Families come in many shapes and sizes, from rich to poor, from Brazil all the way to Hong Kong, meaning that they come from different cultures, races, ethnicity and economic statuses. One particular essay written by Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian has pointed it out. In their essay they argue that the organization, function and ultimately the success of families is based on the socioeconomic status they may have rather than race or culture thus, calling for social policy aimed directly at rectifying economic disadvantages in order to support family success.

But it seems that their argument is actually what families these days need to hear. A family doesn’t need money and class in order to be successful in today’s world and race and culture isn’t going to stop them. Sometimes people blame factors that have nothing to do with their problems in the way to achieve success, making excuses for what they think isn’t reachable, family success. Gerstel’s and Sarkisians’s essay expounds in many other works that shows examples that family ties and their support are the most important thing there is apart from anything else for a family to succeed, for it brings self confidence and support.

GB 2 Many times people are portrayed here and there as Americans, for all families have the same opportunities to get some success if they can just find some common ground to support each other, saying, that there is no need for the nuclear-type of family . As in the narrative by Roger Jack, “An Indian Story”, portrays a form of patriarchal family, where the child of the story has lost his mother, when he was younger, and even though his dad remarried and has other children, he decides to live separate, living and getting raised, mostly, by his aunt.

He eventually grows up, goes to college and becomes a good member of society and coming from an Indian family, that had no much of a status to begin with, Jack is able to be successful despite his race, culture, etc. Jack isn’t in the typical family America is portrayed with in order to be distinguished in the modern world. Even though he lives separate from his mom and dad and he decides to live with his aunt, he’s on the road “to success. ” He grows up to have support from different members of his dad’s family showing that they are there for him always along with his aunt and uncle.

This shows that in order to be successful, there is no need for money, specific race type, or socioeconomic class, but rather strong family ties to guide and support different members of a family by bringing self confidence and support, just as Gerstel and Sarkisian state in their essay. Strong family ties really help when a member of a family needs it. And they can overcome and fight even in the times of most adversity. Family ties can shape people by the values and things they may learn from each other. Something like this would be what happened in France for example.

Saint-Domingue planter Aimi?? -Benjamin Fleuriau left colonialism behind when he returned to his hometown La Rochelle: he literally brought some of the problems he had with him. Five of his mixed-race children by his GB 3 past slave Jeanne arrived with or soon after their white father. “The very existence of this family brought many problems to the relation between blackness and slavery” (Palmer), and for both him and his children, family ties shaped their experience of race and status. In a way, this brought growing racial paranoia in France and legislation ended up regulating all people of color.

But Fleuriau and his daughter, Marie-Jeanne, ended up being a privileged family over race, “.. as a means of carving out a position of autonomy for themselves in French society… ” (Palmer), even if in very different ways and for very different reasons, in doing so, they shaped what the category “family” meant in France. So although they were of color and had it tough in France, they were able to come out of it and establish themselves as members of society. And it was all because their support and love for each other.

Family is very important and more than a “nuclear family” can be, it requires support and provision. This is very important, for example, if people in a family were sick and needed to take care of. The transition into care appears to be inconsistent despite the need for family members to ask questions and discuss the impact of the condition. “Relatives reported that as a family and as individuals they faced significant challenges and were in great need of support at times, but reflected that they would have found it very difficult to accept.

” (Bowen). Relatives were also not really sure what type of support would have helped for their loved one. This shows again the importance of family and the unimportance of race or culture to care and provide for each other. For care providers, there needs to be a shift from the traditional health care professional GB4 ‘patient-centered’ (Bowen) mindset towards more practical family-centered approaches and steps to encourage this are expressed. For families to be successful they don’t really need much. First of all, what is “success”?

The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted that is. So success doesn’t really mean that money, big houses, cars and friendship with “classy families” are going to make families achieve success, for success can be getting that promotion at work to keep on paying the bills, or that help a parent gives his/her child and eventually he/she gets an A+ on a test. But success in America is almost unreachable and the so called “American dream” an actual dream to everyone that doesn’t have a 100 thousand yearly income.

Family success is reachable for everybody that wants to achieve something in order to get their family out to a better start than what the parents had. It doesn’t matter if people are Asian, Mexican or French, if they come from a culture where they must get the highest grades to bring honor to a family or not, but the ties and relations people have with their families. Let’s say a million dollar family business goes wrong and they lose everything, they all start getting a piece of each other and end up alone and bitter.

They have no one to turn because their family ties were weak and revolved around something as corrupt as money. Family ties are the most important things a family must have in order to achieve a level of success, no matter from where there are, from what race or culture they are. Every American family has the capacity of being successful and it’s not as hard and impossible as American society portrays it, with big houses, fancy cars or money.

All that is needed to achieve success within a family is the family ties. Work Cited Bowen, C. “Advanced Multiple Sclerosis And The Psychological Impact On Families. ”

Psychology and Health. January 2011. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost. Web. 1 February 2012. Gerstel, Naomi, and Natalia Sarkisian. “The Color of Family Ties: Race, Class, Gender, and Extended Family Involvement. ” Rereading America: Cultural Contexts For Critical Thinking and Writing. Ed. Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie Lisle.

New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010. Print. Jack, Roger. “An Indian Story. ” Rereading America: Cultural Contexts For Critical Thinking and Writing. Ed. Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie Lisle. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010. Print. Palmer, Jennifer L. “What’s In a Name? Mixed-Race Familes and Resistance to Racial Codification in Eighteen-Century France. ” French Historical Studies. June 2010. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost. Web. 1 February 2012.