Nonverbal communication and culture. Identity, stereotypes and prejudices, страница 36

Types of Families

Traditionally, all people encounter two families during the course of their life: the family they are born into (the family of orientation) and the family that is formed when, and if, they take a spouse (the family of procreation). Kinship bonds link these two families into more complex family systems. In recent years, definitions of family have begun to include a number of different configurations. Three of these configuration are identified by American scholars:

-  live-in couples, heterosexual or homosexual, with or without child, who are unmarried but have a binding relationship;

-  single-parent family, in which the parent—married, never married, widowed, or divorced—lives with her or his biological or adopted child;

-  a blended family, consisting of two adults and their children, all, some, or none of whom may be the offspring from their union.

For our purposes, we are most concerned with your family of origin—the family in which you grew up. For, regardless of the culture, it is primarily this family that "provides you with the foundation of your self-concept and communication competencies.

Culture and Family

The American author William Thayer once wrote, "As are families, so is society." His words clearly express the importance of family to both culture and individuals. Culture alters the most fundamental of all human processes—including family. Different cultures of our world have given us a variety of forms of the family and specific roles that the family plays in society.

A human being's development can take any number of paths, and culture is one of the major determinants of that path. A child in India who lives with many people in one house learns about extended family. A Mexican child who is raised in a home with many elderly people learns about the treatment of the elderly. These seemingly insignificant experiences, when combined with thousands of other messages from the family, shape and mold children into members of their culture.

Families do not develop their rules, beliefs, and rituals in a vacuum. What you think, how you act, even your language, are all transmitted through the family from the wider cultural context. This context includes the culture in which you live, and those from which your ancestors have come.

Different cultures create different families. Cultures vary in everything from their definition of family to their definition of the timing of life cycle phases and the tasks appropriate at each phase. Let us look at some of these ways so that we can appreciate their impact on intercultural communication.

The basic assumption of this section is simple: The interaction patterns in the family offer clues as to communication patterns found outside the family.

Gender Roles

Perhaps one of the most important of all family patterns, and one that is found in all cultures, is the teaching of appropriate gender roles. Early in life, children learn to differentiate between masculine activities and feminine activities. What is intriguing about gender roles is that like all important aspects of a culture, specific perceptions can be traced to the deep structure issues we talked about earlier in the chapter. For example, in cultures such as the Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean, the history of these roles can be traced to the influence of Confucianism. Confucianism made men alone the structurally relevant members of the society and relegated women to social dependence. In early Confucian families, boys studied the classics and played, while girls were confined to the inner quarters of the house where they received instruction in womanly behavior and tasks, such as domestic duties, embroidery, cooking. Even today, in Asian families, males are primarily responsible for task functions, while females attend to social and cultural tasks. Children see the father get served first at meals, get the first bath, and receive nods and deep bows from the rest of the family. In other cultures (e.g., Mexican, Indian, Arab) males are also considered the superior and preferred sex.