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Brazil is a very family-oriented country even in the big cities. I love the fact that there is no real generation gap like it is in the states and you see entire families from newborn babies to elderly grandparents doing activities together.
I think that the US is one of the worse places for family especially out here in California where most people are from some other state. The US in general emphasizes the pursuit of money over family. I find it rather depressing.
I am not saying Brazil is a perfect place. They have their share of family/community/social problems but at the end of the day I still find more warmth and affection between people than I do in the States. In LatinAmerican people tend to live life with more passion and gusto than they do in the States - at least imo.
Agree about Brazil and about California.
Thinking of Latin countries once again.
Awhile back, I was living in Spain for awhile. I fondly recall entire families socializing with other families and children in the parks, even late at night! City parks, in the plazas and such. Everything there was geared towards socializing and meeting and casually running into people. Kids with them as well. Very peaceful and normal about it as well.
Whereas in whatever city parks that exist in the U.S., they seem to quickly turn into rendevous places for gay cruising, drug deal exchanges, the homeless, and whatever else...fairly quickly especially after the sun just starts to go down. Last place you'd want to be hanging out with the wife and kids running around.
What do low birth rates have to do with anything? They certainly don't indicate a lack of family-orientation at the cultural level. Some people prefer quality to quantity.
Families in those countries have few children but that hardly means they don't have strong families.
Family gatherings in Mediterranean countries will often involve brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc.
For example, a given pair of parents will have one child but they'll get together with their close relatives and their kids.
The countries named are much more family oriented than the US which, for all its virtues, might be the least family oriented country in the world.
Women in those nations find the obligations of family life, as they understand it, to be too much. So they avoid it.
What could Spanish and Italian women be looking for instead? Do American women - with higher birth rates, on average, than Europeans - like "the obligations of family life" much better? How should we define those obligations?
Driving children around to play groups and "activities", supposedly in children's "best interest"?
Or...cooking an actual fresh meal instead of slapping together some ready-made food, soaked in preservatives? Cleaning house, keeping it orderly? Ironing? Keeping children neatly dressed? Organizing the household? Spending quality time with the children, talking to them, training them and involving them in household-related chores?...Teaching them specific manners, bringing them up with certain well-defined values, etc? Disciplining them?
I hardly see any of the this in the US. I would guess Italian and Spanish women still do more of the above than their American counterparts, though with a smaller number of children.
Speaking strictly about contemporary American mothers who stay at home (NOT employed mothers!), a woman's role and substantive contribution to the family has never been flimsier and more frivolous (besides the act of actual baby-sitting). Really, the family and the children themselves would benefit much more from a meal cooked from scratch than from those "mommy and me" paid classes - pure acts of frivolity, nothing else.
Overall, raising children at western, middle-class standards is becoming increasingly difficult. Europeans also have the issue of space. As a result, they prefer to have fewer children and take care of those they DO have (often just one), properly.
Does it mean they don't cultivate strong family ties? Unlikely.
I'm just relaying something I read. I think maybe Spanish people expect parents to be more active in their kids life. PSA's aside a fair amount of people in the US, for example, kind of let schools and after-school programs do much of the raising of kids. I know on debates on sex education a big, if maybe unspoken, part of it is that parents often are clueless and things like their sexual morality is better left to the state.
I grew up in Latin America and I have a different opinion about extended families. I still see extended Latin families all the the time on Miami and all I can say it's that I'm not impressed. It's usually your immediate family that is there for you.(spouse, parents, children and sometimes siblings) The rest might fill parties but there are not much different than the average American family when things are not going well. You might be very close to one specific cousin or uncle but you are not gonna be close to all of them. It doesn't work that way.
The American society is not perfect but I think most people will provide a helping hand to a brother or sister if they faced homelessness. Yes some people wouldn't, but believe me you can find the same type of selfish scumbags anywhere in Latin America. I know plenty of people in Latin America(many in me extended family lol) who don't even speak to their siblings. The worst part is that many live in the same household. If you hear them speaking to each other is because they are arguing. I don't think that's healthy at all.
People are people. Family relations are very specific. It depends on the personality of the individuals. One of my parents is very close to their siblings, the other doesn't even speak to most of their siblings. Just because people hang out together it doesn't mean they have close relationships.
