My Family History: a Comprehensive Report

Introduction

The persons who were interviewed for my family history paper are my mother, Sarah Cary, and my Grandmother, Maureen Morris. My family situation is a little complicated, but I believe that I have acquired a comprehensive account of at least half of my lineage, and a far less detailed account of the other half. My mother gave birth to me at a very young age, and when I was two years old my grandmother adopted me. I have always called my grandmother, Maureen, “mom” because she raised me with all the love and cared I could’ve ever needed, and I’ve always know Sarah as my sister. Although I have never met my father, I know my mother can give me some basic information about his and his parents. Fortunately, my grandmother knows a great deal about her parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents.

Most of the immigration done by any generations preceding my grandmother was from Ireland and some from Sicily. The cultural shifts that came with such drastic moves, along with the fact that my great-grandfather was in the military, meaning that him, his wife, and his children moved frequently, allowed for a loss of religion on the side of my family that raised me. Unlike my grandmother’s older siblings and their families, my mother, grandmother, and I are not Catholic. The interviews I conducted with my family reveal why the last few generations deviated so much from the traditional values in my family. The presence of education in my family was closely related to gender roles until quite recently and I’m excited to analyze the changes in mentality within my family surrounding these topics. As for my grandfather, Michael Cary, I won’t be focusing too much on his part of my family because I have never met his relatives. They had very little impact on my mother's life and zero impact on mine. Furthermore, my mother spent most of her childhood with my grandmother because he wasn’t the best parent, and my mother was much closer to her maternal relatives. His family life was pretty horrendous, and my mother was even a bit uncomfortable talking his side of my family.

Both of my maternal great grandparents come from typically Catholic cultures, Irish and Italian. However, my great grandmother had a Jewish aunt whom she was very close to, and my grandmother joked that that’s why her mom worried all the time. My grandmother was the youngest of 4 children, and the only one to not attend Catholic school. In 1961, she was born on a military base in Okinawa, which only had a nondenominational church. Her father, Walter Morris, was extremely patriotic, but certainly not closed minded. When her father died, she began to read books about the other side and spirituality, having always been curious about the world around her. As she explored this world of non-traditional religion she shared her thoughts with her mother, who gradually became more accepting of these beliefs. While my great grandparents always claimed to be Catholic, its apparent that their age and experience left them with more lenient outlooks on life. My grandmother speculates that her father had opened his mind to more eastern style religions from being stationed overseas for many years, and that is why she did not have Catholic teachings ingrained into her as heavily as her siblings had. Anyways, my grandmother today claims to be non-denominational Christian, but she’s very spiritual, and even tries to live by some Buddhist teachings. She believes in continual growth through each life we live, and how we are all trying to learn something from this life that is beneficial specifically to our souls.

My grandmother got married through the Catholic church her first time around and put my mother into Catholic primary school. This was before her father died and she really looked outside of her family’s religion. The teachings of that primary school did not stick with my mother like they were intended to. Today, she believes in something that my grandmother also told me when I was younger, that there is a mother and father God. The unique perspective she possesses comes from the face that she’s read many religious books and many books interpreting these books. This myriad of informational sources had made her religious view quite eclectic and interesting. She acquired most of her beliefs while she was an adult, close to the time in which my grandmother was exploring her spirituality too. They didn’t always come to the same conclusions, but they shared ideas and obtained different perspectives on the things they were learning.

While my grandmother didn’t put me in Catholic school or take me to church, she told me about God and taught me how to pray, which I feel is all I really needed as a child. I used to pray every night when I was younger because I wanted to believe there was a God, but today I’m agnostic and I don’t officially give God credit for anything that happens in the world. Still however, my grandmother often encourages me to read her favorite books, most of which present ways to become a better person and get in-tune with your spirituality, but I don’t read for fun these days like my mother and grandmother do. I think that the shift away from strict Catholicism through each generation in my family has closely followed the overall shift in American culture toward leniency that has really taken off with the advent of the internet and the increase in technology over the past few years.

My maternal grandfather and his whole family were atheists to the best of my mother’s knowledge and she speculated that they did not believe in a God because of all the negative aspects of their life, such as abuse and alcoholism. As I mentioned before, my mother was introduced to religion by my grandmother. My mother’s rebellious spirit, likely cultivated by the lax parenting of my grandfather contrasting so starkly with the strict parenting of my grandmother, lead her to make her own conclusions about the way the world worked. She is independent and curious like my grandmother, but bolder about her actions. My mother did not know if my dad came from a religious family, but I suspect, because of his actions (getting a 15-year-old pregnant), that he himself was not religious or spiritual.

