Week Three

Cultural and social diversity was the main focus of this week's discussions. This week, I really appreciated the discussion that we had on the case study we were supposed to read. The study entitled "The Cost of Getting Ahead" focused on a family that was moving from Mexico to the United States for job opportunities.

In our discussion, we talked about how the parents made the decision to move because they believed that doing so would bring great opportunities to themselves and, more importantly, to their children. The decision couldn't have been made lightly, and I'm sure they worried about leaving their support system behind. However, the family couldn't have realized the effect that moving would have on their family. After the family moved away from their support system, they started to fall apart.

What I found to be most interesting was that the family truly did have the best intentions on moving, but doing so basically destroyed their family system. What I took away from the discussion was that if big life changing experiences are going to take place in your family, you need to do the best that you can to make sure that a sense of normalcy resides in your family. Also, each family member needs to continue to keep the same roles that they had before.