by Tania Johnson | January 14, 2025

Every family will have a unique tapestry of traditions, rituals, family history, culture, relational joy and practices. Your family culture is who you are as a family. It is what makes your family uniquely your family. As human beings we have a deep, innate desire to belong – when we have a strong family culture which we intentionally create, we create a natural place of belonging for our children.

When children are not anchored to their parents , they begin to search for belonging in other places. In the adolescent years, the pursuit of independence and peer group identification is a natural developmental stage, but when children have a primary sense of belonging with their family unit, the family unit remains an anchor through all the shifts and changes of life.

So, what is your family culture? A portion of our  family culture unfolds naturally, but when we add intentionality to our stories and the lives of our children’s stories, we  breathe life into our  tremendous power to narrate what these stories may or may not look like.

1. Identify your Family’s culture

To begin with, you have a  family culture already…you can identify it by asking yourself some of the following questions

• What types of books do I read to my child ( if I read)?
• What types of food do we eat?
• How do we conduct meal times?
• What do we do in our leisure time?
• Who are our closest relationships with outside of our nuclear family?
• What rituals do we have as a family?
• What traditions do we have as a family?
• What religious/ spiritual practices do we engage in ( or not engage in)?
• What cultural group is my family apart of?
• How do past generations impact ( or not impact) or current family?
• How do we express love?

A couple of the questions above centered around culture and history, let’s take a closer look at how these two factors impact family culture.

2. Reflect on the importance of culture and history in your family’s story

It is incredible- we spend money on architects, landscapers, interior designers, city planners, student advisors – to help us create plans and structures for future dreams- yet very rarely, do we sit down and really think about what we really want for our families. I’m not talking about college funds or health insurance ( both important) or a list of “to-do’s”…I’m talking about the essence of a family.

The essence of a family is often rooted in culture and history. Our culture frames our worldview and comes to determine how we see ourselves, others and the world.  Culture incorporates beliefs, values, perspectives and behavioural norms of a group. It can be difficult to distinguish between culture and personality as often our cultural backgrounds determine how we interact with and understand our world.  For example, in more individualistic cultures, the emphasis will be on the needs and the goals of the  self- while in more collectivist cultures the emphasis will be on the needs or the goals of the group. Each of us belongs to several different types of cultures- national, regional, religious, gender, sexual orientation, generational, socioeconomic and group or corporate culture.

• Take a minute to think about your different  cultural groups and a few of their dominant features.
•  In your own family, think about how these features influence the essence of your family
• Are there any elements of culture in your family that you would like to nurture or that you would like to move away from?

3. The Value of Building our Children’s Narrative

Our history- and the generations of people in our family who came before us- also plays an integral role in how we come to define and understand family. Value systems tend to be passed down- for some families- we may actively work at moving away from generational value sets- while other families may hold onto value sets.One of the best strategies to enhance family resilience is the gift of being able to give your children a strong narrative. One smaller study found that when children know about their families history, they have a stronger sense of control, higher self-esteem, and a higher belief in the way their families functioned

There are three different narrative approaches that families take. For some families, it is the ascending narrative…”I came here with nothing, started a small shop, met your father…” For others it is a descending narrative  “ I am a teacher, who had strict parents growing up as a teenager, as a young child we had very little” with the most powerful narrative being an oscillating narrative “we came here with nothing, we are now an integral part of our community, early on things were difficult, but our struggles helped us to fight for community…” The ingredient in this approach is that it is not the details of a story that define us, it’s the meaning-making around a story.

The knowledge that one is rooted in history and part of something far greater is called the “intergenerational self”. In my own family, stories of connection and humanity have always been an integral part of who I am. I grew up in South-Africa and my grandfather, a priest, was an activist against Apartheid. As a priest he would smuggle documents out of the country for freedom fighters, he would secretly marry individuals from different racial backgrounds, and he constantly stood for what was right and just. His stories empower me to be a better mom, psychologist and citizen.

Questions to Ask Your Kids

• Do you know how your parents meet?
• Do you know where your mom grew up?
• Do you know where your dad grew up?
• What do you know about your grandfather?
• What do you know about your grandmother?
• What do you know about the city/ country that your mom, dad, grandfather, grandmother grew up in?
• What was your mom’s childhood like?
• What was your dad’s childhood like?
• What is your mom passionate about?
• What is your dad passionate about?
• What is a difficult experience your family has gone through?
• What is a joyful moment?
• What is your birth story?
• What is important to your family?
• What is a dream that your family has?

Once we understand how culture and history contributes to the identity of family, we can be intentional about the ingredients that we want to include in our family’s essence. How do we want to explore stories with our children? When do we want to explore different stories? How have we explained stories to ourself? To our partner? Which aspects of our culture do we want to embrace more? Let go of? Learn more about?

Intentionality is the operative word of this blog post. When you are able to cut out the noise of society, the push of prescriptive parenting practices, the urging of relatives….you open up a new world that helps you to ask yourself “What do I really want?”

The Institute would love to be a part of your journey in intentional parenting, to find out more about our membership, click here.