Intro to Diversified Studies Cultural Background

Although my maternal grandmother was born a mixture of English and Native American, she was raised in a household that was a blend of Native American and Mexican American. Her mother, my great grandmother, who was also a mixture of English and Native American, remarried after giving birth to her first four children. This new marriage was to a Mexican American man and brought another eight children into the family. Growing up in this type of household influenced not only the foods she cooked, such as fideo, tortillas, and green chili; but, established a multigenerational line of care giving. Being the second oldest of 12 children, my grandmother cared for her siblings as well as her own children at the same time. She then transferred this type of nurturing to her grandchildren. It was common for me and my siblings to be taken care of by my grandmother and great grandmother for entire months at a time, in order to help my mother while she worked. Typical of Mexican Americans "family interdependence involves extended family members sharing the nurturing and disciplining of children" (McGoldrick, Giordano, & Garcia-Preto, 2005, p. 234); yet, my grandmother was not Mexican American. This point became a source of ridicule and ostracizing from her other siblings. This type of racism continued even unto her death three years ago, where at the funeral her siblings sat on the opposite side of the church and never spoke to any of her children or grandchildren. The idiom, blood is thicker than water, clearly explains the phenomenon of the multicultural influences on my mother's side of the family. Although raised in a Mexican American household, the English blood line dominated both my grandmother and mother's behavior. This English blood line also possessed the threads of early Puritan beliefs. Both my great