Joad Family Structure

The diversity of the families in today’s modern society doesn’t always hold to the past values that are represented in “The Walton’s”. The television show portrays wholesome, healing, spiritual, and uplifting values of the family that are rarely seen in modern families. Religion was a major part of living in the early 1900’s; love, morality, and a deep respect for others were learned in infancy. Today, religion still plays a large role in families, but not to the same extent. Morals and values have become less and less a part of our busy world, or perhaps they have just changed to adapt to modern beliefs. Priorities have changed from those that were upheld in the days that families lived through the Great Depression. In the show, the family made loving, difficult, sacrifices for each other, encouraged education,

Initially, the Joad's focus is on their own immediate family and their struggle to stay together. The

How does one define family? Throughout our readings, we find ourselves learning the ideas of theorist, concepts, and definitions to help us define and describe what family is. The family could possibly be what or who we say they are, or in simpler Bozett’s term, who the patient says it is! (Plumer, 2010). A family could consist possibly of values, roles, communication, environment, and relationships. Families may transition through all of these principles that either unites them or tears them apart. For instance, the movie Mrs. Doubtfire portrays these perceptions of what family is when family processes are shifted within a household. We will now discuss in more detail of the family assessment found throughout the movie starring the Hillards.

Over the course of the last sixty years, family values have consistently continued to change. With a heavier influx of women entering the work force and the social emphasis of individualism, the traditional family image has changed, and with

The family is the closest, most stable element in the boys life. LaJoe tries hard to make sure the boys are surrounded with positive influences so that they will grow up secure. This

The Jamison family mysteriously disappeared in October 2009 then reappeared in 2013. The missing four years of the Jamison family is still a mystery involving their background, evidence, and multiple theories.

The ideal family is always portrayed as the two parents and the children, but both “An Indian Story” by Roger Jack and “ Looking for Work” by Gary Soto, surpass that stereotype by showing families that are not ideal. One is a Native American family that doesn’t live together, the other is a working class Mexican American family . As mentioned in, “The Color of Family Ties” , “...commentators often emphasize the disorganization and dysfunction of black and Latino/a family life”, (pg. 54) because they are minorities they are looked upon on, and the way their family is structure is linked to their ethnicity or race, although those two don’t necessarily correlate. “An Indian Story” and “Looking for Work” illustrate nontraditional families, both show love and care within their family regardless of the situation, but “An Indian Story” shows a stronger family tie because they manage to lookout for each other and they continuously show their support to one another in order to be united.

    Families come in many forms, and family may not be considered “traditional” can still have a deep-seated relationship, much of the time more so than “traditional” families. Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Bean Trees makes non-traditional families very prevalent, showing their supportive and functional nature. A traditional family is a family that has a mother, father, and children, whereas a non-traditional family varies from that set. Barbara shows the reader that non-traditional families can function and support the members of the family just as well, if not better than traditional families.

An example of how her family values each other is her description of the conventions and norms of her family. They are thoroughly supportive of one another, attending every graduation, baby shower, birthday, and house warming party. Her father and siblings have burial plots together so that they are never separated. Life is lived with everyone being connected and concerned for not only each person’s well-being, but happiness as well. She says her “relatives form an alliance that represents a genuine and enduring love of family…”

The third idea working to persuade readers was the importance of people staying together. In regards to the Joad family and all migrating families as a whole, it seemed most beneficial to remain unified and to work as a team. Ma Joad was always very concerned that her family stuck together. It was important that Grandpa traveled along with the family when they were first leaving in Chapter 10 and she felt the same about Tom when he wanted to leave in Chapter 26, even though it was safer for the family she wanted her son to stay. Not only was it important for the Joads to remain compact, but everyone who was

Since the family’s origins are in Africa they came from a society with different norms and values. A society composed of many different tribes, each with their own language, customs and traditions. They placed a strong emphasis on the family and kinship ties. Their communities depended on cooperation, assistances and well maintained social order. When a woman was married, she was considered the wife of the family not just the husband (Franklin, 1967-28-31).

The way the author constructed the issue of families was characterization so you get the idea of each member of the family so that helps show the difference between the stereotypical families in the past and the present. Families in the past were different to the one’s in the present because the father was the most dominate because they were the ones that earn the money and they were the ones who were portrayed as being brave. The mother was

What commonalities do you see in the dynamics of both families? What things are vastly different?

husband and a dutiful, confidant wife. However, they aren’t much of a family at all, with little to

Building a family is, in many ways, similar to building a house or a building. It needs to be made of a strong material, like bricks, to protect the family. In addition, the building needs to have a good support material to keep the bricks from a falling out of places, like mortar or cement. Families have similar needs to make them work as well. The father figure is seen as the bricks because they are generally classified as the provider and protector of the family; the person to earn the paycheck and to keep them for starving. The mother figure is one to keep everyone together and take care of the children making sure they know how to behave. Members of today’s families fall less into these gender based roles but they still operate in much the same manner unless like one of the pillars of the family is absent. More commonly it is the mother who raises the family with the father being absent but in the case of my twin cousins’ family it is the mother who is absent and the father has to raise his children by himself. As he raised my cousins, he had to learn that his strong dominant ways were not always the best way to go about certain situations; it was trial and error for him to learn how to act as both a father and a mother.