Awhile back, I was living in Spain for awhile. I fondly recall entire families socializing with other families and children in the parks, even late at night! City parks, in the plazas and such. Everything there was geared towards socializing and meeting and casually running into people. Kids with them as well. Very peaceful and normal about it as well.
Whereas in whatever city parks that exist in the U.S., they seem to quickly turn into rendevous places for gay cruising, drug deal exchanges, the homeless, and whatever else...fairly quickly especially after the sun just starts to go down. Last place you'd want to be hanging out with the wife and kids running around.
In Brazil I always felt like a part of a community - at least in Salvador. Maybe because in Brazil there is no real concept of "personal space". I know Brazil has her share of domestic/family abuse but in general I found people to be more welcoming and the culture warmer and more laidback. Its a totally different energy in Brazil than in the US. Brazilians tend to be happier and more content with life in my opinion. Maybe it's true that the less you own materially the less you have to worry about.
Unfortunately a lot of younger Brazilians want to come to the states and chase that American dream which is sad because a lot of them have what money can't really buy.
I grew up in Latin America and I have a different opinion about extended families. I still see extended Latin families all the the time on Miami and all I can say it's that I'm not impressed. It's usually your immediate family that is there for you.(spouse, parents, children and sometimes siblings) The rest might fill parties but there are not much different than the average American family when things are not going well. You might be very close to one specific cousin or uncle but you are not gonna be close to all of them. It doesn't work that way.
The American society is not perfect but I think most people will provide a helping hand to a brother or sister if they faced homelessness. Yes some people wouldn't, but believe me you can find the same type of selfish scumbags anywhere in Latin America. I know plenty of people in Latin America(many in me extended family lol) who don't even speak to their siblings. The worst part is that many live in the same household. If you hear them speaking to each other is because they are arguing. I don't think that's healthy at all.
People are people. Family relations are very specific. It depends on the personality of the individuals. One of my parents is very close to their siblings, the other doesn't even speak to most of their siblings. Just because people hang out together it doesn't mean they have close relationships.
I agree. A lot of my Brazilian friends have some of the typical family problems that Americans tend to have but overall it is still more family oriented than in the states. Brazilians tend to live life with passion - positive and negative. I like that sort of fiery energy. I like the fact that when you first meet a Brazilian, within about 15 minutes, whether the person is English speaking or not, you feel like you have known that person all of your life. In the States you can know a person for 20 years yet not really have that deep intimate connection with them.
In the more rural areas everyone is pretty much family. It is more of the concept of extended family. Children belong to the community. Every child is "your" child. My teenage Brazilian "daughters" love doing things with people my age. They don't really have that concept of "generation gap". Americans tend to live very isolated lives and the US is an emotionally colder place which is why I believe there are so many mentally ill people in the culture. Latin America can be a harsh place but so is the US if you don't have the big bucks.
Of course every male friend that I have that has visited Brazil immediately wants to relocate there especially when they encounter the beauty of the Brazilian women. It's just that I and a lot of people find the warmth of Brazilian culture more refreshing than the emotionally colder American culture.
Americans tend to live very isolated lives and the US is an emotionally colder place which is why I believe there are so many mentally ill people in the culture.
Could not agree more. It is a culture that expects the individual to keep all real anguish to himself, deal with it on his own and better yet, put on a happy face, regardless of what is going on inside - as nobody wants to hear about anybody's discontentment anyway. Corporate culture, needing huge volumes of happiness and perfect contentment with the status quo - encourages this attitude in one million ways in people's public and private lives alike. Critical thinking and skepticism are labeled as "criticism" or a pathologically negative attitude.
I find this contrived state of so-called "happiness" extremely unhealthy and DEFINITELY related to the high rates of mental illness in the US (depression included). At times, it seems as if the entire nation is on Prozac.
Like you said about Brazilians, I think it is exactly because they naturally allow themselves to be happy as Heck or as miserable as it takes, depending on circumstances - that they manage to live life to the fullest, with its entire spectrum of human emotions. This, I believe, is much healthier than a morbid, propaganda-induced, constant smile and eternal "positive" attitude.
Sometimes, being able to identify the negative when the negative is there amounts to pure mental health.
More of a thing of the past, an urban legend and a necessary evil due to the lack of affordable housing. I'd say almost all African and Asian cultures are much more family-oriented than those mentioned.
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