Family dysfunction is common in Indigenous communities. One example is Rowdy’s family, from Sherman Alexie’s The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Rowdy’s father is a drunkard who beats his wife and son, “so Rowdy and his mother are always walking around with bruised and bloody faces”. In response, Rowdy is a bully who fights anyone and anything in his way. This is one out of many dysfunctional families, common around the world. Family dysfunction does not only occur in Indigenous communities, it also occurs in the dominant culture.
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I agree that dysfunctional families are also found in the dominant culture. I'm not sure what the research says, yet I would imagine you could also look at it from a class perspective too.
ReplyDeleteRich and poor families can experience dysfunction, it is just sometimes the more money your family has, the more your dysfunction can be hidden from others up to a certain point. I am thinking about the upper middle class "soccer mom" in Florida who recently killed her two teenagers. Stories quoted people who knew them as calling them "a nice family" before all of this happened. http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local-beat/Florida-Army-Officers-Wife-Shoots-Children-114854194.html
I understand that richer families experience family dysfunction as well as poorer families, but some people don't understand. I just want people to think about others before they judge someone else, because they may not understand the life others live. The reason some people act out may be because of what’s going on at home. Others may not know why a person is acting out because the person is too ashamed to tell, or nobody cares enough to ask. So they keep their problems hiden inside and escalate to violent high-drama.
ReplyDeleteI've never been rich, more middle-class up until the last few years. My dad isn't all that responsible and he ended up losing his house. My sister moved to our mother's because she was withdrawing into herself too much and I had to move in with my boyfriend to finish high school. My dad isn't a bad father, he just tends to be more of a good buddy rather than a father so he tends to forget the important dad responsibilities. I love my father and I don't have too many issues because of him but I've connected with a few of my friends that have had very troubling problems with their fathers.
ReplyDeleteMost of the friends that have these problems try to over compensate by drowning themselves in school or work. I actually found that most of my friends were far more involved with other people and groups than people would think. I'm not saying that everyone is like this but I think that there are a majority of people that try to find positive things to ignore troubles at home.
Hey Number One,
ReplyDeleteI agree, it is important not to judge and to try and understand what you may not see that is affecting someone's behavior. I think in the context of The Absolutely True Diary, we also need to understand how history has affected a person and their family.
melissaestelle, I agree with you. History has affected lots of people. My family is an example. My great grandma went to a boarding school. She told stories about being beat. As she grew older and had children, she beat them. In turn my grandma (her daughter) beat her children. But my mom, aunts, and uncles refused to beat their children. They remember the feeling of getting beat for nothing at all. They had all promised themselves and each other they wouldn’t do that to their children. It seems instead of beating the children; they became drunkards and started abusing drugs. They soon became absent in their children’s lives. Maybe they became drunkards and began to abuse drugs because of the pain growing up and it’s the easiest way for them to cope with it.
ReplyDeleteHey Number One,
ReplyDeleteYour story reminds me of the Wellbriety documentary we watched in class last week. It was painful and also hopeful to see the work that is being done to try and heal from the historical and intergenerational traumas inflicted on Native people.
The stories of the Boarding Schools should be taught in every school in the US, along with a non-whitewashed version of our history in general.
What you say about your family's experiences and how each generation built off the last reminds me of how hard people have to work to break these vicious cycles. Even if we want to do better as parents, we often fall back on what we learned from our childhoods or try to escape in ways that only keep the pain alive for someone else.