Stacey-Ann EllisProfessor Mary BentleyApril 30, 2015Final Paper

Introduction  

Family is a unit or group of people that provides support and meet basic needs for people

within that group. Family is in part determined by biological relations where everyone share

common genetics with each other. Sometimes family is defined by the people who you support

or people who overall supports you. As long as the support system is built in, regardless of how

one's "family" is structured, how they are or not related, may be considered a family.

Traditionally, society has defined and hold steadfast to the idea that a family is consisted of a

mom and dad in the home, who are married and living in the same home with their children.

Outside of this tradition would not be considered to be a family. This means single parent homes

or same sex homes raising kids is not considered to be a family, because they do not fit into the

societal criteria for normalcy. Across many cultures this belief is held strong and plays an

important role in how families present themselves. The concept of a family is complex, because

everyone has different concepts and combinations that works for them particularly, but wants

and classifies themselves under the same title, even though it is not the norm. Nonetheless, who

are we to tell someone that the people who they consider to be their family is or is not family?

According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, “the family is a group of individuals

with continuing legal, genetic and/or emotional relationship”. The AAFP continued to state that

“society relies on the family group to provide for the economic and protective needs of

individuals, especially children and the elderly”. This perspective captures the idea of what a

family does and who is in it while general enough to capture all kinds of family structures.

Hegemony

The structure that society holds is called Hegemony, because it is a dominant influence

over society. This influence is powerful enough to have people across the world following the

structure. This structure is so powerful that it is ingrained into most cultures and have become a

part of who we are and a structure in which we as a people measure ourselves against based on

what we want. Before World War II, the nuclear family (consisting of a wife, husband and

child/children) structure is what was exercised. However, after the war, it became more of a

model; a model that each family needed to have in order to become successful or even just to get

by. The hegemony for the post-world war is to have a white picket fence, possibly a yellow

house that has a patio running around the house's entire circumference, a house that is in the

suburbs away from the city, a wife and a husband, two kids - a boy and a girl and maybe a new

born baby along with a dog. The two and half kids comparing to having up to 8 or more kids was

the pre-world situation that worked well for families because there was always someone to help

with chores around the house. Women had to go out and work while the men were away giving

less time to having more children because, work came in the way; essentially became more

independent. Over the years as society grew, women began to have less and less children until

today, according to GapMinder, the average amount of children a woman have in the United

States is 2. The Dick and Jane stories enforces these new ways of living and had a major impact

on society. The stories modeled the way for how many kids one should have in order to be happy

and successful and those stories subliminally worked. Years have come and past since and the

Dick and Jane stories are still impacting society today. The book was written to target younger

children, but in order for the children to understand what the story meant, there had to be some

type of model and their parents provided that needed model. The parents in the home influences

the decisions that their child makes whether he/she recognizes it and builds a mental model for

what their future family will be like.

Function

Throughout the world, men gets a higher pay than women even if the efforts are exactly

the same. Having a male contributor in the family does affect the overall function of a family

positively because they earn more. Without women, there would be no family because they are

the ones who carries the child, the ones to take care of the husband, the baby and the entire house

while taking care of their own needs and going to work. This ideal family structure works and

makes sense for a lot of families, but not all of them because not all families are constructed in

the same manner. So what about families that are structured differently like families which are

headed by same sex couples; male or female, single parent households due to different life

circumstances and families that are headed by heterosexual parents? Do they not make it their

structure work for them regardless of who is in it and how much money they make? According

to the Center for Disease Control; in the year 2011, 3.6 of every 1000 marriages in the United

States, ends in a divorce. Most of the time women are left to take on the role of both parents in

these situations. Regardless of the percentage or rate of divorce, what matters is that divorce is

happening at approximately 1.2 million each year according to the book Sociology of Families,

leaving families shattered and having to pick up the pieces on their own.

