While
trying to decide what to base my project around, I realized the most important
part was identifying who I was and the factors that shaped and influenced my
life. I began to assess my role as
a student, looked at how my hobbies influenced me, and even examined my
portrayal of femininity. Despite
these evaluations, I realized none of them defined me and influenced me as much
as my family, and the beliefs they have instilled in me. According to DeFrancisco and
Palczewski’s (2007) definition, I am a member of a nuclear family, which is
composed of my two biological and heterosexual parents and my biological
sister. Although this idea of
family is most widely recognized, it has never been the predominate form of
family in American history. In
fact, “it has never been a form in which all families did, or could,
participate” (Cloud, 1998, p. 393).
The
controversial findings on the nuclear family left me curious. If this biological idea of family is
what we aspire to have, then why do so many of our families not fit the nuclear
criteria? I took a family
communication studies course last semester at UNL where we discussed different
kinds of family in great detail.
While I no longer have the textbook, it identified families as broad as
a group of friends and individuals who identified themselves as having a close
familial-like relationship. Other
families discussed involved stepsiblings, adopted children, non-biological parents,
and same-sex parents.
With this broader idea of family in
mind, I would like to look at agnostic or atheist single-parent families who have at least one
biological child of the opposite sex.
For example, I would be looking at a single mother who has a biological
son and daughter. I wish to
examine these families and study how gender roles are taught in comparison to
nuclear families and analyze the influence religion or beliefs have on the upbringing on their children. I also wish to
see if there are significant differences in child behavior as a result of being
raised in a single-parent household, and whether or not the sex of that parent
influences the child’s gender perception.
Some areas I may specifically look at are verbal forms of punishment and
encouragement, nonverbal forms of punishment and encouragement, physical
reactions to children’s behavior, and overall rules for the family. Also, does being raised by an agnostic or atheist parent mean the child will share these beliefs? In general, do these kids behave any different than those raised with Christian beliefs? After deciding to look further into these
families, I did a quick Google search to see if there was much information on
the topic. To my benefit, I
stumbled across a relatively helpful article. It identified that “single-mother households correlate to
lower child delinquency rates, greater parental control and higher educational
performance than single-father families” (Conger, 2010). Even with just this one sentence, I am
eager to do more research and find out more on these types of families. I didn't look further into the religious aspect of this idea because I wasn't originally sure how to incorporate it, but I am very eager to find more information on this area of the family as well. Because this is a different idea of
family than I am familiar with, there will be more of a challenge in finding
families that fit the above criteria.
However, I think it is very important to examine a culture unlike your
own so as to broaden personal ideas and beliefs. With that being said, I am hopeful and eager to get to find
out more about the effects agnostic or atheist, single-parent families have on their children,
especially when identifying the gender of both the parent and the children
within the family.
Works Cited
Cloud, D. L. (1998). The rhetoric of “family values”:
Scapegoating, utopia, and the privatization of social responsibility. Western Journal of
Communication, 62(4), 387-419.
Conger, C. (2010, January 28). Does a parent’s gender impact
a child’s success? Discovery News.
Retrieved from http://news.discovery.com
DeFrancisco, V. P., & Palczewski, C. H. (2007). Communicating gender diversity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc.
