Why Is Family History Important: Argumentative Essay

Even though each author studies and focuses on different topics, they always talk about family histories. In each reading we can learn something different and see the difference in how the authors study and do their work, however, we can see that all the articles end up explaining how families were or could be. The most relevant issues in family law, considering that this is the set of norms and legal institutions that regulate the personal and patrimonial relations of the members of the family, among themselves and with respect to third parties. Slavery, family separations, exploitation of families, inhuman treatment, immigration, and rights for women and men were the most important topics in the readings.

While doing my research on Ancestry.com searching for family members, all the time I was thinking about Coontz’s entire article, The Way We Never Were, because is dedicated to exploring the absence of a traditional family. That’s what I was doing, exploring the absence of my ancestors. Subtitling her work ‘The Nostalgia Trap’ further makes her point that the idea of a traditional family is just an idea. For as long as there have been families, families have been complicated. Coontz juxtaposes the responses from her students of how they defined this nostalgic perfect family with actual historical data proving how the modern American family has not actually changed all that much; the ‘abstract nostalgia,’ as she calls it, prevents people from understanding the historical facts of the American family, and therein lies the actual crisis (Coontz, 21).

Americans during the 20th century became interested in finding their own family history because of a magazine called, ‘Genealogical Helper.’ Middle-class citizens became more interested in genealogy, and for the first-time public libraries were interested in helping them. Professional genealogists attempted to improve the quality and accuracy of the documents, especially with certification to become a genealogist. This would help people find the correct information and identify ‘…potential quacks.’ François Weil, Family Trees) the 21st century had more credible resources such as Ancestory.com, DNA, and Genealogy.com. We currently have a lot of evidence to try and find our ancestors thanks to technology. Americans seem to be really curious about their family history and even this class proves it. (François Weil, Family Trees, 112)

Ryan supports the idea that there has not been any kind of major change in the structure of the American family. Referencing Edward Shorter, she argues that ‘the American family was ‘born modern’ and thereby deprives U.S. historians of a major turning point in family history,’ (Ryan, 185). She argues against the periodization of the American family, mainly for the reason that it is one-dimensional. Observing only the public structure of a family fails to incorporate all of the actual facts and data that can help us understand what was going on.

“Many people hold an image of how American families ‘used to be’ at some particular point in time, and they propose that we return to that ideal. In fact, however, there have been a wide variety of family forms and values in American history, and there is no period in which some ideal family predominated.” (Coontz 2.)

Families have been known to participate in traditions that have lasted for several generations throughout their family. The purpose is to keep the same morals and values that they had before and to continue these beliefs for future generations. “Family transitions, those innumerable points in time when one generation succeeds another, are critical historical junctures…possibility of change even as they link the past to the future.” (Mary P. Ryan)

However, family historians have used social theory and social science techniques to look at public records of wills, inventories, censuses, vital statistics, house plans, home furnishings, family photographs, opinion pools, social surveys, time budgets, folklore songs, stories, and games where they found that families do not keep their traditions.

After the 1850s, American families did not have a lot of evidence of physical evidence such as photographs of what happened to their family. In the article, Ryan and Coontz mentioned that families in particular practically vanish in statistics where there were only mentioned family size and the cities they were living in. Mary P. Ryan, 184. Historians determined that this was because of divorces; families lost each other because of family issues and instability. Another example of the traditional family “crisis” was the lack of nuclear families in America. David Schedlder created a typology based on the fact that families in America were considered nuclear. But most Americans did not live with a husband, wife, or child but mostly spent their lives living alone, or with people who were not related to them by blood, or marriage from the seventeenth century to the nineteen-eighties. (Mary P. Ryan, 186-187.)

Heather Andrea Williams’ book, Help Me to Find My People is a haunting tale of the emotional burdens and trials that slaves had to endure. It recounts the experiences of slaves who had their families sold off or forcibly taken from them. Many whites, Williams asserts, did not think that slaves were capable of possessing emotions or having emotional ties with anyone, even their own families. This obvious farce is examined by Williams, by recounting documents of slaves themselves, witnesses to slaves being separated, the owners, as well as observers and reporters who say they are buying and selling people on the auction block. The chapters are based on certain concepts such as marriage among slaves and the subsequent division of husbands and wives by their masters, the separation of children from their parents, and the attitudes of whites towards these occurrences.

