Family Interviews: Meaning of Family
The meaning of "family" as a construct and as an entity can vary from one racial, ethnic and cultural group to another. To examine this variance, interviews with two American families were conducted. One family was an African-American single-parent household in which a working mother, a maternal grandmother, and three children were found. The second family was a Hispanic-American family with working parents and two children. Both families live in an urban community area; all children attend a public elementary school and receive a reduced price lunch due to family income levels. However, both families are economically self-sufficient, if not precisely prosperous. Both rent their residences and live in multi-family units.
In discussing what "family" meant to Ms. Jones, the single African-American mother, it was revealed that "kinship" relations for this family are extensive and broadly defined. As Wesley (1999) commented, many African-American families have extensive kinship ties forged out of necessity; extended rather than nuclear families are the norm among members of this cultural group. Ms. Jones noted that she grew up in a multi-generational household and that here children are also living in such a setting; their home is also home to a first cousin whose mother cannot care for her and who is in the custody of Ms. Jones' mother, who lives with the family.
Further, Ms. Jones noted that many of the African-American families with which she is friendly are headed more often than to by single female parents. According to Nandia and Harris (1999), as of 1994, some 48 percent of all African-American households are headed by women with small children;' among these families, poverty is a major problem. Ms Jones stated that she is a Registered Nurse earning a good salary, but that she receives no child support from her former husband and that she is unable to "get ahead." She comm...