Kinship

For this weeks assignment I decided to interview the person who has not only given me half of their chromosomes, but in addition their mitochondrial DNA, my mother! The reason why I decided to analyze kinship through the matrilineal descent path was not because I share more genetic information with her but that I know that she comes from a huge family and it would be fun to see how far I could delve into it. My mother was born in Yerevan, Armenia, at the time of her birth she didn’t know it, but she would be the oldest of the 5 offspring. My mother was born to a working class family and today is still in a working class family, but hopefully with my advancement into medical school that soon will change!

As an insider, trying to play the role of an outsider, it was hard to develop some sort of professionalism between me and my mother during this interview because we are very aware of exactly what is happening in each other’s lives. However, there were still things I had no idea of. As my mother began to tell me about her parents, my grandparents, and their siblings she started to mention those who were deceased. The thing was I had no idea who she was talking about, because I have met all my grandparents’ siblings. The human brain has evolved to predict outcomes, and this sent me and my brain in a state of confusion. It turned out the reason why I never knew about my grandfather’s sister was because she passed away at an early age of 5 years. However, I tried to not let that bother me, because to her she seemed to have accepted it. The honest truth is if I was in the same situation with someone I was not familiar with I would most likely not be so distort about it, so I feel like there was some bias involved during this interview.

With this interview, my assumptions turned out to be true. For example, my immediate family is very close with each other and with extended family members. Just as we today spend Christmas with family from 4 generations, my mother’s childhood memories were ones where she celebrated holidays with all family members and still with family from many different generations. Coming from rural country, the majority of Armenians are from the working class, and my mother’s family was not an exception. Some family members have been living on their own, independent farms (reflecting the subsistence agricultural pattern), some have jobs and live in the city, and some live far away from the city. Even though there was some bias on my side when I was interviewing my mother, it didn’t seem that my mother had a bias towards one side of the family. She respectfully and accurately recalled all of her family members, age of death, and her childhood memories. According to my mother, it seems that there are almost no differences but only similarities in the lifestyle among the different family members. All of the family recalled by my mother were born and raised in Armenia, during their lifetime. They all shared similar patterns of lifestyle like patrilocal residence to a point (which even my mother participated early in her marriage). Another pattern that seems to be similar throughout all generations is that family size tends to be on the larger side. The only difference that my mother can point out is the difference between the younger and older generations. With her being part of the middle of the 4 generations, she fairly understands both the younger generation and the older generation, and she let me know that the older ones do see things that they don’t necessarily like however they do see things that make them proud to be part of this kinship.

Since birth family has been a major factor in every decision I have made in my life, especially when I decided to go off to UC Davis to earn my B.S. however as much as I am involved with my family I sadly do not know ever person very well. I know back to my grandparents’ siblings but nothing before that due to obvious reasons; age! Still, the relatives I know, I socialize with them equally from both my father’s and mother’s side of the family. In my immediate family, my father has always had the final say and I am certain that this is because of where my parents came from. A common aspect of Armenian culture is a heavy reliance on the male figure of the family, this arises from our strict morals and ethics. This leads to the question of how different genders are perceived. Looking through my kinship and family, I have personally noticed that females are subjected to abide by different standards than the males, even in everyday interactions; greetings! When males greet another male we are innately drawn to shake the other’s hand and even give a kiss on the cheek whereas males treat females more subtly or sometimes even passively by hugging or simply saying hello, respectively. However, as the generation of American-Armenians starts to grow, this general trend of the male figure having the last word is starting to diminish and now we are adopting the trend of compromising and possessing equal status. Something to note here is that those who marry into the family still come from the same background and culture so they are not treated differently, however the adaption of emotions has led to all human beings having their own opinions of one another.