Family Identity and "Collective identity"

David and Bar-Tal’s look at collective identity by incorporating a micro and macro level of research. The first level tells us the individual process of identification; which is important with the surrounding society for molding of one. There are many aspects of identification such as cognitive, motivational, and emotional. Macro is the second level it defines collective identity in a diverse way such as, a situation in which people in society identify themselves as collective and they also know there are other people that do this as well.

In David and Bar-Tal’s article they claim that “collective identity” is an important implication for a group of people and its members as individuals and also as a whole; it can construct the sense of the group and how they are united together. They talk about how there is an emotional aspect of how we identify ourselves; people in a group feel attached with each other as love and care is expressed amongst them all and is shown.

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A family Identity I believe is “unique” and they show us that cultural beliefs, values, norms and such things make up uniqueness; a family usually is a “we” which makes it distinctive with unique characteristics.

In my research paper I am going to address how “family identity” is seen as a “collective identity” and also I want to look at how a family becomes who they are, how they are not the same as each other. I first would like to explain what a “family” is.

The main aspects that my paper is based on is going to be how change and family rituals can shape that identity, how a family theorizes themselves, not based on an actually theories that people assume about how they live. Lastly I will be talking about the togetherness of family- how families move and shift into different places and how families willingly spend time with each other even when there are many other better things to do in the outside world.

What is a family actually? Have you ever wondered? A family is shaped by how we live our everyday lives with the members of our family; families constitute and manage their identities themselves (Epp, A & Price, L, 2008). We do not know what one is as a family, each family containes different everyday experience and consists of uniqueness within everyone. A family is usually seen as a “we”; there may be a way to tell how a family sustains their identity and how they engage in consumption activities to manage those identities. Families build collective identity as they see it in media and what they inherit; their identity is the sense of it owns continuity over time, and the present situation and its characters. The authors Epp, A and Price, L (2008) go into figuring out exactly how family identity works; I believe that family identity builds from the day it has started and their identity does not just appear it has to be created.

Change is a huge aspect of life, it can shape how we live; family rituals and traditions are abounded within change throughout lives. The value of assessing family ritual life is an aid to understanding how a family gets organized and the process of becoming an actual family. According to Giblin’s (1995) research that there if there was not any family rituals, the families were not satisfied in their marriage which would affect the kids as well. A relationship between family ritual meaning and marital satisfaction was demonstrated with good results. Families, like individuals, have identities; the family may have certain beliefs about themselves which are generally recognized and seen by others. Such beliefs may relate to the family’s achievement, career aspirations, wealth, poverty, physical appearance, communication styles or coping mechanisms.

Each of these qualities or characteristics reflects the family identity (Friesen, J, 1990). Rituals are one of those things that make a family different from all the other families in the world; every family has a certain ritual or belief that they hang onto which also gets carried on throughout their generations of the family. A ritual does not have to be something that is based on one’s culture, a ritual can be something like having movie night every Friday of the month and everyone just sitting together and relaxing as family; a ritual can be as simple as that. Change can also how a families identity is, because in the place where they are known, they have a reputation that they have to live up to kind of and in a new place they have to build that again, which is an example of change like moving to a different place. Change can also be something like a divorce which is huge in a family; it can change many things throughout all the relationships that had been made already.

Does one make a family based on what they have read about what a family should actually be? Specialist has their own theories about what a family should act like, but a family has their own theories about how they should work together as. Our own family and our everyday lives are by the complex intersections of many forces such as things like material health, moral and spiritual, temporal, spatial and relationship concerns (Daly, K, 2003). These concerns are both ordinary and persistent; they are not often apparent in our formal theories of families. The theories created by specialist have referred as the “elusiveness of family life”; everyday concerns such as the ones listed above are pervasive, however they are not often apparent in the formal theories created about families. There is a difference between theories that scholars create and what a family actually lives by.

The author uses negative spaces to foreground the implicit theories created by scholars; negative spaces are the recessive areas that we are unaccustomed to seeing but that are every but important for the representation of the reality at hand (Daly, K, 2003). The three main negative spaces in a family include things such as the realm of belief and intuition which consists of emotions, religious and spiritual matter, the world of material things and the coordinate of time and space as means of everyday family experiences (Daly, K, 2003).

Scholars theorize families differently than they actually are; on television we see examples of families that some scholars may have theorized to be the correct way of living as a family. These examples from the television can lead many of us wanting to have that kind of perfect family, and sometimes make us try too hard to create that picture-perfect family; but all we have to do is make our families the way we want them to be, not what we have seen.

Families are created by people, they do not just occur. People begin a family with people they care about and also sometimes a certain place can make it easier to make a family happen. Miller, L (1995) explains that there is decline of intact families in the suburbs; once a promising place for a family to flourish, Family is not only a domestic alliance, it is a group of people that enjoy each other’s company. There doubts in many ways that the social and spatial structure of suburbia does promote family togetherness. Family was beginning to be redefined as a source of companionship and emotional sustenance and the suburbs were a great place to begin according to Miller, L (1995). Family I believe is an alliance that creates a household to take care of its members’ basic necessities; but they are also a group of people who enjoy each other’s company. This is a vision of family togetherness, meaning that husband, wife and children choose to spend the time not claimed by wage labor or school with one another, they prefer each other’s company instead of the things in the outside world that could be attractive.

In conclusion the value of assessing family ritual life is an aid to understanding how a family gets organized and the process of becoming an actual family .A relationship between family ritual meaning and marital satisfaction was demonstrated with good results. Families, like individuals, have identities; the family may have certain beliefs about themselves which are generally recognized and seen by others. There is a difference between theories that scholars create and what a family actually lives by. Families are created with the thought that each and every one takes care of its members’ basic necessities; but they are also a group of people who enjoy each other’s company.

This is a vision of family togetherness, meaning that husband, wife and children choose to spend. Families can have multiple identities that can be caused by divorce as well, also not having a ritual in a family actually affect their identity greatly. Everyone wants to create a family that works out with no problem and that everyone enjoys each other’s company when together no matter how busy their personal life may be or how much work they have to do at their jobs, giving time to their family should not be something they are forced to give, it should something they want to do.

Bibliography

David,O & Bar-Tal,D. (2009). A Socialpsychological conception of collective identity: The case of national identity as an example. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13(4), 354-379. doi: 10.1177/1088868309344412 Daly,K. (2003). Family theory versus the theories families live by. Journal of Marriage and Family,65(4),771-784. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.proxy.ufv.ca: 2048/stable/3599889

Epp,A & Price,L. (2008). Family identity: A framework of identity interplay in consumption practices. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(n/a), 50-65. doi: 10.1086/529535

Friesen, J. (1990). Rituals and Family Strength. Direction Journal. (19(1), 39-48. Retrieved from http://www.directionjournal.org/article/?654

Giblin,P. (1995). Identity, change, and family rituals. The Family Journal: Counselling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 3(1), 37-41.doi: 10.1177/1066480795031006

Miller,L. (1995). Family togetherness and the suburban ideal. Sociological Forum, 10(3), 393-418. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/684782