The Family Spectrum

We are all part of some sort of family, normal or not. But what about the families outside blood. How similar are our different families? Although it can be argued that gaining respect in a school, work or any type of environment can be achieved by the skill and contribution you provide to the community, most of these communities work like families, where the longer you have been there, the higher you move up the family spectrum.

Let’s start with something most of us have been part of at some point in our lives, School. Generally, we start school from a very young age, and we start to make connections we keep for most of our lives. A study by the National institute of mental health, states that a child's brain is most absorbent at 3 main points in their lives. Two of which are during our school lives. The way we make connections to our family members is almost identical to how we make connections to school friends. “In a way, schools are like families. The principles act like the parents. The teachers represent Nanny’s or grandparents or in some cases, parents, and the children are well, the children.” (John Cleese) If you think about it, that is quite an accurate representation. Unless you were homeschooled, in which case, family and school for you would have been the same. It’s true that families and schools are not exactly the same thing. Family is something you stick with for the rest of your lives, and school is just a small portion of your life. But the connections you make in schools are almost like having a second family, and once we graduate school, we get welcomed to whole new types of family. Just like in our families, the longer we stay at a specific school, the higher we move up the spectrum.

This applies to most of the communities we take part in during our lifetime, not just schools. Once we grow up and get a job, we are part of a new community. This doesn’t mean we change families at every chapter of our lives. It just means we often take part in more than one or two. “Often adults aging 22-28 years old who are in their first big jobs in their lifetime, get treated as the children. In fact, whenever one joins a new job or community, they are generally the children, amongst the people on the same level.”(Robin Skynner) Here he is explaining how when you get a starting job in an office, you would be treated as the child in that office or section. Just like you get to parents or grandparents in families, in jobs you get promoted, or even of you don’t, when you are there for a longer time, you start to gain respect and move up the family spectrum. (Arun Rath, NY times) Retiring from a job is like dying. You retire when you are done with the spectrum. When you no longer have anything to contribute, and when you have learned everything that you can learn and gone as high as possible. Sometimes you leave the spectrum at an unexpected early stage, for instance if you get fired, or you get expelled from a  school. This is sort of like an unexpected death, and doesn’t happen that often. Another way you can leave the family is when you leave home, for new opportunities. This happens when you change jobs, or schools.

The family spectrum is essentially a big part of any community. It has been argued that sometimes people can join at a higher level from the start, such as CEO, or parent. But that applies to families too, as Step-Parents work the same way. Step Parents, essentially skip the lower levels of a certain family spectrum and join at the top. But they still need to gain the respect of the people below, above and at the same level as them. In schools “playground credit” is achieved not by being skilled and starting higher, it’s achieved by being loyal and there for a long time. (Mircea Agabrian) Step parents have also taken part in the lower levels of a different spectrum, essentially making them experienced but still new to their current position.

The family spectrum doesn’t always apply to how successful you are in a community, but to how much respect you are given in one. It applies to all of our various encounters during our lifetimes and will till our death. We will continue to climb up the spectrum until we can no longer climb higher.

Bibliography

• Skynner, A. C. Robin., and John Cleese. "Look Mummy, I'm Chairman of International Consolidated." Life and How to Survive It. New York: Norton, 1994. N. pag. Print.

• Rath, Arun. "How Jobs Are like Your Second Family." The New York Times. New York Times, 18 Mar. 2013. Web. 9 June 2016.
• Agabrian, Mircea (2006). Relationships Between School and Family: The Adolescents' Perspective [83 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 8(1), Art. 20, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0701208.

- vir