According to the chart about the divorce rate have been slightly increasing, the amount of

people who are getting married is declining with an increase in people that’s never been married,

while men who have been widowed is decreasing. This chart compares marital status post WWII

in 1950 to 2014. Approximately 70% of men were getting married in 1960 and today about 53%

of men are married. This graph helps to explain a lot of structures in family and how they

function as a whole with factors of marriage, unmarried, divorced and widowed parents in the

home. This also throws the structure off balance because the structure was not made to include

those outside factors and the structure many of the time does not work for families.

There are many factors which contributes to the function of a family including the

amount of money each parent brings in and who is the “bread winner”. The bread winner may

feel a sense of entitlement and therefore try to dominate their partner, creating an unhealthy

environment. Another problem is the bread winners becoming too stressed and spends their

money on drugs on alcohol, which greatly affects the function of the family because the money

to keep them afloat is wasted. The families that mainly suffer from addiction problems are ones

who are struggling to keep up with the needs of the family. The high levels of stress in which

they encounter triggers the need to get high or drunk to push their problems away, except that

never works and it becomes a continuous cycle of spending what they do not have and getting

angry at themselves for spending it in the first place. In a TED talk with Tony Porter, he explains

how men feels this sense of dominance over women not by their income alone, but simply by

being a male. He calls it the male box where it has all the rules of how to not be like a woman; to

be perceived as weak as a female. This dominating behavior leads to domestic abuse, which

according to the CDC is the highest kind of abuse in America. Tony also states that the CDC

stated that men violence against women is an epidemic in America. That feeling of dominance

and power over your partner from the bread winners, and the stress that they feel after a long

day, coming home to a house with kids running around, and how easily his week’s earnings go

into bills makes women an easy target, especially because they have smaller bodies than their

partner most of the time. This kind of behavior against women could also be a factor in the

reason why the marriage rate has gone down because after WWII women found a sense of

independence. This allowed them to be less dependent upon males and take bigger risks to face

life on their own instead of in an abusive, dominating relationship.

Most families struggles due to financial situations. Throughout the world, a black man or

woman is not viewed as trustworthy or worthy, but as inferior, trouble makers, and suffering

from some kind of illness. This is sometimes an effect of low education which affects work

along with prejudices against one race in comparison to another. America has the most people

that are incarcerated and African American males are disproportionately the highest. An article

from the Huffington Post on barriers black girls face, showed the difference in treatment by race.

Two girls who had gotten into a fight, one white and the other black, they were both sent away

from their school into juvenile centers except the white girl spent three months while the black

girl spent a whole year. By doing this, not only is it unfair to them being treated differently for

the same fight, the black girl ended up being one year behind everyone she was in the same class

with.

Incarcerated individuals have families that they have to leave behind. If they were

struggling to make ends meet, poverty becomes more likely to happen. If there are children

around who goes through these long sufferings of a nurturing environment, they have increased

chances of mental illness and developmental delays. These children would be marginally behind

the percentile ranges comparing to their counterparts who are not in the same situation. These

children learn about 52,000 words less than people who has the right environmental stimulus to

help them grow. When these children are being viewed and treated differently at such a young

age by throwing them behind bars unfairly, this mainstreams them for a possible incarceration.

This mainstream messes them up because their perspective and outlook on life changes from

good to bad. It does seem that even though The Jim Crow Laws is not practiced anymore in

terms of separate facilities, there may be some remains of it in regards to the way different

colored students are being treated. In regards to the suspension site, it is clear that the

punishment was a divided justice as in the past, black and whites had separate treatments and the

same applies here.

Single Story

There is a thought among people worldwide that everyone shares the same story. If you

do not share the same story then you are the odd one and perhaps be considered less than. This

story is perhaps a happy family with a mom and dad in the home contributing to the child’s

overall wellbeing. They have money, have the typical family problems and the only way to not

have this is by being lazy and not working hard enough. In most children literature, the images

which are displayed are of a white family with the mother having blond hair and the father

having dark hair and the children have some combination or one of both genes expressed. In

schools, most teachers assumes the single story until a reason to discuss otherwise. These single

stories among many others are ways in which the thinking and the mindset of society in general

is one dimensional. When we assume that everyone shares the same experiences no matter their

background, it takes away from what make that individual or child stand out amongst everyone

else, making them seem irrelevant or less than.

