Maggie Humbert
10/18/2020
FCS 112
My Family Analysis
For my Family Analysis paper, unfortunately I couldn’t interview any of my family
members in person, so I found my information mainly through phone calls and texting with my
grandparents and my parents. My grandparents on my mom’s side have lived in Chicago, IL
their whole life and my grandparents on my dad’s side came to America from Italy. For my
siblings and I, we have lived in Naperville, IL with our parents for our whole lives. We have
never moved before so all I’ve ever known is Naperville. Both of my grandparents were married
fairly young and both had
kids when they were in their
younger twenties. My
mom’s parents had three
kids while my dad’s parents
had five kids. Both of my
grandmothers stayed home
to take care of the house and
her children, but my
Easter day with my family in 2016
grandfathers worked every single day to support the family. I think it was expected for my
grandmothers to stay home and take care of the kids and house while my grandfathers were the
breadwinners for the family. Now, for my parents my mom worked from home at first when I
was a baby but once I got older, they both started working and I had a babysitter for a couple
years up until me or my siblings could stay home alone. It was never expected for my mom to
My sister, mom, and I in Colorado 2019
stay home with me while my dad
worked though, so I think gender roles
have completely changed in that aspect.
Gender roles were taken a lot seriously
back then compared to now. Currently,
my dad just happens to be home for work all the time because he has a lot of flexibility with his
job while my mom usually works in Chicago for
her job. With everything going on in the world
right now, both my parents work from home at
the moment but my parents both work full-time
Me at my family Christmas party
jobs and always have. My family has gone through many challenges and changes over the past
few generations such as a few deaths in the family but there are certain traditions that have never
stopped or have always stayed the same. On my dad’s side, my family and I always go over to
my grandma’s house every Christmas to celebrate. It is something we have been doing since I
was a little girl and it is a
way for our whole family to
get together once in a while.
On my mom’s side, my
family and I like to get
together on Easter every
year and have breakfast at my aunt’s house. I have always loved this tradition because I get to
see my cousins that I don’t get to see a lot. One thing that has changed is no one really likes to
talk about politics anymore in my extended family because we all have different views. We used
to be able to speak about it very briefly at certain family dinners. But especially in the past few
years, no one likes to talk about what is happening in the world which is very unfortunate
because I think it is important to talk about. I think this has to do with the fact that a lot of my
older family members are conservative, and it is probably from the way that they were raised
because they never had parents
who were believed in liberal
accustoms. When comparing
myself to my family members,
there are a lot of differences
including religion and politics
but there are also similarities.
I’ve noticed that my grandpa on
my mom’s side is very outgoing and loves to talk about anything with anyone. I am very similar
in that way where I love talking and am very extroverted. My sister and brother are alike in that
way too where they are super extroverted and are able to talk to anyone. My dad is the opposite
of me and my siblings in that sense and he is definitely more introverted due to his mom being
very quiet and shy when my dad was growing up. My siblings are also very proactive and
independent. Since I am the youngest in my family I feel as though I am not as independent as
them and struggle with being on my own. I’ve always been very close to my mom and would
always get separation anxiety anytime I had to
be away from her when I was a little kid. My
parents are like my siblings in this way
because they both love their alone time and
strive in what they do. While doing this project
I found it very interesting to me that my family
and I have many differences. Although,
everyone tells me that my mom and I are the
exact same and we have the same mannerisms. My grandparents immigrated from Italy and
passed down so much of their Italian culture to my dad which was then passed down to my
siblings and me. When coming to America, they had to work right away and work very hard to
keep what they had in America. When my grandpa came to America, after a while he eventually
moved with his wife to
Kentucky and lived on a
ranch with several horses,
cats, and dogs. I spent a lot
of my childhood at his
ranch and it is always such
an amazing memory. My
grandpa and I had very
different views in life. He
was very religious and did everything in his life for God. While I on the other hand didn’t think
that you should put your
everything into one person.
We definitely butted heads in
religion and politics but we
never let it affect our
relationship. My
grandparents and I have a
different view on life
considering the fact that I’m living in a generation where everything is completely different
compared to when they were born. I am so grateful to have the friends and family that I do
because without them I wouldn’t be who I am today. Growing up with two parents and two older
siblings, my childhood was pretty average, and I got to have a very fun childhood. Without my
older sister, I feel like I wouldn’t be as confident and secure as I am. She has always been there
for me whenever I was going through something hard in middle school and high school. My
younger teen years weren’t the easiest for me because I’ve always been very insecure and an
anxious person. My sister also suffers with anxiety, so I tell her about a lot of the things that I go
through and she always knows how to make me feel better. She is a very big influence in my life
and has been a big impact on who I am today. My friends in high school also had a very big
impact on my high school experience and the way that I was. I was never into sports or clubs, so
I mainly focused on my academics and hung out with my friends constantly throughout high
school. Although I wish I could’ve gotten myself out there more, I am still grateful for the
experiences that I had, and I don’t regret anything. Even though I never broke out of my shell, I
still enjoyed my psychology classes in high school. Psychology and the field of social work has
always been very intriguing to me which is why I took a few classes relating to that field. I am
very passionate about helping others and doing whatever I can to help. Luckily, I had amazing
teachers that taught me a lot about myself and what I might want to do when I am older. When I
am older and have kids of my own, I want them to experience things that I was too afraid to
experience when I was younger. I want them to have as many opportunities to do what they love
in life so that they never have any regrets. I will also carry on the traditions that I had when I was
younger to
my future
children
because I
know that I
always
appreciated
being with
family on the holidays and I want them to be able to experience that. I would love to have my
own traditions with my family also, such as visiting family. My whole life I feel as I’ve never
really been able to see my extended family as much as I would like due to them living far away.
When I have kids, I would try my best to let them see their family more frequently than I did.
Although I am not a very religious person, I would let my kids decide what they want to believe
in no matter what I believe in. I also think it is very important to talk about politics, mental
health, school, and several other
important topics because growing up
I feel like my family and I didn’t
really get to talk about serious topics
as much. I would love to have my
children come to me for help or talk
to me about anything. Compared to
my grandparent’s generation and
now, a lot of things are acceptable that once were not back then which is why I believe my future
kids will be very different compared to my grandparents. As much as I love my grandparents and
will always respect their views, I
believe that future generations
will be the ones to save us
because we were born in a
society where your typical norms
aren’t always expected. Overall,
my family’s history has taught
me a lot more about myself and
why I’m the way I am. Even though each and every one of us is different, we all have our
similarities too. I would never want to change anything about my family, and I will forever be
grateful for the relationship that I have with all of them. For the most part, I think I did a very
good job on going into depth on my relationships with my family members. This project helped
me understand things that I didn’t even know about myself or my family, so I found this to be a
very beneficial project. Without this project, I wouldn’t have known certain things about my
grandparent’s history and what their life was like in America. In conclusion, I believe that I put
in the best effort that I could’ve into this project, and I am proud of the final result.