Cultural Traditions

As we discussed in class this week, I was reminded of my own family and the things my parents had to do to ensure that I had a good future. They wanted to make sure that all their children had a good future, so they immigrated to the U.S with my three older siblings. Once in the U.S, my older sister, me, and my younger brother were born. Similar to the families in the study we read, my parents decided to go to mexico to visit their parents because they had been away for several years. While being in mexico for six months, my dad decided to come back to the U.S by himself to get everything ready for us to come back. Luckily, it was only a couple months and not three years like the families in the study. I might not have spent a lot of time in mexico and might have been very young, but it was long enough for me to experience some of the traditions of my culture.

All through my childhood it became very apparent to me that family was very important. No one’s family is perfect, and mine is definitely not the exception. For one reason or another my siblings have stopped talking to each other in the past and might still have their differences, but one thing that I have always appreciated is that whenever we need each other we are always there for each other. This is something that I have noticed in the mexican culture, not to say that it isn’t this way in any other culture, and it is something that I have always admired. I think that the importance of family is something that I would like to be able to teach to my future family because I believe it is what has kept my family in tact. I think that teaching the importance of family to my future family will be easy, especially being a member of the LDS church because I feel that it is one of the most important things we are taught.

One thing that I have noticed in the mexican culture that I do not appreciate and have always had a problem with is the belief that men are superior to women. This is something that I have personally seen in my own family and didn’t question for the majority of my life. It wasn’t until I got older that I started to notice it more. Even now it still happens when I go back home, It will be something as simple as my mother asking me to serve my brother a plate when we eat dinner. I would never question it, but then I started to question why he couldn’t do it himself and my mother would always say it was because he went to work and came home tired. It seems that this is always the excuse for men in my family to get out of doing certain things or doing anything at all. It’s almost as if they feel like they have the right to not help out at home because they work and provide for the family. This aspect of the mexican culture is something that I would like to change because I feel that it has been the reason for some of the problems that I have had with my family, like not having the best relationship with my brothers for example. Since joining the church I have learned that husband and wife should work as equal partners.This is something that I have been able to witness through my sister and her husband and I can see how different their relationship is compared to my parents. It’s definitely the kind of relationship that I hope to have and the type of relationship my future children get to see.