The story about Adichie and reading books filled with white people is powerful, simply

because it is the truth. She described how the people in her books had blue eyes and blond hair

and she was able to replicate them in her drawings of her family because those were the only

kind of people she saw in the books and not people that shared a commonality with her. I can

personally attest that this holds true for me because all of my books that I have ever had were

never representative of people who looked like me. Throughout most of her childhood, she was

not exposed to books with little black girls in there, books that she could relate to herself and her

family. This kind of story almost destroyed her perspectives of how things were, until she got

ahold of books with black children in there. In each of those books are valuable lessons and there

are history in them, history she could learn from. Adichie became more and more interested in

those books and lucky for her, her parents where professors in England to help provide her with

books, but not everyone is as luckily as she was to be able to change our perspective on a single

story and the dangers that comes with it.

This single story perspective is one that we carry around with us and is our own bias

unless we are culturally competent. Unless we are exposed to different kinds of people we have a

very limited perspective on what another person’s life may be like. Throughout the semester, I

had a class with a guy who is extremely pissed off at the Patient Protection and Affordable Care

Act. His parents are a bit wealthy therefore he has limited idea on what it means to be

impoverish. Each time the ACA is brought up he would scruff. His question is why does he has

to pay taxes that will only go to paying for the health care of poor, lazy people. I being appalled

at his question said that his 20 cents out of his pay check does not necessarily distribute directly

to the poor, but he is determined to believe that is where it is going. I then asked what is wrong

with helping people and his reply was that there is nothing wrong with helping people, but he

does not want his money going to poor lazy people who are not working to get themselves out of

poverty. I being dumbfounded simply kept quiet, wished him a good day and then walked away.

What stands out to me is that his job is with the EMT therefore he is always helping people, so

why is he being so defiant? He has a single story perspective and hold steadfast to this belief that

no matter who tries to educate him on the topic he refuses to listen because he already have his

perspective and believes it to be right. This is an example of how a single story with a limited

perspective can affect not just them, but everyone that comes into contact with them as well.

Demographics

Poverty is when an individual does not have enough resources to supplement his/her

family and as a result is having a negative impact on the family's health and ability to function.

Rural poverty is one of the harshest situations one can live in. In the Hard Scrabble Life video,

there were harsh situations that the children had to live through. There are kids taking care of

other kids not much younger than themselves, children sliding through broken windows, children

living in mold and around live wire and children running away in the woods. These children are

running away because they did not want to be found by social workers because if they did, they

would be taken away from the people who they have grown to love and call them their family.

These children had bonded and depended on each other the way a child would depend on their

mothers. They rather be with each other than to be in a rural foster care system, where life would

not be greatly different from the one that they are living.

In the video of foster care in the child’s perspective, it showed how a child is moved from

family to family after they are practically ripped from their own. The family, even though it was

broken, it was a family nonetheless and she loved them regardless. In the rural poverty it is clear

that these children rather lived in the woods with animals rather than be taken away from people

they have grown to love as family. These situations of trying to play parent when you are a child

yourself and exposing your body to harmful weather conditions is unhealthy and develops an

impact overtime. All of these factors leads to the kids showing early onset of illnesses like

bronchitis, due to harsh exposure of multiple unhealthy factors in the environment.

Rural poverty, generally have small communities, in which everyone knows each other.

Having sexual intercourse with your mate's children is an increased possibility due to the lack of

options which was one of the cases presented. Kerry in the film, ended up having a baby for her

mother's boyfriend because he sexually abused her multiple times and got her pregnant. This

essentially ruined any potential chances she had of leaving the situation she was in. She is now a

single mother and high school drop out with a chip on her shoulder. She could not make it on her

own and so she became insecure and started looking for affection in the wrong places. When

these situations keeps reoccurring it is not uncommon to begin to isolate yourself because you

feel less than what you thought you were before.