As women gained more social freedom in American society, many of them gained the courage to deviate from the religious teachings that had been imposed upon them. Education and gender roles in my family were too closely related to leave either topic out. My immediate section of the family, which includes me, my mother, and my grandmother, is very progressive and forward thinking. Unfortunately, my grandmother’s older siblings got stuck with more socially strict values ingrained into them, and today my mother’s siblings and all their children are some from Christian and fully conservative.

Maternal Great Grandparents

Let’s start with my maternal great grandparents, their lives, and the dynamic of their relationship. They both dropped out of high school and soon after got married. My great grandmother, although she was a bright student, was told to drop out so that she could help her family. Next, my great grandfather earned his GED and enlisted in the military because he wanted to fight against the “evil Germans” in WWII. After he returned from the war and gained some weight after being a POW, he tried to work for Otis Elevator Company, where many of his relatives worked, but he didn’t enjoy it. Instead, he started night school, joined the civil service, and moved away from St. Louis, where both of my great grandparents were from. From this point on, my great grandfather worked to support their family, and my great grandmother completed womanly tasks in the domestic sphere of their life. He continued to get promoted in the civil service, eventually received a college degree, and kept moving across the country following job opportunities.

Along the way, over the span of about 16 years, they had some kids: Kevin, Robyn, Sean, and Maureen. For quite a while Sean was their star child, because he was intelligent and talented in several sports. Kevin wasn’t as bright, and not much was expected of either Robyn or Maureen. Kevin went to college, obtained a business degree, and went into advertising. He’s had two wives, neither with significant careers; his son had a pharmaceutical career and his daughter is a drug addict. I don’t think imposed gender roles really affected how they turned out. Robyn attended secretarial school, worked as a secretary, had two husbands, and never really had to take care of herself. Unfortunately, a few years ago, her husband died, and she was quite helpless in doing all the things that normal adults do—like filing taxes and paying bills. Sean went to college, also received a business degree, and went into sales, which has made him the most financially successful of the 4 siblings. He has had one wife, who coincidentally also worked as a secretary for a long time, and they’ve had three children together. They’re the most religious of the four main branches of my family, they go to church weekly and pray before every dinner, both things that none of the other Morris’ do. Their nuclear family most closely matches the model that my great grandparents set for their kids. Their sons Ryan and Danny were expected to go to college and become successful by having meaningful, well-paying careers, and that’s pretty much exactly what they’ve done. Some small part of Sean and his wife expected Kelly to marry a nice man and settle down real soon. In this day and age sexism is covert and hidden in passive comments, and that’s exactly how Sean’s family oppresses their daughter. With less than enthusiasm from her parents, she went to college, got a nice job, had a kid without getting married, and is now raising her daughter and working in medical sales. I suspect Kelly was more independent than her parents expected because of the major changes in American life that were going on when she was growing up. The advent of the internet, laptops, and cell phones played a huge part in her childhood, and I believe a lot of parents during the 80’s and 90’s didn’t know how to let their kids into this digital world properly.

My grandmother went to community college for two years but dropped out after getting pregnant with my mom. The importance of school for women wasn’t stressed at all to her by her parents. Her father even encouraged her to go down to the Blossom Athletic Center and try to pick up a Spurs basketball player. He’d say things to her like, “it’s as easy to love a rich man as it is a poor man.” So my grandmother did the opposite! She went to college, with aspirations of being a psychologist, found a poor man from the south side, and married him when her parents told her she wasn’t allowed to go backpacking with him. For most of her life after college she did very well for herself while working in printing, advertising, marketing, sales, and customer service. She tells me how important college is because times have definitely changed, and she was working while they were changing. Through the late 20th century, companies began to value a college degree much more than experience or competency. A degree began to determine your title, your salary, and even whether or not you were hired at all. My grandmother saw this firsthand when morons with shiny new college degrees would get hired to work in positions above her but wouldn’t get anything done right. It really pushes my buttons and I wasn’t even the one dealing with them. It’s unfortunate that this is the way the world turned. This trend has even continued into 2018 – if you want to do anything special you need to go to graduate school, or so I hear. With the few years of college that my grandmother did have, she was able to be independent from a husband for most of her life and raise me to the best of her abilities. While she did have a long-term boyfriend for most of my childhood, she now lives happily alone. Of course, everyone wants a loving partner, but she never relied on a man to support her. This is impressive compared to how her sister Robyn ended up, with only a 16-year age difference between them. Again, this is attributable to how her parents were more open-minded by the time they had their 4th child. This led to a more independent state of mind in my grandmother, and this, combined with the carefree nature of my granddad, created the rebellious character—my mother—who gave birth to me.

