Kinship

The person I interviewed is my father. He was born in Rushden, England. He was not at all close with his dads family, infact, his father had been out of the picture since he was 5 years old. He is still alive, however, my father and my family have very little - almost next to no- contact with him. However, his mothers family (from Rome, Italy) was around more and therefore he grew up in a situation with more Italian culture and influence than British. He is not sure on the background of his father. He believe's that he is English and possibly French - but he's not too sure. His siblings aren't sure either. They don't know any of his family members that they could ask this question to. And his mother (my grandmother) is dead. 

This interview was a little awkward only because there are a lot of mixed feelings towards his own father. He has never been close with the family and I believe that his dad sometimes talks to my aunt (my dads sister) but not very rarely. I have met my grandfather once when I went to England to see other family. He did not talk to me or acknowledge me, so I did not really get to know him or what he was like. The interview was okay otherwise. If I was interviewing someone who wasn't related to me, I would not have felt the personal connection to it and therefore would not have felt as awkward or uncomfortable. 

There is definitely an emphasis on maternal lines as they do not really know anyone related to my dads father. When I was telling my mom about this assignment later (my parents are divorced and both remarried) she said that she was trying to do a family tree maybe 20 something years ago and she had written a letter to my grandfather asking him questions about his family. He wrote back telling my mom to mind her own business. My mom told my grandmother about it (my dads mom) and she said that it was because his sister was a prostitute and he and the rest of their family was ashamed by this.  My dad's mothers family is Italian. So they are very stereotypical. I have tons of cousins and "uncles" (ya know, those people who you arent really related to but they've been family friends so long they're practically an uncle. I'm not sure if this happens with really american families). In my dads family everyone is white and italian. So the ethnic differences thing doesn't really come into play. The only thing I could relate to this is that my dad, my uncle and my aunt all have "american" spouses. However, my Step mom's family is also italian so culturally we do the same kind of things that her family does and have the same attitudes about things so it made getting along with them really easy as we were all kind of on the same guido page already. 

I know my dads family pretty well. My mom's family we really only talk to her mom, (her dad ignores everyone and lives in florida), my great grandmother (we just had to get her committed over the weekend because she's 94 years old and going crazy. She's basically trying to kill herself in the hospital. very stressful), and her brothers. I do not see her brothers that often, however. I definitely am closer with my dads family. In typical Italian fashion, we would go to my dad's mothers (my grandmothers) house every sunday for family dinner when she was alive. Often, I would swing by my grandmothers work and take her home when she was off work and have dinner with her and my uncles. My dads sisters kids  and my sister and i are a month apart from eachother so my cousins and i were very close growing up. 

I am not really aware of times when situations have come up where someone needs to be the decison maker in my family. I know when my parents were married they seem to have an equal vote as to what goes on in the household. When my grandother was dying, my dad, his two brothers and his sister seemed to all be involved in the decisions that went on with that situation. This past weekend with my great grandmother drama, my grandmother, mom and great aunt all had equal say in what was happening with that as the three of them are her power of attorney and executors of the trust. 

Family members who marry into the family as opposed to people who are born into it are generally treated the same I suppose. My mom told me once that when her and my dad started dating my grandmother was mean to her but after she started having babies, she became nice. I don't know if this was the case with my aunts husband. I do know that my grandma didn't really like my uncles wife…however, no one really does. So she wasn't alone. She's really hard to get along with. 

I do not believe there are different attitudes in my family that are based in gender. If there are, I have never noticed it. 

I didn't really learn anything I wasn't already aware of. Because I grew up with no grandfathers or anything like that, these kinds of questions had already come up at an early age. My parents were always pretty open with my sister and i on the situation. So I would say that I pretty much knew all of this before diving into this assignment.