In rural poverty, women is most likely to have multiple children, above the average of 2

not because they want to, but because they have no protection for their natural sexual drives

against conception or minimal access to the resources. The minority group suffers more than the

white group just by their skin tone. While a white family may be going through the exact

situation as a black family, the white family will receive some kind of sympathy for their

situation, but the black families would be frowned upon and called lazy for being in the situation

that they are in and that they are not trying hard enough like their other black counterparts that

are doing better than they are. Unfortunately, there has been a system in place before the Jim

Crow Laws even did anything. Blacks were never viewed as equal and will never be viewed as

equal and the Jim Crow Laws only made that more apparent. There is such a strong history that

goes with this though which is still affecting us over a century later. My family is not a part of

the American History, but I cannot help to feel as if they were because of the way people view

me just by my complexion. Walking up a stairs where someone coming down takes their extreme

left and crosses back over when they pass you and continue on their journey or having a

professor ask if you could write a short answer because you have an accent. These are just

minimal things I face from time to time, but my experience is almost irrelevant when compared

to what many other people go through every day that lives in a less accepting community than I

do. The uproar in Ferguson, Missouri was a result of the inequalities and unfair treatments

throughout the community that had everyone frustrated and the Killing of Michael Brown was

just an icing on the cake that to people externalizing their feeling that they have been suppressing

for a long time. There may not be official separation of places and equipment one uses, the water

fountain one uses or the places that they can sit and eat, that does not mean that black people are

not being judged each place that they go. There is racial profiling component that is

unreasonably high, enough that it manifested in the killing of Mike among many other people

throughout the United States.

Schools

Schools are facilities that people go to get educated among various subject areas from the

basic level to an advance graduate level. By getting an opportunity at education, you are giving

your family a chance to raise their financial status. More education provides more opportunities

and more opportunities leads to increased income in the future. There is a saying that says ‘when

we educate a mother, we educate an entire generation as the mother passes on her knowledge to

her offspring’. For the child, going to school gives them an opportunity for a brighter future, a

future that is brighter than what their parents had gone through. Education rises your status and

as the child advance more and more in school each year, your status as a family keeps rising.

When you give these children a chance of education, when they grow up and have their own

children, they will spread what they learned the best they can.

Initially when a child enters school, based upon the way the child dresses, everyone

including the teachers tries to make up a mental explanation of what the child's home life is like.

If the child is especially good behaving, the teachers would assume that the child has a good

parentage where the mother and the father take part in their child's life. The child may just have a

good mom at home or a good dad that showed him the importance of behaving and that child that

continues to act out could be the same child who lives in a home with their mom and dad. Some

children may have issues learning in class because their learning style is different from what the

teacher is teaching and so this child may be considered disruptive and have bad behavior

especially if they are of a minority or they simply would just get left out and eventually left

behind because everything just slip right through their hands. It is important to view each child

as an individual and not group them, because it gives them the impression that you care and you

will not forget about them. By treating them as an individual, you will also encourage a

comfortable atmosphere. I remember in high school, I would go to my English teacher's

classroom or my math teacher's classroom for lunch because they created that positive space.

During that time, it would be a therapy session for some, play time for some, learning

opportunity, a time for chess, getting homework done, reading a book among many other things.

By doing these things and making the conscious effort, it creates a conscious effort in the child.

With these times a student's grade may dramatically increase because they are afraid to

disappoint you and instead wants you to be proud of them so they in return try a bit harder.

On the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website there is an article titled ‘why does

education matter so much to health?’ In this article is an infographic that shows all the benefits

of just having knowledge alone, like living about 5 years longer if you graduated college vs high

school, reduced risks for diabetes, heart disease, over weight and smoking. This is important to

know because if we do not make smarter choices for ourselves and others, everyone will be

affected. In the schools, children are treated unfairly with punishments which involves their

education as well. By doing this those risk will increase among one race and decrease among

others. In the chart below it shows the percentage of how African American females are treated

in comparison to other girls. The chart shows that 17% of Black girls are enrolled in school. Of

that 17%, 31% of them have had referrals to law enforcement. Once again, of that 31%, 43% of

them have been school related arrests. These are disciplinary actions taken by schools to ‘help’

black girls with any behavior issues that they may have. When compared, their counterparts are

not being given unfair treatments that could possibly interfere with their future in terms of their

vocational options and the ability to provide for their families.

