Expository Essay - Jovan Tewira

Jovan Tewira

ENGLISH 11000 – B

March 23^rd, 2015

Family Intimacy is Communication

            In the past, a public holiday, which is usually to give all the workers the opportunity to take some time off from their work, were really used by everyone to gather with their family, in order to tighten the family bond. But, nowadays, most of the people just want to stay home, watching television instead of going out with the family. This has influenced the society a lot, especially the children in the world. They grow up with the thoughts that whatever the television says is true and they should follow it. These kind of faulty thoughts could be blamed on the carelessness of the parents who are not really aware of their children development, and unconsciously, destroys their family bond. Family intimacy will easily be damaged by internal or external causes that are supported by the parent’s carelessness.

            Giving sometime off to be with the family is a good thing for building up a good relationship within the family. This allows the children to get a better care from their parents, so they will not go in a wrong way. Unfortunately, there are a lot of obstacles in here whether from outside or inside the family. One of the examples from the external influence is the television. In Marie Winn’s article, “Television: The Plug-In Drug”, she said that “Of course, families today still do things together at times: go camping in the summer, go to the zoo on a nice Sunday, take various trips and expeditions. But their ordinary daily life together is diminished . . . the children have their regular schedule of television programs and bedtime, and the parents have their peaceful dinner together” (468). Winn is explaining about the changes in habit within the family, in the past until now. The parents sometimes feel disturbed by their children when they are in home. In the past, they could not do anything to prevent it besides to be patience in taking a good care of them. But, after the television was introduced for the first time, they used it as a tool to calm their kids, and they would get the quietness that they had desired in their house. It turns out that it impacts negatively for their intimacy. Unconsciously, they forget about the dinner conversation that they usually have because the pleasantness of watching television, which they think it, is really entertaining, and slowly it makes them to be apart of each other. Winn also said that “They [kids] watch their favorite programs . . . they watch whatever else is on – because watching is the important thing. Their mother does not see anything amiss with watching progress just for the sake of watching; she only wishes there were some first-rate children’s shows on at those times” (468). In this statement, she tries to tell the readers how the television changes the kids’ thoughts about “watching is important” because the parents’ carelessness toward their children that could lead to the broken bond of family. Besides the external cause, there is an internal influence too; one of the examples is the Bilingual language. In Richard Rodriguez’s article, “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, he said that “The family’s quiet was partly due to the fact that as we children learned more and more English, we shared fewer and fewer words with our parents” (336). Most of the people, who never experience to be in Rodriguez’s position, when he was a kid, would never understand why it could damage the family bond. In this statement, he is telling the story about his childhood from how the entire family could not speak English at all, and they just spoke Spanish at home. But, they became intimate because of that. Then, one day, a nun from Rodriguez’s school came and told the parents to start teaching the kids English. As a result, when everyone could speak English, they became more distant toward each other because they started to have more friends outside. From here we can see that even the things that we thought it was good for us, could make everything worse. In this story, it is because the parents’ unawareness about the thoughts that if their kids learned English, they would be better. In fact, it became worse, it broke their intimacy.

            Family ritual is the time when all members in the family gather together and talk to one another about everything. Unfortunately, this family quality time has disappeared from today’s life. Winn said, “But more obviously damaging to family relationships is the elimination of opportunities to talk and converse, or to argue, to air grievances between parents and children and brothers and sisters” (471). She clearly said that when there is no communication within a family, everything would be broken, in terms of relationships. As Rodriguez said, “Intimacy is not created by a particular language; it is created by intimates” (343). From his text, this is the major problem that made his family to be apart from one another, although they were still in the same house on that time. Starting from when they always had dinner together until they had their own life because of the linguistic problems. Family ritual is the major part for improving the family intimacy, as Winn and Rodriguez have stated above, it is all about communication within the family itself. As I interpret it by my own understanding, when a whole family communicates to each other, they could help each other if they have problems that they couldn’t solve. It makes them feel more belong to their family.

            There are a lot of influences that worsen the family intimacy besides of language and television. Winn stated that “Obviously the sources of family breakdown do not necessarily come from the family itself, but from the circumstances in which the family finds itself and the way of life imposed upon it by those circumstances” (472). According to the New York Times, in “The Divorce Surge is Over, but the Myth Lives On” article, it states that the divorce rate in the United States is fifty-percent and increasing along with the time. Divorce really breaks the family bond, as the parents would be separated and the kids should choose either go with the father or the mother. I would say that whenever people get divorced, their family intimacy is already gone because everyone would be separated. It becomes a normal thing to do for couples nowadays because the lack of communication between them. They are too busy with themselves and end up forgetting the essence of being in a family, so whenever they are faced with a problem, even just a simple problem, make them really frustrated and make them easier to say the word ‘divorce’. It is all because the family ritual those families are missing now. Besides of divorce, workaholic parents are the cause of the damaged family intimacy. When parents decide to hire a babysitter to take care of their children, their family intimacy already starts to fall apart. The workaholic parents would have no time for their children, the worst part is the children would never know how it feels to gather as a family. This is what usually happens in Today’s life. Winn said “As family ties grow weaker and vaguer, as children’s lives become more separate from their parents’, as parents’ educational role in their children’s lives is taken over by the media, the school, and the peer group, family life becomes increasingly more unsatisfying for both parents and children” (473). So, parents’ care is really important for the children’s development.

            In conclusion, family quality time is really needed for every family in this modern day. As you can see that when the media or another factors take the parents’ role, the children would not grow well. Winn and Rodriguez explain really well about the family intimacy. Winn explains it through giving some facts about how the television could affect the children’s development. Then, Rodriguez explains it through his childhood experience. Both of them argued that communication from the parents to their children is really important for the sake of their family. So, to keep an intimate family in these modern days, the parents should give their times for their family, at least twice a week.