Saturday, December 6, 2014
Post 2
This chapter was very important to me because I learned a lot about elders that I did not know and some terms that I never heard before. An interesting aspect I found in this chapter was the section about grandparents and grandchildren. This was interesting to me because some of definitions actually relate to my life. In this chapter I learned about the different variations of grandparents and grandchildren which can be found on 710 of our textbook chapter 25. Here I learned about remote grandparents or in other words a grandparents who are emotionally distant to their grandchildren (Berger, 2011.) I have never heard this term, and this actually relates to my life. My grandmother was never really tied to me and my sister and always acted as if we were a burden or didn't know what to do with us. So I would label her a distant grandparent since she never really emotionally tied with me and my sister. The next term in this section is a companionate grandparent, who is a fun loving grandparent that spoils their grand kids (Berger, 2011). I would label this for my dad's side because his parents were always spoiling me and my sister. I never wanted to leave there because it was one big play house and it was some place where I felt at home. So my dads parents would be labeled as companionate grandparents for all that they have done for me and my sister. The next term on the list is involved grandparents or parents that live close to the grandchildren or live with them (Berger, 2011). I always lived a distance of about 45 minutes away from my grandparents so this definition does not apply to me but my best friend actually built on an addition for her grandmother and lived in an apartment attached to the house. The final term is Surrogate parents who raise their grandchild because their parents are unwilling to do so (Berger,2011). This relates to my life and my friends because my good friend Miranda's grandmother raised her her whole life because of the absence of her parents. This chapter was overall interesting to me because I learned so much that I always wanted to know about older people. In this chapter I learned names of grandparents and learned so much about the elderly which helped me understand them and their behaviors a lot more.
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My mother's parents were more distant grandparents as well. Especially my maternal grandfather. He never took much of an interest in us grandchildren and complained about the noise we made. Every year though when they came home from Florida they brought a small gift for each of us. So I do think they did care about their grandchildren they just didn't know how to relate to us.
ReplyDeleteI have fonder memories of my paternal grandparents. Grandad kept bikes just for us grand-kids to use and sleds and would go sledding with us.
I agree that it is interesting to learn about family and their meanings, certainly in regards to elders. I too had somewhat distant grandparents. Connections and relationships are so important to how we define ourselves and to our happiness. I found that in some ways the chapter didn't explore enough the forms of relationships that can exists to replace familial relationships. However the chapter was great in exploring the different types and likewise the benefits and causes of how we relate to each other in the context of family. How we relate is also directly related to culture. For example, as was discussed, previous generations have had more absent fathers and to be absent was not considered to be faulty, but simple the standard or relations. In this generation having an emotionally present father is much more common and in contract to history, having an emotionally unavailable father might be considered to be damaging to a persons well being and/or development. Family, the types of relationships and the cultural context in which they exists is all highly relevant to culture and to time.
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