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Welcome to familywisdom.com, a website dedicated to informing and inspiring couples and families. Each week you will find a new article, story or essay about parenting, marriage or life. Suggestions for articles and questions to Ellen Terich are welcome. You can contact her at e.terich1@verizon.net |
THE IMPORTANCE AND POWER OF FAMILIES 2004-08-31 I'm preparing to teach a class on Family Therapy to a group of graduate students training to be Marriage and Family Therapists. Therefore, I've been spending a lot of time reviewing theories, re-reading texts and journal articles and thinking a lot about families. Some Family Therapists work with one generation, a mother, father and children, to try to resolve whatever issues are creating problems for the immediate family and the individuals who belong to it; others believe you have to look beyond just the immediate generation to one or two past generations in order to understand the family dysfunction, as well as family strengths in order to find solutions. In other words, families are powerful groups influencing their members for several generations. While it may not always be practical to bring two or more generations of family members into therapy, the fact is that we need to be attentive to what we learned not just from our parents, but also from our grandparents. We all need to recognize that family traditions, family beliefs, and family behaviors become part of who we are now in our current families. For example, I have frequently written about my maternal grandmother, and how her guiding principle with respect to her children and grandchildren was "Whatever is mine is yours." An extremely generous person in her life, she still influences me, long after her death, to give things away, even when it may not be wise to do so. Friends of mine, on the other hand, grew up with parents and grandparents who influenced them to look out for themselves, as no one else would, and to watch carefully over what they owned. Both of these viewpoints have validity, and which behavior and philosophy you adopt in your current family will reflect what you learned from your parents, who in turn learned it from their parents. Problems sometimes develop in new families when husband and wife come from families with very different philosophies. How to handle money, which church to attend, how to celebrate holidays, and how to raise children are a few examples of areas in which two people can have strong differences that may cause problems in a marriage. This is one of the reasons it takes a lot of work to make a marriage successful. Once the romance, passion and lust have settled down, two people have to find common ground and create their own philosophy and traditions, often trying to blend two very different histories. My son Matt recently married his long time love, Maria, a wonderful woman from Puerto Rico. While she and my son were raised in the same religious tradition, they grew up speaking different languages, eating different foods and honoring different family traditions. Although they have known each other for many years, and have spent time with each other's families, they were faced with the task of combining different traditions in the wedding, as they will be faced with combining elements of both in their marriage. My husband and I knew very little about the bride's family, having never met them, and they knew little about us. We had only a short time in which to get to know each other and it was important to both my son and his bride to make the first meeting of the parents, as well as the wedding with its first combining of family traditions, to go well. So they set out from the beginning to make the wedding not just about them, but about family, and about bringing the two families together. They started out by creating a website about the upcoming wedding. On the website they posted pictures of the weddings of their brothers and sisters, and their parents and grandparents. This not only enabled us to see each other before our first meeting, but it announced to everyone that this young couple considered their families a crucial part of the success of the new family they were creating. They sent out invitations in both Spanish and English, spoke their vows in both Spanish and English, and had readings in both Spanish and English. My son, who speaks very little Spanish, even toasted his new bride in Spanish. This wasn't for the benefit of his bride, who speaks perfect English, but for her family members, who do not speak it as well. I watched the bride's family each time my son or another member of the wedding spoke Spanish, and their gratitude and pride was so apparent. The most touching and profound inclusion of the family however, including the past several generations, was the presence of family pictures on each of the tables at the reception. There were pictures of Matt and Maria as children, alone and with their families, pictures of their parents as adults and children, pictures of brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. There was even a picture of my brother who died 34 years ago. His name, was included in the program in a special section honoring family members who are no longer with us, but still live in our hearts and our memories. These pictures were the topic of much discussion at the wedding and helped us all feel as if we knew each other a little better. The symbolism of the pictures was clear: two people who loved each other were bringing together two very different traditions from two very different families and wanted to honor them both. The celebration of love and family is over and now Matt and Maria have to get down to the hard work of bringing the two family traditions and philosophies together. It will take much discussion and compromise, and perhaps even a few fights. When children come along, another phase of family influence will be apparent as the two struggle to determine how much of their upbringing will influence their own parenting. Unlike many people, for whom a wedding day is a simple expression of their romantic love, Matt and Maria realize that marriage is more than the union of two people. It is the union of two family traditions. Those family traditions will influence them for the rest of their lives, and because of that they chose to honor and embrace them and make them center stage at their own wedding. In a time of excessive focus on either having lavish, expensive weddings or eloping to Las Vegas, they chose to make the wedding about family love and family unity. They are, I believe, off to a good start. |