Family Relations Class Week #4

 Hello to everyone! I hope you are all doing well. During my Family Relations class this week we continued to talk about family systems and how they change within the family. Our class on wednesday was specifically spent talking about how families can change when they move out of one culture and into a new culture. In class we decided to do a roleplay with multiple of the class members. In this roleplay there were people roleplaying as a family. There was a grandfather, mother, father, son, daughter, aunt, uncle, and two cousins. In this example we talked about a family living inside Mexico. 

In Mexico the family has a good life where they are very close with each other and the father has a very good source of income in the business of construction. Although things are going fairly well for them where they live in Mexico, they decide that they want to move to the United States where they believe they can have a better chance at living. Unfortunately to do this, the father will need to leave his family and go to the United States on his own because they don’t have the money for mom, son, and daughter to go as well. The reason for this is because for the family to be able to go to the United States, they will need to pay someone(known as a coyote) to help them cross the border. The coyote’s job is to help people cross the border because it can be very dangerous and it can be very life threatening. Because of how dangerous the coyote’s job and journey can be, the cost to be able to cross the border from Mexico can be very expensive.

So what happens when the father makes the journey to the United States? When the father arrives he will most likely not have much except the clothes on his back and a few other things. With enough luck, using his skills in construction he should be able to obtain a job while in the United States. Even though he will have gotten a job in the United States it may be a little while before he makes the same amount of money or more of what he made back in Mexico. Little by little the father will do all that he can to send money that he earns to his family back in Mexico. 

Meanwhile, for the rest of the family back in Mexico, the family system will start to change. Now normally in their culture, the father acts as the sole provider in the family. However, because the father is gone who is the sole provider of the family, the mother will need to step up and become the sole provider of the family. Not only will the mother have to step up but the son will have to step up and take some of the responsibilities of the father as well. The son will start to almost take the role of the father(he will become the man of the house) due to the father’s absence. In addition to the lack of a father figure in the house the son may start to do things that are not in the father's best interest such as smoking or other shady activities.

Now when the rest of the family is finally able to make the journey to the United States, their family system will have changed from when they were all back together in Mexico. Now that the mother has had a job in Mexico, she will most likely get a job in the United States meaning that the parents will have less time with their children during the day even though they are living together. Also because the son had previously stepped up to take the place of the father, there may be a power struggle between the son and the father on who is the ‘man of the house’. So here we see that even though the family is back to living together in the United States, the structure of the family has changed dramatically from what it was when they were in Mexico.

I really enjoyed learning about how the family system could change in this way and I hope I taught you something that I learned as well. If you have any comments or questions, I would love to hear them! Until next week my friends.