Personal Essay On Self-Culture And Family Identity

Self-Culture and Family Origin

I view my culture as the values, beliefs, and principles that my family and I value. My culture would be defined as white, upper middle class, law enforcement, Midwestern. Based upon my culture and how I was raised some values and principles that are most influential into how I act and live my life are family, kindness, hard work, respect, and education. The most important value of all of these is family. Family is the core of who I am and it means more to me than anything else. My view of family is not strictly based upon what I have grown up around however. When I picture a family, I think of a mom, a dad, and a few kids. I always picture a few kids, since in my family I have two sisters. However, I do not limit family to this view. I have been around

I do not have a constricted view of family because I have been growing up in a time period where the idea of family is more important than the physical depiction of a family. As long as a family cares for, loves, and supports one another, then they are a family. The reason that I hold family to such a high esteem is because growing up in the Midwest, family is one of the most important values that a person has.

In addition to family some other important values are hard work, kindness, and respect. The values of hard work and kindness are driven by my Midwestern and upper middle class culture. Throughout my entire life, I have seen my parents work hard to provide us with everything that my family needed, and my parents also made sure that we received a lot of what we wanted. I have been taught that with hard work anyone can succeed, this is a value that is shared amongst many upper middle class families in the Midwest because based upon their lives, that is true. In the Midwest if you are an upper middle class family you can afford what you need by working hard at your job, and they can take pride in the fact that they can