5 My immediate family

I have 8 brothers and sisters which is unusual in contemporary times. I have 6 sisters, and 2 brothers. My parents were married for 50 years the year my father passed away. Our family was simple as we only had one cousin who was younger than all of us and she lived in Spain. The family tree is going to begin to have many branches that split off because I have one sister who was married three times and had three children. Her first child she had at age 16 and he was adopted through a closed adoption. Zerubavel would call this cutting or pasting in the family tree because he is never talked about in conversation and it is as if he did not exist (Zerubavel 2012).  My sister had 2 other boys. the first one was with her second husband and her third son was with her third husband. The two boys were raised under the same roof as my sister, Elena was married to her oldest son’s father for 18 years. This is what our textbook refers to as a blended family and they also are a household based family in that they were all raised under the same roof (Ciabattari 2017). Elena also raised her step son who was her husband’s kid from a previous relationship.

My sister Vida gave up a kid for an adoption in an open adoption with a couple who could not have children and she was in the military with. We do not talk about her either so she is someone who has been cut out of our lineage so far. The rest of my siblings that are married have children with their husbands only and continue to live in a nuclear household where everyone has assumed their roles.

We are a structural family in that we are related by blood and our parents are married and we also fall under the definition of a nuclear family which is a family that consists of 2 parents and their children (Ciabattari 2017). It was common in the early twentieth century to have at least 3 kids or more, but that by 2010 that number dwindled to 1.9 children per couple (Ciabattari 2017). My family does not represent the norm on that, but the tradition of living in a structural family in which siblings and parents fall into their ascribed roles ended with my siblings and their families for several reasons. For example, my oldest sister was the breadwinner in her family for over 25 years which breaks the separate spheres ideology of the roles ascribed to the man and woman in a marriage (Ciabaratti 2017). My grandparents on my mother’s side got married before the age of 20, and my parents were married by the ages of 21 and 25 respectively. This tradition has been broken with my siblings as my sister, Lucia, and her husband have followed the current trend in which they got married after the age of 35 and had children when my sister was 37 and 39. Her husband, Brian was in his 40’s already. They have a structural family, that is nuclear, and where everyone plays their roles, but this is where the commonality ends. Both of my parents worked full-time and so did my grandparents on my mother’s side, which means my grandmother was working full-time in the 1940’s, which was uncommon. According to the textbook only 10% of married white women worked outside the home in the 1930’s (Ciabattari 2017). Women began working full-time outside the home in the 1940’s because a lot of men were drafted in WWII. The fact that my parents did not divorce decreased the chances that my siblings would get divorced, as family structure that a person grows up in influences the rates of divorce (Ciabratti 2017). Given this statistic my father remained married to my mother until he passed away which was against the odds since he came from a broken family. The relatedness through the passing of names was common on both sides of the family, but it stopped there. My brother did not name his son after him, but he did give him a Spanish name (Antonio). There was continuity in the number of children as my grandmother on my mom’s side had 7 siblings, and her daughter, my mom, had 9 children herself. This commonality skipped generations. Below are some pictures of my family. I hope you enjoyed reading my family history!