During the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival week, I watched a video for World

of Apps where they are trying to create apps which promotes health in order for people in

developing countries or communities can contribute to solving their own problems. In one of the

clips, one of the featured persons spoke about how her brother drank plant pesticide to kill

himself because he owed so many people money in efforts to try and maintain his family and

their wellbeing, but his farming was not working out as well for him. This is a man that was

overworked and under-resourced, and a man who reached his tipping point because he was

trying to maintain his family and it was too much pressure for him. Perhaps if he had more

knowledge of how farming works he would not have had as much problems as he did. The health

of this man affected his entire family because now that he committed suicide they have to find a

way to make it on their own without him. On the other side, if someone have good health, it

affects the family positively, if at all.

With having a good health, not a lot of money is being spent in that regard and is then

redistributed to some other aspect of life that is more pressing, such as buying food to be able to

eat and have enough energy to go on. People tend to try to get better not from their primary or

secondary signs of something going wrong, but when they reach the tertiary level and needs

immediate medical treatment to minimize effects of illness. At this point, sometimes it is hard to

come back because things have really gotten out of control, but sometimes it is possible based

upon the situation. In the HPV screening titled “Someone You Love,” there were four women

who were each diagnosed with HPV or cervical cancer. One of the women named Susie found

out she had HPV when she was pregnant and did not go back to the gynecologist to take care of

it and ended up into cervical cancer afterwards. Luckily in her second pregnancy it was in its

early stages before it became malignant. Even so, she had ignored primary and secondary signs,

until she got to the tertiary side and had to be treated for it. This also plays into having the right

education and having someone to really tell you what it is that they are diagnosing you with. If

she had a good community of people who could help her through this time, including her ex-

husband, then probably she could have avoided the position she ended up in and not be judged

on something she did not do, such as having sex before she said she did. Having the family

support around you to help keep you strong is what she needed and did not have. Education plays

an important role in the treatment and eradication of all health concerns

Family Support

Having a good family around to give you support and you giving back support is a way to

get through many of the issues discussed above. There is nothing a unit of family members

cannot make you feel better about, no matter how bad the situation is. Having that support

system gives the extra push and perhaps for some people the will to live each day because they

know they have someone behind them no matter what. Having someone to go to for food when

you have none, money when you are too low to function, possibly a job that provide you with an

income, dealing with stereotypes and discrimination, taking care of children by yourself, just to

name a few, are things that your support system helps you with. A family support is like a

support system that gives the extra hand to push you along your way. In the first Story Corp, we

talked about food and how it bonded everyone and made the family much stronger, which is a

kind of family we had growing for the most part and one we may still need. A lot of the time we

throw out old ways for new ways but sometimes the old way is best. It is a place where

encouragement and support can take place a point of growth when you move from the kids’ table

to the grown up table. That pushes you to act mature regardless of your age and that is the kind

of support families need to provide, the building up of an individual for the future.

Focus issue: Immigration

Immigration is when an individual or a group of people depart from their land of birth to

live in another country, settle and prepare their life for a permanent stay. This whole process

have major effects on families in terms of culture shock and the new surroundings among other

things. All my life I grew up in a three bedroom house, with a living room, kitchen, bathroom, a

veranda, a yard to play in and 7 acres of land filled with fruit trees to wander about. I was never

truly hungry unless I was tired of eating fruits and no one was home to cook anything for me. My

house was perched on a hill separated from everyone else, only to move to Bronx, New York

where a stretch of house on each side of the blocks are all connected to each other. There are no

more fruits trees, in my back yard or a lawn to play on but rather a sidewalk. This was a culture

shock for me along with living among people who just did not care that you exist because that is

the culture of the community. For families this is a hard adjustment especially if they do not

speak English or limited amount of English. Luckily I am multilingual and English is one of the

main languages I speak. I just had to work on lessening my accent in different environments

based upon the environment I was in. For families, especially ones that includes the elderly in

their migration, may face more difficulties than I had because I was young enough to adapt and

adaptability is easier at a younger age. The older you are the less you are able to get rid of habits

that you have had for decades.