In considering the connection between genealogy and family history, I was struck by Coontz’s statement that ‘as time passes, the actual complexity of our history – even of our own personal experience – gets buried under the weight of the ideal image.’ (Coontz, xiv). The ever-persistent pressure exerted by political, social, and religious forces to live up to the ‘ideal’ family can result in distorted personal family histories. Difficult histories that fall short of the ideal can be left unspoken in the hope that they will disappear from the family lore.

Nara Milanich tries to focus more on Latin American families, especially in Brazil, Chile, and Peru, and mentioned a little about Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Talking about Latin America, she started talking about the abandonment of children in Brazil. “Indeed, Euro-American historiography has often set the agenda for family history in other parts of the world. An example is the literature on child abandonment in Latin America, one of the better-researched topics in the history of childhood and family in the region.” (Milanich 450) This is something I was never going to known if I did not read this article, because when people talk about Brazil, people talk about many things, except this. Giving emphasis to this topic (abandonment of children), gives more interest to the article.

Tom Gjelten’sBacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba highlight the major shifts, both physical and ideological that the Bacardi family dealt with during the 20th century. The author’s political posturing aside, the book is interesting and highlights some important things about Cuba, predominantly the culture. The carefree but at the same time prideful country has a lot of problems due to its history as well as some believing that they know what is best for the country above others. A reading of the family history of the Bacardi rum family reveals that “family” takes many different forms – whether biological, relational, or part of a network of friends or associates. Bill Griffeth takes the reader on a journey he takes to figure out who and what family is for him. (Gjeten, Tom, 2018)

In Eileen Findlay’s book, We Are Left without a Father Here, Luis Marin didn’t help everybody how he said he will. He was the patriarch of sorts for the nation and attempted to provide for his people by giving them advice on self-sufficiency and attempting to connect them with jobs in Michigan so that they would be able to do so. What also interests me is whether or not some men stayed on the island and stood their ground. The book showed myriad examples of men calling for better wages, better conditions, and better treatment, as well as wives pleading for assistance from the government. (Findlay, Eileen J. Suárez, 121-123)

To sum up, all the authors have a point in common, and that point is the study of a family in past. Each author studies different centuries, ages, gender, societies, and continents, and we can learn how families lived in the past, which is why I ended up with different thoughts and ideas about families. They all have different arguments, but if we keep reading the articles, everything is explained really well. What I think is that every century families live according to their country, rules, culture, and customs, so every decade or century, everything was and will change. If working together in the past, they have managed to improve human rights, stop slavery, have improved the quality of life, we still need to work together to end the mistreatment of immigrant families and to treat everyone equally so that every family in the world can live in peace.

References

  1. Coontz, S. (1992). The way we never were: American families and the nostalgia trap. New York, NY:
  2. Findlay, Eileen J. Suárez, We Are Life without a Father Here: Masculinity, Domesticity, and Migration in Postwar Puerto Rico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 121-123
  3. François Weil, Family Trees: A History of Genealogy in America (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2013
  4. Gjeten, Tom, Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause (New York: Viking, 2008)
  5. Griffeth, Bill, the Stranger in My Genes: A Memoir (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2016)
  6. NARA Milanich, Whither Family History? A Road Map from Latin America, The American Historical Review, Volume 112, Issue 2, April 2007
  7. Ryan, Mary P. “The Explosion of Family History.” Reviews in American History, vol. 10, no. 4, 1982, p. 181., doi:10.2307/2701826.
  8. Williams, Heather Andrea. Help Me to Find My People: the African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery. University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

Essay on Family History and Sociological Experience of Steve Jobs

Introduction

The social experience of a person shapes his life from a very early age. The impact of sociological theories such as structure and agent theory is also prominent in the person’s overall experience in very sectors such as family, race, ethnicity and social inequalities. As a person grows his learning and experience from an early age also becomes mature (PANAGIOTOU, 2019). Steve Jobs is known as one of the most successful entrepreneurs, industrial designers,s and media investors of all time. This essay focuses on the life experience of Steve Jobs in various sectors. The influence of structure and agency are also demonstrated in their experience in the later part of the report.

