On the Structure of the Family:
The Filipino Family
They like to give a lot of importance to the family and family bonds. They often live together with their families in large groups. Many generations also live together with love, respect and happiness. The Filipino family typically consists of a father, mother, children, extended family members like grandparents, cousins and aunts and uncles. Overall, they are a close-knit structure.
In a traditional Filipino family, the father is considered the head and the provider of the family while the mother takes responsibility of the domestic needs and in charge of the emotional growth and values formation of the children. Children see their mothers soft and calm, while they regard their fathers as strong and the most eminent figure in the family.
The American Family
A family support system involving two married individuals providing care and stability for their biological offspring. However, nuclear family has become less prevalent, and alternative family forms have become more common. The family is created at birth and establishes ties across generations. Those generations, the extended family of aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins, can hold significant emotional and economic roles for the nuclear family.
Over time, the transtructure has had to adapt to very influential changes, including divorce and the introduction of single-parent families, teenage pregnancy and unwed mothers, same-sex marriage, and increased interest in adoption. Social movements such as the feminist movement and the stay-at-home father have contributed to the creation of alternative family forms, generating new versions of the American family.
On the Status of Women in the Family:
The Filipino Family
Women in the Philippines have traditionally controlled the family finances. In traditional societies, they have been responsible for planting, household chores, and child care. Women have traditionally been expected to be involved in nurturing tasks like education and service. Their role of a woman in many ways is defined by Catholicism. Women occupy a high place in society, politics and the professions. They enjoy equal social and political rights with men. The present-day Filipina is now more assertive. There is a growing women’s right movement.
The Filipina enjoys equality with men in many areas, notably in professional, business and career areas. As she goes through life, the Filipina may take he roles of daughter, sister, dalaga or young woman, wife, mother, mistress, professional, employer, employee, etc. The first few roles are more firmly entrenched in tradition and probably influence the more modem roles that a Filipina faces.
The American Family
Women make up almost half of the workforce. Few families have someone who can stay at home to take care of health emergencies, pick children up from school and supervise homework, or take an elderly parent to a doctor’s appointment. In half of all families with children, women are the primary or co-breadwinner. Low-income families are particularly likely to have all parents in the labor force. Women are the large majority of family caregivers, and in the absence of reliable family supports, too many women are forced to make difficult decisions between keeping their jobs and caring for their family members.
On Domestic Practices:
The Filipino Family
Filipinos highly value the presence of their families more than anything. Parents sometimes have difficulties letting go of their children. Grandparents are commonly seen living with their children in the Philippines. They enjoy their remaining lives inside their houses with their children and grandchildren looking after them. Filipinos have strong respect for elders. Children are taught from birth how to say “po” and “opo” to teach them how to properly respect their elders. These words are used to show respect to people of older level. Children fighting back or addressing parents or elder siblings with arrogant tone are not at all tolerated.
They are also not allowed to leave the house without their parents’ permission. Conservative families expect children to practice the kissing of hands or placing their parents or elder family members’ hand to their foreheads with the words “mano po” as a sort of greeting.
Filipino children are not obliged to get out of their homes unless they want to. Most of them keep their close relationship to their parents by staying at least before they get married.
Filipinos keep close connection with other relatives. They recognize them from 2nd degree to the last they can identify. As Filipinos say, “not being able to know a relative is like turning their backs from where they come from.”
The American Family
Mainstream culture in America is constantly evolving to reflect the predominant values and belief systems of the day, including what are often considered immutable social systems, such as the family. Instead of being one unit, the institution has been in a constant state of evolution since the founding of America itself.
Today, there really is no consistent definition of the American family. With single-parent households, varying family structures and fewer children, the modern family defies categorization. But these most recent changes have brought with them a nostalgia-based myth: that “divorce, domestic violence and single parenthood are recent phenomena (and) that, throughout most of American history, most families consisted of a breadwinner husband and a homemaker wife.” When the history of the American family is surveyed in-depth, it becomes apparent that this is not the case.
Constant change and adaptation are the only themes that remain consistent for families throughout America’s history. In fact, “recent changes in family life are only the latest in a series of disjunctive transformations in family roles, functions and dynamics that have occurred over the (centuries).”
there is a stronger emphasis and influence of family in asian cultures.