Culture Through Generations
This essay will explain how I learned culture through generations of my family.
The first thing I noticed when analyzing my chart is that there has been considerable
migration through generations of my family. My family came from Europe to Central
America , because they had made investments there which was their initial reason for
leaving Spain. My parents generation left Central America for political reasons which
lead them to financial disaster. Opportunity, can be said is the reason why generations of
my families have lived in the Americas. Cultural values in my family are still rooted to
those which exist in Spain. When they first came to the Americas , they moved to a very
close nit European community. This is what set a precedent for cultural values and
family through the passing down of European traditions from generation to generation.
In the neighborhoods where my parents grew up it made a difference what your
name was, so it was important to inter-marry between people of the same class and on the
same cultural level. This also meant that your surnames created support networks which
created a financial backbone for the family. This in turn is lead to not what I’d call a
pre- arranged marriage but a suggestive marriage. That means your parents would
suggest to you that a certain person from a certain family would be a suitable mate
because of their family and background. This was common practice in my parents
community. These kinds of marriages were accepted by previous generations because of
a respect of your parents opinions, and because of the tight nit family structure. These
traditions have been passed down form generation to generation, with exception to the
Caso, Federico
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American generation of my family. This also meant my family had expectations of each
succeeding generation.
Every generation was insisted upon having a college degree, it was completely
unacceptable to not have a college education in my family. This particular culture and
society was lived by two generations of my family. When communism came to power
my parents needed to leave the country because all of their possessions were seized by
the poor rebellious communists. Communism was also not parents political affiliation so
they chose to come to America for opportunity and freedom. My parents like my
grandparents had to be acculturated in the American way when they came to this country.
They also had to create new support networks and had to start all over again. The close
nit family structure revived the support network because eventually the rest of my
family came to the states. Even though my family came to a new country: the same
social and cultural expectations were implemented in my contemporary generation. My
generation and the previous generations have had the same root values, but they all very
slightly from generation to generation. Having reflected upon this kinship assignment I
have learned culture, values , and a central family have been passed down generation to
generation to make the family succeed and be prosperous through a close nit support
group.
Anthropology