Steve Jobs: A brief overview

Steven Paul Jobs came to the earth on the day of 24th February 1955. His biological father Abdul Fattah and his mother was Joanne. Soon after the birth, Steven was given up for adoption in the family of a mechanic father Paul and an accountant mother Clara. In his early life, Steve learned mechanical basics from his father(McKenzie, 2012). Steve Jobs tried to continue his education after high school and soon dropped out of college because he simply could not keep up with the traditional way of learning and studying. Soon after Steve jobs started attending creative classes and learned calligraphy.

In his life, Steve Jobs went through many life experiences. At the beginning of his adult life, Steve job was homeless and could not provide for himself. He used to go to Hindu Ashrams for free food and would rest there. In search of enlightenment, he went to India and stayed in several ashrams. But he found solace in Buddhism of Japanese core religion. The simplicity of industrial designing that later was used in Apple products was adopted from the live view of the simplicity of Buddhism.

Steve Jobs along with Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple. They found success in the Apple II computer in 1976. Steve Jobs gave rise to the wave of personalized Apple computers in the 1970 and 1980’s era. The famous Apple Inc. was founded in the garage of a tiny home. Even though he was outcast from his own company by Scully. Through the sale of the Macintosh and the creation, NeXT Steve jobs again became one of the successful inventors. Later he started Pixar and became a billionaire once Pixar went public soon after making “Toy Story” the animated movie (Storch Rudall, 2012). Later Steve jobs Sold Pixar to Walt Disney and NeXT to Apple Inc. He became the CEO of Apple Inc. with Steve Jobs in the CEO position of Apple Inc. Brought some of their most revolutionary products and grabbed multiple industries. Among them, iMac, iPhone, and iPad are the products that took the young generation by storm and increased the market value of Apple Inc. almost overnight.

Soon after this living legend was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer(Apple founder Steve Jobs dies – HISTORY, 2020). Even in his diagnosis and treatment period, he continued his duty as the CEO of Apple Inc. After taking a lever transplant Steve Jobs resigned and put the duty of Apple Inc. in the hand of Tim Cook. Steve Jobs died in 2011 after a long battle with his illness.

Personal Experience in Two Themes reflecting the influence of structure and agency theory

Theme 1- Family

Impact of Structure

Steve Jobs was born in the womb of a college-going mother and a non-American father. None of them was capable enough to raise him and was not married then. For this reason, they gave up Steven Jobs for adoption. The very early age of Steve Jobs was impacted by the overall structure. If the socio-economic condition of the biological mother and father were strong enough they would not have haven up Steve Jobs for adoption.

Later, Steve Jobs was raised by his foster family. The father Paul was a mechanic and his other was an accountant. Steve learned the basics of business and his handicap through machine learning experience from his father (Midgley, 2020). Latest the path of his career was largely influenced by his father. Other than that, For his own family, Steve Jobs did not initially take the paternity claim of his very first daughter Lisa. He was motivated by the fact that it was a scam to bring down his early success. All these experiences reflect the impact of the structures on which Steve Jobs did not have control. The majority of the experience was part of rules and regulations set by society in which Steve did not have any free will.

Impact of Agency

The impact of agency refers to the free will of a person. The decision-making that is not influenced by any other external batters is also known as the impact of agency in sociology. Steve jobs in his life demonstrated many aspects of individuality in decision-making. In the case of the family even after his biological parents were married he chose to remain in his foster family because they took his responsibility (Isaacson and Baker, 2011). This indicates personal choice along with individual decision-making at a very early age. In times of his marriage, he also chooses Paul (the adoptive father) as his real father in the ceremonial attempt. In the case of parenting is first child Lisa Steve was chasing his dreams and chose not to become the father figure for her life at an early age. It was when Lisa turned teenage that Steve Jobs started to recognize her as a daughter. To win back the trust and show her value Steve also named her first Apple computer Lisa. He certainly chooses a versatile method of parenting for Lisa, his firstborn.

