My Sister's Home Research

Comparing how families deal with different situations

Ethnography, Essay #3

In my observations I decided to visit my sister’s house and compare it to the household I live in. The reason for my decision was to compare parenting between teens living with their parents and adults living with their parents. Most appealing to me within my choice were the hopes of noticing habits within a parent who is involved in their career as an officer verses, parenting habits within single mothers or those who weren’t fully prepared to raise children at the time they conceived them. During my observation I noticed there were a few specifics that I didn’t fully attend to when considering my subgroup. Some of those important specifics includes that one of

my brothers is physically disabled and the other involves the absence of the male parent within the household I live in. Consolingly, this task allowed me to identify the differences within families and the impact it can have on parenting. Further, it allowed me to grasp the full efforts that take place during nurturing and educating a child. The first day of my observation I discovered many things.
Day one of my observation began at my house. The place was silent, most of the lights were off except for the living room light. The lights were warm yellow, so it gave a dim and warm home feeling to the atmosphere, yet it was still silent. My youngest brother came plunging into the house fully dressed in a heavy coat for a day out in the town. He loves going out and gallivanting, he spends most of his time socializing with people, whether that is in the church or outside in the streets of NYC. My brother is physically disabled. He doesn’t eat his formula as much as he should. The importance of the formula is to build muscle and protein. In a result, my mother now monitors his feeding and sometimes has my brother drink his Ensure where she can see him. She also follows up with him to make sure he is not adding to much ingrediencies to his meals. He has a tendency of adding an overwhelming amount to his dish. Last, she checks up on his room occasionally, with the intensions of doing her routine seasonal cleaning.
As he makes his way into the house I announce I have an assignment to do for class and it is based on our family and my sister’s families parenting skills. Once my mother was aware she made sure my younger brother Anthony stayed downstairs in the living room, so I can have something to write about. He began to get comfortable at our computer desk, then asked my mother to adjust his headset, so he can enjoy his music (another one of his hobbies). In between her setting up the music system, he asked, “do you like the way I look”? then reminds her she had bought the pants and shoes he was wearing. He proceeds and mentioned that he loves her. Before my mother can reply, Anthony jokingly says “Sike”. They chuckle. She responds, oh yes? Guess what? He replies what? while laughing. She says I bought your favorite pound cake, but you don’t love me, so you can’t have it. He yells, Noooooo, Rushes to the kitchen and steals his pound cake.
A couple minutes later my mother asked me, do you think he gained weight? This is something I often talk to her about. Anthony interrupts and says yes! “because she’s making me eat my Ensure”. They bring liveliness to the midst of silence. Laughter substituted the usual disputes. They planned a trip to the theatre and my brother began browsing the web for potential movies they would enjoy. My mom is beginning to feed the cats. We have two white cats their names are Busta and Powder. Busta is very loving, you can pet him a lot and he won’t mind while Powder is feisty and very aggressive. We also have a grey cat I think she’s the sweetest because when we speak to her, she replies every time with a ‘meow’. Her name is Daisy.
My mother then starts cleaning the kitchen and my brother is still listening to music.

This gave me the opportunity to indulge in my surroundings. Sitting on a mini bed that replaced a beige suede couch in the living area, I see bamboo plants, a bible laying on top of a small shelf, and some religious décor threw out the living area. The house is a bit out of date. I saw stained wooded floors, a small flat screen T.V., and the walls were covered with a poor paint job. My mom loves to paint the house. She paints the house approximately twice a year sometime skipping a year. We lived here for about ten years, so one could imagine the number of paint jobs done in our home. We resided here longer than we lived in any other house. Usually we experienced a move about every four

years.
While indulging in my surroundings suddenly the music starts playing (R&B music) I look over to my right and I see my mother dancing. I noticed my youngest brother heading to his room. He also likes his solidarity just like mom. My mom continues to dance and sing. For the time in which I was observing them I noticed my brother has a lot in common with my mom from going out to being alone. It’s a little weird due to the age and gender difference but it brings understanding to genetic heritances.
Further, I remembered my professor requested that I get involved in my observation, so I attempt to get involved and ask, when will we be taking our next family photo? (in hopes to replace the Instagram photo’s we have pinned up on our walls, for more tasteful look). I guess my mother didn’t want to be interrupted from listening to her music because before I could get a word out she answered with aggravation and assumed I was going to ask when will Anthony come back downstairs, so I can finish my paper. My brother comes back downstairs for about a minute after being asked to and then goes back upstairs to drink his Ensure.
Truth is our family is becoming more isolated and careless. It started when my parents completed their divorce. Slowly after our family began to separate, we were getting into our own things. For some odd reason I still desire family time. When we do engage we become more family oriented and a little hectic. I would describe it to be like the movie “Home Alone”.
Day two of my studies continued at my sister’s house. When I entered their home, everyone was in the living room. My sister was cooking, my youngest niece Patricia was listening to music in her head phones. Her hair was wet as if she was fresh out of the shower. It was about 8pm, I just had gotten out of work and they were preparing for bed. This makes the process in getting them to bed easy. My nephew was intently playing video games and my oldest niece Destiny was talking to her mother about organizing her gender reveal party for her mother. My older sister is currently four to five months pregnant. The lights were all on and everyone was very engaged in conversation.
I observe my sisters parenting in concerns to her oldest daughter Destiny.

She seems leant regarding her daughter’s desire to get a tattoo. Although my sister didn’t seem pleased to discover the location that Destiny wants her tattoo, she still left the choice up to her. These are similar traits of my mothers parenting skills. Instead of implementing disciplinary acts they look for other ways to make their children’s process in obtaining their goals more difficult. For instance, she would refuse to take her to the tattoo shop and so on. My sister continues to make sure all her children have done their chores. She made a schedule with them that organized and set days for each of them to do a specific chore. My nephew Isaac is very loud through the process of my sister talking to her daughters. He’s very game

focused.
Her husband usually gets home in the evening and when he gets home my nephew transforms into this well-behaved son. Everybody expresses their excitement to see him. He prepares for sleep, interacts with the kids, and talks about their day. He makes sure their homework is done. Within his parenting skills there is much discipline. There are rules that must be followed and consequences behind not following them. Overall there is more life to a household filled with teens. Their parents have more control. They eat at the table like a family. The décor in their home is well laid out. Like my house there is many religious statements. There are warm colors and photos. Instead their wall pictures and portraits are formal and professional. With a dash of chore charts in the kitchen. I witnessed the presents of a male figure. Although her husband was not home there had been communication over the phone. In addition, to the observation I also obtained confirmation to my sister having help unlike my mother. She has her older daughter delegating her sibling relieving the stress off her mother which is much need in the time of her pregnancy. Lastly my sister and her husband seem a lot more in tune with their children’s lingo. The communication with their children is very present.
In conclusion, I was able to learn that teen and adult boys who have a father figure in their lives are significantly less likely to engage in delinquent behavior rather than others with no father figure in their household. I also observed a single parent come up against a unique set of emotional challenges that can feel overwhelming. I would like to understand and relate to my mother more in concerns to be a single parent, yet these feelings are better understood by other single mothers. I have witnessed anxiety over money to be stressful for my mom. Also making decisions alone has had a big impact of parenting and money situation. Impressively I have seen both my sister and mother come up with some creative solutions that have worked for them as parents and us as teens and adults living with our parent/parents.