With immigration, adoption and the adjustment of a new environment comes along with

the process. With acquiring the knowledge of this surrounding, one's language is the most

important and plays the most important roles. Immigrants who immigrates to America from

Mexico, for example, whose first language is not English, or who have not had much exposure to

the language may face a lot of difficulties, not only in their communities, but in their quest for a

job, education and healthcare as well. Language plays an important role along with education, it

is a dividing factor in which helps in deciding whether or not you feel as if you fit in or feel

included. According to usillealaliens.com, many of the legal residents are highly educated, but

most of the illegal residents are at the "bottom of the education spectrum". These illegal

immigrants who have little interest in education, most of the time have children who are not

well-educated because of the lack of participation and interest in their child advancing higher

than themselves. It is stated that even after 60 years of living in the country, the descendants of

Mexicans do not have a high interest in higher education; "they fail to close the Education Gap."

The poor education that they are assimilating are preventing them from climbing the ladder of

success; without an adequate degree today, there are little to no opportunities available for

advancement and an increased income from minimum wage jobs.

Another factor that affects families in immigration is whether or not they are legal

immigrants. If they are legal, they get to go to school through college and do everything just as

normal as American citizens, except the privilege of any kind of voting. This does not happen

until they do their citizenship to get notarized and then is considered an American after 5 years

of legally living in the country. If those individuals are undocumented immigrants or otherwise

known as illegal residents, they have life a bit harder than the legal immigrants would. These

individuals cannot get a substantial job because they do not have the right documentation like a

social security card, a Green Card or Workers Permit. Without these documents, they are always

at risk because they never know when their situation may change for the worst in regards to

getting deported. Due to these circumstances, employers of the worst jobs employ these

individuals along with low wages, and essentially taking advantage. These individuals also do

not pick fights or arguments with their bosses or other individuals because they want to maintain

a low profile status in order to not get noticed by the law enforcers. In California, the farmlands

are mostly occupied by illegal immigrants. These conditions that they work in is very harsh and

demanding. They only get enough substance in the field like water to keep them from falling and

to keep working as much as possible. These situations that they live in are slave-like and even

then, they send a portion of their makings back home to Mexico to their families, in order for

them to have a meal to eat each day.

The United States economy benefits greatly from these illegal residents’ work and not

just in farmland. According to The Hill, 53% of farmers are illegal residents. This article overall,

also states that if the US should get rid of these immigrants, the price of milk, for example, price

would increase by 61%. The growing and labor force would be understaffed and therefore

require more effort leading to increased prices for the foods that are grown in the west coast and

in the south. There are policies for these immigrants to be kept in place because of their obvious

contribution to the overall population. On an individual level, I would rather not pay 61% more

on my produce as the cost of living is already too high. President Obama has recognized their

contributions and is trying to make a conscious effort to make accommodations, especially

families who ends up having an American child while still having an illegal status which puts the

child or children in a weird and unhealthy situation. He is attempting to give these individuals

citizenship after living and contributing to the country after 5 years.

Families throughout the United States have to be broken up across the board with illegal

immigrants and not just Mexicans. It creates a bad situation when they have children who are

American, the parents are being deported back to the country that they came from and taking

their American born may be difficult because the country have limited accommodations for a

foreigner in their country just as Americans do not. This leads to families leaving their children

behind with friends; which could end up being good or bad, putting their children in the foster

care system or abandoning their child because they did not know what to do otherwise. The US

is fond of enslaving (because of unfair treatments and irrational accommodations just because

they are illegal) the Mexicans to do some of their worst jobs and reaping from what they did not

sew, getting all the benefits, while also destroying their families by sending them back home or

send home the person that usually knows enough English to communicate and get jobs. It is

essentially a punishment for coming in the country and benefitting us, illegally. These families

that have to cope with their family member who is usually the head of their household. It is

mostly the women and the children that are left behind, especially a woman who knows minimal

English. These children grows up to be translators while trying to balance their family's culture

and the one that they are surrounded by each and every day. These women would end up in low

paying jobs that does not require much use of communicating or become a nanny or housekeeper

in order to make an honest living.

