Module 2: Families in a Canadian Context

Prejudice/Stereotypes

• Not always bad

• Not all negative/racist

• Problematic: placing judgment on them based on groups

Ethnocentrism

• You use your cultural group as how you judge other groups

  • Eg. Using Western as the baseline when comparing cultures

  • What is “good” emerges from one's own cultural

  • The dominant group uses themselves as the reference group

Prejudice

• Forming an opinion without direct experience

  • Prejudging however does not always mean bad

  • The most obvious examples are racist/ignorant

Stereotypes

• Characteristics of a cultural group placed on another

  • Exaggerated to a repulsive point

  • Often overlaps with prejudice

  • The presentation that owns culture is the ‘norm’

  • These become automatic

  • Education and culture contrast → reduce stereotypes

Automacy of Activation

• When people are under stress = More primitive parts of the brain are concerned about ‘the other’

  • Eg. → stress from 9/11 = racism against Muslims

  • Start activation stereotypes when under stress

Socialization

• Communicating Through Generations To Navigate Society

  • Conformity and transmission of culture

  • Types of Conformity

    • Low vs High-Class Families

  • Forms of Enforcement

    • Different economic families use different methods

  • How to Successfully Navigate The Environment

  • Norms of Parents/Child Relationships

Transgenerational Transmission of Values

• What values are important to transmit from one generation to the next

• Is there a sense of continuity or change?

• Change is good... So is continuity

• Cultural shifts in values - conflict is an essential component (develop in response to conflict)

Ways of Organizing Cultural Values

Individualism vs Collectivism

• Individualism → importance of individual goals and independence

• Collectivism → primacy of group goal, interdependence and orientation to family, acceptance of duties and obligations toward groups

Kohlberg Moral Reasoning:

Community: Our collectivistic approach to what is morally right is in relationship with my community. (collectivistic)

Autonomy: Our ability to make our own decisions (individualistic)

Divinity: Many cultures have religious scripts that evaluate morals

All cultures have different amounts of each of these

Schwartz: Hierarchy of Values:

• Power

• Achievement

• Hedonism → pleasure and gratification of one's self

• Stimulation

• Self-direction

• Universalism → understanding of protection

• Benevolence → enforcement of the welfare of those close in contact

• Tradition

• Conformity → do not violate social ‘norm’ expectations

• Security

• Opposites across from each other in pic

• Individualist = left side

• Colelctivitsc = right side

• All cultures have all → some are diminished, some are used

Cross-Cultural Adaption

Immigration→ Dominant vs Indigenous Cultures

• More immigration than we have seen historically

• Not all countries are the first ones they are not the dominant group (in Canada indigenous are not dominant)

Cross-Cultural Adaption

Acculturation

• Two cultural groups come into contact with one another

  • 2 groups come together from different backgrounds

  • Smaller groups usually have to adapt to the larger

Cross-Cultural Adaption

Encultraltion

• Process of learning values of a second culture

  • Form of socialization

  • Learning values of an original cultural group

Cross-Cultural Adaption

Adaptation

Families adapt to living within new cultures

Immigrant Language Growth

• New immigrants are using their language

• More diversity

• European languages decrease use in Canada

Process of Adaptation Berry (2006)

Process of adaptation considers levels of both acculturation and enculturation

Indigenous Knowledge and Family

Vygotsky

Tools and Practices  

Language as a tool in development (fundamental culture)

• Being separated and told your culture is no good disrupts this fundamental part of development

• Language and cultural coping mechanisms stripped away

Indigenous Knowledge and Family

Bowlby

Attachment

A child forcefully separated from a parent

• A child goes through a period of detachment (devastation to mother and child)

• Emotional response narrowed and not as adaptive

Both Dominant and minority adapt when they come in contact with one another

• Consequences more prevalent in minority

• Adaptation requires hard work

• Start listening to indigenous groups to prompt adaptation of the dominant group

Family Traditions and Customs

Video 1+2 Okanagan Women Elder Stories

• It is important to get back to own roots

• Furr bows

• Rose bushes → Wash the house with rose bushes for the presence of disease to keep spirits out

• Burn the personal clothing of those deceased

Family Traditions - Belief and Language

Video 1+2 Okanagan Women Elder Stories

• Giving names → no ceremony because it is personal within the family

• Children seen and not heard

• Names were made public ceremony but not traditionally in culture

Indigenous families: Who Do You Call Family?

• The Western definition of family (nuclear family) cannot be extended to indigenous

• Family is based on social, cultural, geographic, political, and economic aspects

• Explored conceptualization of indigenous families in Canada

• Findings → The perspective of indigenous families may be framed through a personal or institutional perspective

• Personal Level → Perception of an indigenous family was influenced by culture, specific socialities, language, childrearing practices, and residential locations

• Institutional level → defined through demographic and legal terms and influenced by temporal change (through generally a non-indigenous lens)

• Suggests that current Western definitions of the family may not accurately represent the indigenous populations

Indigenous Families and Households in Canada: A Tale of Statistical Disadvantage

• Currently a knowledge gap concerning the competition in Indigenous households and their evolution over time

• Essential to improve our understanding of their social organization and its relationship to well-being and develop appropriate policies

• Do not have proper statistical representation

  • Data availability → about indigenous families could be expanded by increasing the sample sizes of existing surveys

  • Data accessibility → could be improved by ensuring that households in census reports and related produce

  • Data exploitability → could be promoted by including more and finer indicators or family structure and living arrangements in public-use microdata

Hidden Burdens: A Review of Intergenerational, Historical, and Complex Trauma, Implications for Indigenous Families

• Consider whether understanding of stressed human capacity as described by family members of various generations affected by traumatic events may be increased through exploring the developmental implication of complex trauma

• Informed support for individuals and families combined with political advocacy at a system level is critical in intergeneration trauma work to break historical patterns affecting family development and interaction

• Sociocultural, psychological relational, family system and genetic and biological models contribute to the appropriate assessment of survivors and their families

• Gentis dispositions → Understanding the effects of early stress to access tools and resources to strengthen buffers

• Early attachment is important in managing trauma presented

• Pscyheduactional information to help survivors cope with unspoken and unidentified trauma

• Need to acknowledge the role of public policy on intergenerational trauma

  • Need to address issues of poverty, inequality, oppression, and discrimination