A family can come in many forms, from nuclear to extended, from single parent to blended and even broken families. It doesn’t matter if we share blood or common interests, a family is a social unit that lives together and shares beliefs and customs. Our family has an enormous influence in shaping our lives, identities and ultimately who we will turn out to be.
From the first moments of life, we begin a process of socialisation. Socialisation is when we learn to become members of society by gaining the skills, values, behaviors and habits of the culture we are living in. We learn by listening and watching what the people around us do, we then copy those actions to become a normal member of our society.
The people who shape and influence us are usually our parents, siblings, extended family, and friends. Because of this we pick up the language they speak, the religion they believe in, the food they like, the way they dress and almost everything else that makes up that family unit. The things we are used to are the things we have experienced since birth, the things that we consider to be ‘normal’. What we grow up doing is completely different to what someone else around the world will grow up doing, as a result of this, we all grow up with different ideas, views and sense of the norm.
In todays society the family structure is changing. The way we now view gender, race, religion and other things we used to discriminate against, has allowed more freedom in the way that families are formed, such as the general acceptance of interracial and same sex couples. Because of this we are brought up with a wider range of culture, beliefs, skills and acceptance.
Even though we continue changing and learning throughout our lives, we maintain the basic structure we have gained from the beginning of our socialisation process, the things we picked up from our family. The things we have done from birth, the things we enjoy are