Almost all factors such as work, health, family, and poverty are all related and affect each

other. Just one situation throws everything off balance. Your work affects your family life, the

way you eat or whether you are out working and not getting enough interaction, food affects the

way we interact with each other, health affects the amount of money you have and how much

you can spend on other things, poverty in my opinion is when each of the other levels gets low at

the same time, making it hard to bring each other up by the status of other factors.

In America, minorities are the people that suffer the most, especially if there is a

language barrier immigrants especially may have a barrier such as language. I remember when I

had just gotten to the US and my brother, sister, mother and I had medical check-ups so often

that I found them to be highly unusual because I have never gone to the doctor that much within

such a close time period, when I was in Jamaica because it was not needed, nor would the

immigration services allow us to leave without the necessary documentation of vaccinations. I

had all my shots and was up to date and though I was a bit young, it was definitely a red flag for

me, especially since I hated needles and I was being poked multiple times every week for a

whole month. It turned out that in the middle of one of our last appointments to fulfill whatever

we were fulfilling, the nurses realized that they had made a mistake. They did not bother to read

our health record and just assume that me, my brother and sister and mother did not have our

shots and was pretty much giving us all the shots over again since birth. Once again, language

barriers did not apply to us because we speak English fairly well and we were just complying

with doctor's orders to come back to the next appointment. I cannot possibly begin to understand

what others go through if they do not speak any level of English and is unable to communicate

their medical history. Health affects family and family affects health as both are interrelated. It is

important that people who are in poverty to remain healthy because they cannot afford all the

medical cost that is associated with having bad health.

Conclusion

Poverty is an issue that everyone faces worldwide. In homes with people who has a

certain construct of earning the dominant person’s income or having two median household

income is an essential part in surviving certain situations. Hegemony plays a huge role in our

society as it plays into how the family works overall and how they are viewed by people on the

outside. People treat you differently based on the type of construct that you are living in whether

it follows cultural norms or not following cultural norms. There are many factors that influences

family life like how much money one has, the health of the family or of the household,

incarcerations, immigration, and schools. Everything is so related that one thing affects another

and if too much are affected, it impacts your overall health. Health is the driving factor in all of

these families because it affects all aspects of life and it also affects the six components of what

health is. According to the book Health Counseling: A Microskills Approach for Counselors,

Educators, and School Nurses, the six components of health are emotional,

education/intellectual, mental, physical, spiritual and environmental. All six have to be balance

or near balance to be healthy because if one is thrown off, the entire structure may fall.

All of these issues are surrounding family and different areas in which they are affected

while showing how everything is so interrelated that one thing affects the other. I am sure that if

people should start working with each other instead of against each other, then there would be

less of a problem, not just in the United States, but globally as well. People today only seem to

care for themselves and have no space for others. Poverty is an issue that affects every country in

the world. Even in Singapore, one of the wealthiest and most developed countries in the world

faces poverty and is concerned because poverty went from 16% to 28%, from 2002 – 2013,

according to The Heart Truths. In first story corps assignment we looked at food and how

everyone had dinner, but in a lot of the audios it mentioned that once you had enough food to eat

and you were able to get by, even if you had to put in a little extra work, you would not be

considered impoverish. At the end of the day, being poor dos not discriminate based on your

complexion, the kind of family structure you have or where you are from. The family is affected

by unfortunate situations individuals may encounter which may also impede on them as a family

unit. Family is an intricate thing that should be honored and treasured, no matter the kind of

family you may have formed, whether it is traditional or not. Every family face issues, only some

may encounter more than others, but it is that unit of togetherness that keeps everyone going and

what makes it worth it beyond measures.

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