Sociology

For the Thanksgiving holiday I traveled home to meet my family. At this time of the year not only my immediate family gathers, but members of my extended family as well. It is a subconscious sort of belief that we are coming together to experience and enjoy one another’s presence. However, the one goal we each set forth individually as well as collectively is eating Thanksgiving dinner.

Throughout the last two decades the image of my family as changed distinctively. There are now smaller children, newborns, new additions by marriage, cousins who are now adults, and aunts and parents that are aging. One sociological factor that comes into play here is the idea of the individual within the institution. The University of Chapel Hill as a highly accredited sociology program and says this about societal arguments when writing:” The "individual argument" generally takes this form: "The individual is free to make choices, and any outcomes can be explained exclusively through the study of his or her ideas and decisions." While it is of course true that we all make our own choices, we must also keep in mind that, to paraphrase Marx, we make these choices under circumstances given to us by the structures of society. Therefore, it is important to investigate what conditions made these choices possible in the first place, as well as what allows some individuals to successfully act on their choices while others cannot(Anson,Chris & Schwegler, Rpbert A.)

This argument in particular seems to meet my observations of the Thanksgiving weekend quite well. I noticed that as people age they are more susceptible to the idea of the individual. Once you are married, you no longer ask for permission to have children. Cousins that are my age were in various stages of dating, marriage and childbirth. Also, those who has recently had children were learning about child behavior and discipline within their own terms. What is very interesting though, is to put all of these changes underneath one roof and look one the impact that it has one others. Are older member of my family still capable of doing as they please now that they have children, grandchildren, etc? Have they been lifted from their responsibilities or given more? I felt as though some of my aunts seemed quite pleased to be holding babies and getting to know new additions to our family. There were some incidents though, however slight, that made me think that the institution of family were being dramatically altered. That older generations were somewhat limited as to what they could do (as far as free time and less responsibility) by the addition of family. They had babysitting to do, getting to know the spouses and generally more work than when their children had been born and it was just three generations of family instead of four.

I don’t mean this to be a negative sounding observation. My time spent there was quite joyous. However, it is just meant to hoe the unique changes within my family I hadn’t noticed before studying sociology.