KINSHIP
My interviewee was my older cousin Ian. He is a 28 year old
Caucasian male who is currently single.
He was born in Newport Beach California at Hoag Hospital. He went to
University of Nevada, Reno and has a Bachelor’s of Science in Biology. He
enjoys riding his bike everywhere; he would rather ride a bike then drive a
car. Last summer Ian and his best friend rode their bicycles from Venice Beach
California to New York City! It took him and his friend two months, and they only
stayed in a hotel two times. They camped outside and also cooked there food
outside. Something I found out during
this interview is that he is afraid of water.
I was really comfortable throughout the interview he was very calm when
I was interviewing him and was extremely informative. I did not experience any awkwardness or
discomfort during interviewing my cousin.
I do think that if it would have been awkward that it would have
affected the thoroughness of my interview and since it wasn't at all I think it
made this interview very efficient. I
think if it would have been someone else it would have been very uncomfortable
at times talking about my family stuff and really getting in to our family relationships,
and even talking about divorce in families. One of the patterns to see is that both
grandparents stayed married until they passed away and that there were divorce
for both my mom and my aunt my cousin’s mom. There is a difference with my
cousin Ian and the rest of his mom’s side of his family because he lives out
here in California and his mom and sisters all live in Nebraska and his dad
lives in Reno Nevada. His dad’s side of the family is a lot larger than his
moms. On his moms side of the family I am his only cousin whereas on his dad’s
side he has four cousins. His older
sister and youngest sister both have a child, he said that his attitude towards
his older sister is a little different because his younger sister is married
and the older sister is not. He does not believe in having children before
marriage. On both of our moms side of
the family which is how we are related we do not talk to our second cousins or
extended family at all. After our grandparents passed away we all stopped
having contact. He believe it is because of the older family members because he
told me that he tried to keep in contact and visit them because they live in
different states and they never followed up with it. Both sides of the families are very social
with each other just not both sides of the family at once. Ian also does not talk to his dad but maybe a
few times a year, which has really impacted there whole family. We got in to
why they do not but I don’t want to post
it all on here, but I think because of their lack of communication it has
brought a sadness to him you could tell
when I was asking him questions about his dad and the way he was answering
them. He says he is a lot closer with his mom’s side of the family because it
is smaller than his dad’s side of the family.
I know my relatives on both my mom and dad’s side of the
family. I do not socialize with them
equally. My dad’s two brothers live in town,
with my four cousins, my dad’s other sister and brother both live out of
state but I am in contact with them allot. With my dad’s family living in town
and two of my cousins being my age it makes it allot easier to socialize and be
with them on holidays, special occasions or just hanging out. I do not socialize with my cousins on my mom side
of the family as much as I would like to because they all live in Nebraska.
With my cousin Ian living here at my house right now it has brought us allot closer
and given us the chance to socialize more but my cousins his sisters who live
in Nebraska we rarely talk. We use to talk all the time when I had a Facebook
which made it easier to keep in contact and plus we didn’t have to pay the long
distance charges on our phones but since I do not have one anymore we rarely talk. My parents are divorced which makes it really
difficult at times with decisions made in our family. I am the only child which
makes it even harder at times because I feel stuck in the middle of the both of
them. My dad makes the decisions in my life just as much as my mom does. I live
with my mom so she makes allot of the decisions but my dad helps me with making
decisions about health, school, and even cars etc… I think living with my mom full time since the day my
parents got divorced more than 15 years ago, it really does make my mom have
the biggest decisions made in our lives. I do not think that any of my aunts or uncles is
treated any differently because they were not born in to our family. I would
never treat anyone like they were different because they were married in to the
family nor would anyone else in my family.
My cousin Ian who I did this interview with is my only guy cousin on
both sides; in fact I have 11 girl cousins.
I think this exercise has taught me how much divorce really affects
families. I think that when I have my own family I want to make sure that
everyone is close no matter how far apart we live from other members of our
family. I think that family is the most important thing and I sometimes feel
like I have a big family but at times it almost feels like lonely because I am
the only child and I do not hang out with my family as much as I would like.
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I enjoyed doing the chart with my cousin and mom and dads side of the family so I decided to do mine.
It was very interesting reading about your family. You seems like you are pretty close with your cousin Ian. I understand what you are saying about how divorce affects a family immensely because my own parents were divorced as well when I was younger. Since then I have had almost no contact with my father's side of the family. It is hard because our family is very separated. I agree that family is the most important thing, and I hope that we can both gain more communication with our extended family.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment! I hope you get more communication with your family to! It is really hard when family's do not talk more because life is to short and family should be the most important people in life.
ReplyDeleteYes, i agree, this was really intresting. I like the flow of this, You seem quite confident , and defintley felt at ease with your cousin. Im sorry that you dont have some communicatioin with your family, as in reading mine, there are some family memebers i dont talk to as well. I have come to terms that in life some will come and some will go. They say that with friends to.I was told yes that it was rare my parents have been together for so long, but they basically grew up together and are in love. its cute yes. Well i hope all is well :)
ReplyDeleteInteresting interview with your cousin.
ReplyDeleteYou made this comment: "I would never treat anyone like they were different because they were married in to the family nor would anyone else in my family."
I don't think there are many people who would consider that they might treat people differently, but there is often a difference between stated attitudes and real, or acted-upon attitudes. Sometimes differences in treatment are subtle and subconscious and, to be honest, it is rare that all members of the family, regardless of being related by blood or marriage, are treated exactly the same. Patterns like that might have been more apparent by interviewing someone from an older generation. Younger people in families are more likely to not have different attitudes based upon marriage or gender.
Good job.
I think as humans we can't help but be egocentric and assume every person has had the same upbringing, so I found it shocking and intriguing that you have only 11 cousins instead of 100. I was hoping to read a blog post where the family size is a bit more small and intimate so I can have more of an insight of what is like not having twenty thousand people in your business. It was refreshing to know your cousin feels closer to his mother's side of the family because it is smaller.
ReplyDelete