to only-child stereotypes, I have never felt claustrophobic or overwhelmed in big groups because I’ve been shaped by so many of my relat...

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...en to make homemade gnocci, pasta sauce, and drink lots of wine. My father’s side is a mixture of ethnicities. We are a combination of Mexican, German, and English but one thing is constant - homemade menudo, with tripe drying out in the front yard, and the strange but welcoming smell of boiled cabbage as Grandma makes galuskies. To me, relatives are those that accept you exactly how you are. The love of a family is unconditional. Family is comprised of those people who have the biggest influence on us as individuals. For me, my immediate kin raised me on a day to day basis but my extended family was always nearby. I am who I am today because of these people and my own personal experiences throughout my 22 years of life. We certainly have seen the definition of family expand throughout the generations and it will continue to do so as we head into the future.