The versatility of his decision-making also reflects on his marriage to a Buddhism guru. Steve followed Hinduism and Buddhism to find the meaning of life. Even though his wife was Christian the marriage ritual was under Buddhism law (Elder-Vass, 2011). Both Steve and his wife would keep their personal life private. It also reflected on the least number of guests that attended the ceremony at that time. Besides rats, bath his wife, and Steve brought equal value, responsibility and individuality in their relationship rather than the male dominating social structure family.

Theme 2- Social inequalities

Impact of Structure

Steve jobs faced social Inequality at a very early age. The middle-class family and their lifestyle were one of the motivators behind his passion for hardware and software. He wanted to build something that could be available to everyone and provide equal opportunity for learning (Steinwart and Ziegler, 2014). As part of the structural system, it is mandatory to fulfill some key requirements to continue to study in college. Steve jobs could not compete with others even though he was one of the most successful creative minds of the century.

As a result, he dropped out of education. Without a proper job and degree, American society is cruel and does not provide shelter or proper food. To survive the harsh reality Steve Jobs took refuge to many Ashrams and Buddhist shelters for the door, sleep and mental peace. However, once he was a multibillionaire he started to give back to society as Corporate Social Responsibility.

Impact of Agency

The individual decisions that came out of personal freedom helped Steve jobs fight and later build a strong fort against social inequality. From the times of Ashrams, Steve jobs learned that ‘simplicity is the ultimate luxury”. He later used these simple tools in his apple Road, iPhone, MacBook, etc (Streeter, 2012). Various inventions were brought in the market in a range that is available to almost everyone. Youth were provided with the utmost opportunity to work within apple. So that they can make the best use of creativity without the risk of getting rejected. Steve Jobs also took drastic measures to reduce social class and social inequality through the Google brand. But unfortunately, the brand is now a boasting tool for the higher class people from around the world. For anyone struggling to make an individual decision and breakthrough, these are some of his famous quotes.

Conclusion

Steve Jobs has earned his rightful deputation in the course of history. It has been many years since he passed away. But his experience, lessons, and his passion for life remain as an example for those who want to be successful in their careers. Steve Jobs might seem self-absorbed, overconfident and strong-willed but he used the lessons from his life in a great manner. The apple brand, Pixar, and NeXT are some of his inventions that have left its mark on changing the course of history. His life and experience is certainly a part of social understanding. In summary, even though Steve Jobs faced a lot of struggles and obstacles in the early part of his life it is clear that our 2 chosen themes impacted his life and career in a positive manner considering his success in the middle and later part of his life.

References

  1. Archer, M., 2013. Structure, Agency, And The Internal Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  2. Elder-Vass, D., 2011. Causal Power of Social Structures. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press.
  3. History.com. 2020. Apple Founder Steve Jobs Dies – HISTORY. [online] Available at: [Accessed 22 October 2020].
  4. Isaacson, W. and Baker, D., 2011. Steve Jobs. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Audio.
  5. Jobs, S. and Owens, J., 2015. Steve Jobs, The Unauthorized Autobiography.
  6. McKenzie, K., 2012. From inequalities to equity. Ethnicity and Inequalities in Health and Social Care, 5(3).
  7. Midgley, J., 2020. Inequality, Social Protection, and Social Justice. Edward Elgar Publishing.
  8. PANAGIOTOU, A., 2019. STRUCTURE, AGENCY, AND BIOTECHNOLOGY. [S.l.]: ANTHEM PRESS.
  9. Severance, C., 2012. The Second-Order Effects of Steve Jobs. Computer, 45(1), pp.10-11.
  10. Steinwart, M. and Ziegler, J., 2014. Remembering Apple CEO Steve Jobs as a “Transformational Leader”. Journal of Leadership Education, 13(2), pp.52-66.
  11. Storch Rudall, Y., 2012. Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography20122Walter Isaacson. Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography. Little Brown, 2012. £25 656 pp. 9781408703748. Kybernetes, 41(7/8), pp.1160-1161.
  12. Streeter, T., 2012. Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview * Steve Jobs–One Last Thing. Journal of American History, 99(3), pp.1015-1018.