Critical Analysis of Family Life

Critical Analysis of Family Life:
For this week's blog entry, I would like you to consider how race, gender, social class, and sexuality (1) impacted and shaped your family life so far, (2) affected your ideas about families, and (3) might affect your family life in the future. The purpose of this assignment is to get you thinking about how social positions affect our family experiences as well as to contemplate what your beliefs are and why you have them. Such things often seem “normal” or “natural” so try to think critically when doing this exercise. This blog entry will be graded based on your critical thinking about these issues.


I grew up in Andover MA, a wealthy suburb of Boston as part of what would considered an upper-middle class, Irish-Catholic family with an older brother and an older sister. I find my family to be very open minded when it comes to race, gender, and class, but not as open minded when it comes to sexuality. In regards to social class, I come from a town that is generally fairly wealthy. I also grew up next to one of the poorest cities in the United States: Lawrence, MA. The transition from my town to Lawrence was always fairly drastic. Any community service or donations that I participated in usually took place in Lawrence or for the people that lived there. My parents have always stressed helping others who need it. I never considered myself as wealthy as a lot of my classmates in high school. I know we have had many financial constraints, but they have not really affected me directly yet, in that they prevented me from doing or having something that I really wanted. All 3 of us went to public schools, though I was given the option of a private high school if I had wanted it. My parents have sacrificed a lot to send all 3 of us to Boston College, and we have received a great deal of financial aid in order to do so. I made my decision of what college to attend when my brother was a senior here and my sister was a sophomore. I was given the opportunity to attend a less prestigious university in the honors program with a scholarship for $15,000 a year. This decision was very tough for me, because my father is very strict about our financial needs. I knew he really wanted me to accept the scholarship, but after much deliberation I decided that if I did not attend BC I would always regret it. My father definitely sacrificed a lot to let me go where he knew I really wanted to go. I've always been taught the value of hard work, having to do chores to earn allowance when I was younger, and contributing money I make at my job towards my college education. As for race, I come from a white, Irish-Catholic family and have not really been faced with the hardships that other races tend to experience. We all have friends from many different backgrounds, and I don't see anyone in my family having a problem with anyone dating outside our race or culture. I don't see much difference when it comes to gender in my family. When me and my siblings were little my mother would only work one day a week and stay home with us the rest of the time. She usually does the cooking and cleaning as well. However, both of my parents have worked full time jobs since I was in middle school and allowed to stay home by myself. As for us, my parents expect all 3 of us to be successful regardless of our gender. When it comes to sexuality however, my family is incredibly conservative. We hardly ever talk about it, except for the obligatory awkward conversation that occurred in 5th grade when we first started having sex education classes. At this point, my mother expressed her wish that we would all wait until marriage before having sex. In regards to homosexuality, I feel like I come from a completely different world as my parents sometimes. I have 2 male cousins that are gay, one of whom is my age and I grew up being very good friends with. One is much older than me and I don't remember anything about my family's reaction to his coming out. But when my other cousin came out, my family, in particular my Grandma and father, were pretty upset. They still love him of course, but they definitely don't approve, and I think this can be attributed to how things were when they were growing up. My sister, brother and I share similar opinions and are much more accepting of it because we've grown up learning to accept all types of people regardless of race, gender, social class, or sexuality. I've grown up observing a variety of types of families, many much different than my own, and I think this has led me to realize that there is no strict definition of "family". I've also realized just how much of an affect your family and your background have on the way you treat other people. In the future, I plan to raise my family to be openminded and respectful of all kinds of people and all kinds of families, no matter what my own views are.