Blended Family Structure

Her family structure is a blended family. Blended family is a family consisting of a couple, the children they have had together, and their children from previous relationships (Blended family, n.d.). In her definition of family, she defined her immediate family consisted with her parents and siblings. “Personally, I consider family anyone who willingly cares and loves you. People who accept you for who you are and that will stick by you through thick and thin. It does not always have to be blood-relatives”. According to Laypeople’s views (Weigel, 2008) the importance in a family is : Love, trust, respect, support, honesty, acceptance, encouragement, caring, and always there for you for a lifetime. Not important things are man/woman/child,

My mother cooks, cleans, washes,and etc, while my dad does pays bills and works - the typical Latino stereotype many families have lived up to”. Her parent did not request her leave the house when she turn 18, she is allow to do what she wants in her future, whether it was continuing to pursue her education or to work. In El Salvador, basic education is compulsory until age thirteen, but half the children ages six to sixteen in the poorest families do not attend school. Nine of ten children of the richest families attend school, and a quarter go on to study at a university. Poor families often cannot afford to pay school fees or pay for shoes and school supplies (n.d). As for education, her family expected to get exceptional grades and pass all classes. Her family expects her to receive her master's degree and earn a great education. Her educational goal is to receive my bachelor's degree in Sociology, attend graduate school, and graduates with exceptional grades. Her overall life goal at the moment is to start her own non-profit that helps high schoolers get into college. In El Salvador, a marriage performed in a church is considered irreversible, and many people wait until they have children to marry. Couples must be 18 years old to marry unless the woman is pregnant or already has children. In both civil and religious marriages, divorce law requires a separation and a cause. The

Her family is consisted with her parents and her six siblings. In her family, they are all Catholic, and I am surprised that her parents are divorced. I thought that once a person is married to someone, the person would not divorce their partners. Maybe it is only a special case in their family since I am still unfamiliar with what Catholic really is about. In my family, I have a typical “traditional” family structure so I couldn’t imagine how it was like to have a blended family. I am always close with my siblings and for my interviewee’s family she was never close to them since they did not grew up together. In her opinion, her siblings were not as close compared to her friends that she grew up with. In class, we learn that family comes in different structures and there are different type of family. Family can or cannot be those who blood-related with each other, and it is the closeness, care for each other that makes them