Family Case Study

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Family Case Study Project

Section 1: Background information on the Family Composition of the family: My parents got married in 1988 and I am fortunate enough to say that they are

still married today. My parents met in college through mutual friends and have been

together for 27 years. My dad just turned 53 this month and my mom turned 50 last year.

I have one younger brother who will be 19 in July, he just graduated from high school

and will begin his first semester of college come August. I turned 21 back in October and

I just finished my junior year of college and will begin my senior year this fall.

Occupation of parents, educational achievement, ethnicity, background, social class:

My dad is the Director of Global IT Infrastructure at a pharmaceutical company

and has been working in the IT field for as long as I can remember. Lately his job has

required him travel a lot more and recently just went to Austria and India. My mom has a

degree in Interior Design and before she had my brother and I she was an interior

designer in Cincinnati. After she had us she took a break for a while and worked part time

at the gym where I cheered and danced working at the front desk. She worked for many

years doing some design work for a sign company as well. Currently, my mom is a

Business Account Administrator for a sales and marketing agency, it is a little outside of

her degree but she is really enjoying the business side of working for a company. Both of

my parents have a high school diploma and a bachelor’s degree from Eastern Kentucky

University.

My mom grew up going to church every single Sunday and her grandfather was

the pastor. She always had in mind that she wanted us to make our own choice regarding

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religion and as my brother and I have grown up we definitely have. My sophomore year

of high school I decided to attend Younglife, a non-denominational Christian ministry for

high school students. When my brother started high school I was a senior and he too

decided to go to Younglife with some of his friends. This really brought not only us as

siblings closer, but also our family as well. We began to have more open conversations

about faith and slowly started going to church again. We stopped going when we moved

to Mason, Ohio because we hadn’t found a church that we really enjoyed going to until

2013 when we found Crossroads. As a family, we have all grown in our faith together

attending church most Sundays and also becoming more involved in our church and our

community as well. I would say that my family falls into the upper middle class category.

Description of Community/Neighborhood:

We have lived in Mason, Ohio since July of 2000, before then we lived in

Sharonville, Ohio but moved to Mason before I began first grade. Our community is a

large suburb that is very diverse and very friendly. The Mason City Schools system is

very large and the high school, William Mason High School is the largest high school in

Ohio. I would say that our community although large is a very tight-knit community,

everyone knows someone and everyone has connections. It is definitely a family-centered

community and values community growth and involvement.

Locations of and Connections with Extended Family:

My dad’s side of the family all lives in the Dayton area of Ohio, my grandparents

are in Miamisburg and my Dad’s brother and family live in Springboro. I have two

cousins on that side, one my age and the other two years out of college and engaged. We

are decently close with all of them because we are all about 20-30 minutes away from

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each other. We usually all get together for birthdays and other holidays. My mom’s side

of the family is more spread out, but many of them live in Northern Kentucky so we see

them for birthdays and holidays. The other part of her family lives in different parts of the

country, some in Virginia, Texas, California, Oregon and Washington. We only see them

every couple of years when they come out here for Christmas or Thanksgiving and some

of them I have only met once or twice.

Section 2: Brief Commentary and Illustrations of Challenges and Strengths

After rating my family on the Couple and Family Rating Map I found our

cohesion to be around 4.5 to 5, flexibility around 5.5 to 6, and communication to be

around 4.5 to 5. My family falls into the category of Flexibly Connected.

Cohesion:

For the first dimension, cohesion, we averaged a 4.5 – 5 falling under cohesive. A

few years ago I may have said that this was incorrect but lately I would say that this is

very accurate. Partially why I think this is very accurate lately is because I'm usually

away at school and my brother is about to go away to college as well. My whole family

really enjoys spending time together, whether it’s having meals together or watching TV

as a family at night before we go to bed. I think one of our strengths as a family and our

cohesion is our I-We balance. It’s always been really important to my family to focus on

what is best for us as a family rather than each of us as individuals when it comes to

making certain decisions. When we sold our boat and lake house it was a really tough

decision because we have family friends who go down there that we don’t see very often.

We decided that because I had cheer and dance practice on Sundays and my brother had

football games Fridays and Saturdays it didn’t make sense for us to keep the boat and the

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lake house when we, as a family, couldn’t all enjoy it together. It was a really tough

decision but it was what was best for our family as a whole.