My mother, who is a bit older than Kelly, isn’t too successful. As a young child she was incredibly bright and did wonderfully on tests and assignments until late elementary school and middle school, when her crappy father really started to affect her life. His incompetency as a parent, in turn, put stress on my grandmother, which also negatively impacted my mother. Not to mention that classmates turned into bullies and neighborhood friends turned into bad influences. My mother made some bad choices to cope with the cards she was dealt, she got pregnant with me and dropped out after 8th grade. In the “nature versus nurture” argument of child development, I strongly believe that a child’s environment, experiences, and relationships have the greatest impact on their personality and to some extent their fluid intelligence. She did not value school whatsoever when she was younger, but she loved to read and learn new things. Presently, she is incredibly artistic and still enjoys reading (how else are you supposed to pass the time in prison). Nowadays, she stresses the importance of school to me all the time, and so does my grandmother, who tells me that she wishes someone would’ve told her that college was important.

My maternal grandfather didn’t care about school or rules, much like how my mother ended up. He dropped out of high school, joined the Navy, quit because of all the rules, and worked odd jobs for most of his young life. At some point, he decided to pursue a college degree. He enjoyed poetry, English, and journalism, which intrigued and eventually wooed my grandmother. Still, however, my grandfather didn’t complete his associate’s degree – he is missing 3 hours of math. “Cut off your nose to spite your face,” as my grandmother would always say. His lax attitude about education and authority rubbed off on my mother while she was a child. Really, what kid wants to go to school and follow all the rules if they don’t have to? Over time, my grandfather realized his irresponsibility was hurting his loved ones, so he became more and more hardworking, and he always encouraged me to go to college. Adults are such hypocrites. Since getting his act together, he’s worked for many newspapers and has written countless articles since going to college, but he currently works managing a team that sets up events for different companies.

Neither my grandmother nor my grandfather ever suggested to me or my mother that we couldn’t do something that was “only for men.” The lack of good father figures in my and my mother’s lives may have made us attention-seekers (we both need to have significant others or we get pretty depressed), but we never saw ourselves as inferior to men. I know that everyone should be educated on some basic level, and I know that either gender can do anything the other can because I’ve never been given a reason to believe otherwise. I have had only female leaders in my family since I was born. My great grandmother was the head of my whole family while I was young because my great grandfather wasn’t alive, and my grandmother was always the head of my immediate family because she’s generally strong willed and bossy. When I was a teenager my grandmother helped her mom make important decisions because she was my great grandmother’s favorite child. This was due to the fact that she lived the closest and was the one who helped my great grandmother the most, without ever suggesting that it was a burden to her. This favoritism began before my great grandfather died and even led to my mother being the favorite grandchild for both my great grandparents. Anyway, the strong circle of female characters has made me into the feminist I am today.

Conclusion

Overall, my entire family has become more open-minded about religion, invested in education, and egalitarian about gender roles. Not all of us have cut religion out of our lives, but rather some of us practice spirituality. As the importance of education has risen in society, most of us have adapted and pursued more schooling to improve our lives and get ourselves careers. All members of my family now have the autonomy to live their best life with or without a husband or a wife or children if they so choose. I believe this trend toward freedom of choice within each of my family’s branches will continue to increase as my aunts, uncles, and cousins start their own families and as I, one day, start my own family. We are all so connected to the world around us via the internet and media outlets that every person is absorbing ideas that they never would have thought of on their own. These ideas include everything from fashion trends to political statements, and the sharing of these ideas is multiplying the amount of new ideas that that are formed. Essentially the world is now a giant think-tank, anyone can find out anything these days with just the tap of a finger, and its increasing the independent nature of human beings. We no longer have to be what our parents have taught us to be, but we can be anything we want to be.