My introduction blog defined which group I wanted to study and why. The group that I want to study is a non-traditional family. Whether that be a single mom who raised her children, a family that was raised by their grandparents or a family raised by same sex marriage. I can't relate to any of these types of families which is why I want to learn more about them and why they are the way they are.
APPLICATION BLOG:
In my application blog I talked about which direction I was going to take. I chose to use Intercultural Relationships to focus on when I was learning about non-tradtitional families. In our textbook it says that the key to these intercultural relationships is maintaining a balance between differences and similarities. The first step is to acquire knowledge about the world, the second step is to break stereotypes, and the third step is to acquire new skills.
THEMES:
I interviewed two different people who are actually extremely close to me. I felt like by doing that I would get a much more in depth interview and answers because they trust me. I chose to interview my boyfriend and my roommate. Going in to the interviews I assumed that they would answer close to the same ways and both feel the same ways, but I was completely wrong. There are two very strong themes that I noticed during my interviews.
The first theme I noticed during my boyfriend's interview was hope. Hope is defined as a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. He didn't let the fact that he lived in a non-traditional family hold him back. He states, "I do not have any worries for my future with my traditional or non-traditional family. I don’t think that it would have too much effect on my life because I hold the power and direction of my future."
The few themes I noticed during my roommate's interview was love and insecurity. My roommate has two completely different lives; " My dad was married before he was to my mom. He had two twin boys that are now 33. One has 3 sons and the other lives single in California; complete opposites. Now my dad lives alone in his house and has a girlfriend of 5 years. My mom is remarried and they have little boys ages 7 and 5. My parents, luckily, get along very well making it easy on my older sister and I. My sister is 21 and is easily my best friend. Although my family may appear broken by divorce, my family is very happy and it’s nice that we are all able to get along." She talks a lot about how she has learned to love her two families because she can let in so much love. She is able to have so much love and support from so many different people. Her insecurities stem from growing up without parents who stayed together. She talks about how her parent's relationship kind of reflects in her own relationships. She states, "I feel like I grew up with so much conflict between my parents right in front of my face without even realizing it. I feel like I have made conflict in so many of my relationships so far because I’m not sure how a relationship really works without that conflict. It’s really got me thinking lately and trying to figure it out for myself."
COMPETENCE:
Intercultural competence is the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately with people of other cultures. I've learned a lot from this project because going in I knew nothing about non-traditional families and the things that they go through. I went in expecting them to have the same sort of feelings and experiences, but I learned that everybody has their own opinions and experiences. It's all about how they choose to handle them. I think that we can be more competent in intercultural communication by first taking the time to fully understand what that means. Then I think we will be able to understand different people and their cultures and not be judgmental towards them.
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