Something we could work on, in terms of cohesion, is activities. Although we

spend a lot of time together it is usually at home and we don’t do a lot of activities

together outside of our home. I think it’s because we all have our own things going on

and were all really busy. My brother is usually off with his friends or at work, my mom is

either at work, playing tennis or volunteering, my dad is usually working or running and

I'm usually either working as a nanny or spending time with my friends who are home

from school. I think one way we could do more activities together would be by making a

point to schedule time to do things we like to do as a family, like going hiking, going to

the movies or other fun family activities.

Flexibility:

In the dimension of flexibility, we scored between a 5.5 and a 6. I would

definitely say that my family is very flexible, whether it’s with each other or others. I

always remember my mom saying, “Just go with the flow” when I was a kid and it was

honestly great advice. I would say that my whole family is very flexible and when asked

what we want to do we will often say we don’t care even if we do. We scored highest on

discipline. I think this is because we grew up in a household that was about trust and

rarely did my brother or I ever lose our parents trust. It was something that was very

important and we didn’t want our parents to not be able to trust us. Any time we were in

need of any kind of consequence it was very circumstantial and it was very rare. I

remember getting in trouble for not cleaning up the kitchen after making cupcakes and I

was told that if I didn’t clean up next time that I wouldn’t be allowed to bake in the

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kitchen again. This was a very lenient consequence because there was no way my mom

would completely ban me from baking in the kitchen but it definitely taught me to clean

up after myself.

As a family, we scored lowest in negotiation. Although we are all very “go with

the flow” whenever we do things as a family and someone has something on their mind

it’s hard to negotiate and compromise as a family. This is probably one of the few times

we ever bicker as a family and it’s almost always centered on food or a movie we are

going to watch. One time after one of my brothers football games we went to pick up

dinner on our way home and my brother wanted Chik-Fil-A, I'm gluten free so I didn’t

want it because there are very few things I can eat from there, my mom just wanted a

salad if we went there so just decided she would make one at home and my dad was

attempting to be the mediator. It was really frustrating because we were all trying to give

our suggestions but no one wanted to compromise on what they wanted to eat. I think one

way we can work on this is to take turns who picks where we go to eat from a list of

places everyone likes to eat that way we know that everyone can find something they

like. Also, switching up whose turn it is to pick the restaurant so it isn’t always the same

place.

Communication:

For the dimension of communication, my family scored between a 4.5 and a 5.

We are usually pretty good at communicating with each other and other people who we

each communicate with. One of the highest things my family scored on was respect and

regard. We are all very respectful of each other and each other’s schedules and we are all

very respectful of other people as well. One way that we are all very respectful of each

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other when it comes to communication is when we are at work. Whenever my mom is at

work we know that she often doesn’t have time to talk on the phone so instead we text

her and ask if we can call or let her know what we need. One of the things we scored

lowest on was listening skills. Sometimes my brother and I don’t always listen to our

parents and their instructions or sometimes we are listening but it goes in one ear and out

the other. I think one way we could work on our listening skills would be by putting

down our phones and listening to each other when speaking. A lot of the times someone

will be talking about family plans or something that involves each of us and someone is

usually on their phone and misses something the other said. By putting down our phones

and being in the moment we would probably all listen to each other better.

Reflection of My Family:

After assessing my family and its structure I can make more sense of how we

function as a family unit. I wasn’t super surprised by any of the results nor was I worried

about any of the things we needed to work on. Like any family we have our strengths and

our weaknesses and I think the results of the things my family needs to work on will

actually be really beneficial to help us grow. We have become closer in the last few years

and discovering what we need to work on will only help my family become closer and

continue to grow as a family and as ourselves. I do think that, at first, this was kind of

difficult to do because I hadn’t thought about my family in the dimensions that were

given. They are really important things in a family but they just aren’t things I had

reflected upon before. I think after assessing my family I can say that there are a lot of

things I really like. I really like how close we are and how we have gotten closer over the

past few years. I have always hoped to grow up with a close-knit family unit and that’s

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definitely something that I believe my family to be. I only hope to have a similar family

system when it’s my time to start my own family in the future. I'm so thankful to be part

of a healthy, happy, strong, close and loving family.

Couple Family Map: