Genogram Significant Family Events Dolly

Genogram

Significant Family Events

Dolly is a Punjabi Muslim woman from Malaysia. When Dolly was 16 her family moved to Singapore, where she was raised. Dolly's genogram reveals a lot about the impact of family history, cultural values, class conflict, and gender roles on an individual. The most significant family events in Dolly's life include the death of her father and the disowning of her sister by the rest of the family. Expectations for an arranged marriage and limitations on women's work and educational prospects have significantly impacted Dolly. The dual pressures placed on her by her family and society continually challenge her identity as a Punjabi woman.

Dolly currently addresses issues related to her career and personal life. She will face tremendous challenges if Dolly has to decide between fulfilling the wishes of her family vs. her desires as an individual. Dolly's genogram offers valuable insight for all counselors interested in multicultural issues.

Although the pressure to conform to female gender roles continue to affect Dolly, a lot has changed since her grandfather passed away decades ago. Dolly notes that her grandfather was the last true patriarch in the family. He ascribed to traditional roles for women, which meant women were prohibited from receiving any education past the very early years. Women were expected to become part of their in-laws' family. All marriages were to be arranged; no one marries for love or outside of the Punjabi ethnic group. Moreover, marriages generally mean a union of individuals from similar social class backgrounds. In Dolly's case, her parents' marriage already subverted some of those traditional marriage values. Dolly's father was from a much lower socio-economic class than Dolly's mother. The marriage was arranged, but not fully approved of by all family members. In fact, Dolly noted that many of her maternal relatives want nothing to do with her side of the family because of her father's perceived low social standing. When they were married, Dolly's father was 21 and her mother was 20.

II. Themes and Issues

Dolly's father and mother broke other social codes. Dolly's father was especially interested in educating all of his female children, and he was the first patriarch in her family line to encourage his female children to attend school, receive a higher education, and work in worldly careers. Dolly's father also broke with tradition when he moved the family to Singapore. All of Dolly's extended relatives still live in Malaysia and in the same village. Dolly's family therefore significantly broke off from its roots. Dolly's genogram reveals severances of several different types of family ties. First, Dolly's dad broke away from traditional parenting styles. Second, Dolly's parents married outside of their caste even though it was an arranged marriage. Third, Dolly's dad educated all his children including the females. Fourth, Dolly's relatively small branch of the family moved away from the root family in Malaysia. All of these issues have created a gap, or a discontinuity, in the way Dolly feels about her relatives. Dolly's family is geographically and culturally removed from her more traditional relatives in Malaysia. Unlike most of her cousins, Dolly did not grow up amid a large extended family that includes dozens of cousins, aunts, and uncles. Although Dolly has five siblings and is close to all of them, her branch of the family is somewhat cut off from the remainder of her family -- both the maternal and paternal sides. The physical and emotional separation between her and her extended family in Malaysia have affected her identity and roles.

Furthermore, Dolly's siblings have also led unconventional lives with regards to family traditions. None of her siblings have married a fellow Punjabi. This has caused tremendous strife between her siblings and other family members. Dolly's older sisters have suffered the most from being isolated, due to their choice in marriage partners. The very fact that Dolly's sisters chose who they married represented a major shift from tradition. Dolly's oldest sister married a Pakistani man. Together they have four children, the oldest of which is 19 and the youngest of which is 9.

Dolly's next older sister married a Hindu man who happened to be from a lower caste. Like her sister, Dolly's older brother also married a woman outside of his caste, a Sikh woman from a poor family. These siblings have all broken from tradition in the same way that Dolly's parents broke a bit from their family traditions. It is possible that Dolly's parents paved the way for a more liberal interpretation of marriage, a broader set of choices for both boy and girl children. However, these choices have been very difficult for the family because of the isolation they experience.

Especially painful has been how the family disowned Dolly's sister. According to Dolly, the sister is viewed as if "dead." Dolly's sister married a Hindu man from a low caste. She therefore married outside of her religion, her culture, and her class. Dolly's older brother married a Sikh woman. Punjabi Muslims, Punjabi Sikhs, and Hindus have had some historical conflicts and so this represents an affront to her family traditions. Dolly's younger sister married a Caucasian man from the United States. Therefore, none of her siblings married a Punjabi. Dolly is not yet married. Her siblings' experiences are likely to affect how, when, why, and who she marries.

Besides the disowning of her sister, the other major life event for Dolly has been the death of her father. He died young, when he was only in his 50s. Dolly's mother has never remarried. The death of Dolly's father was not entirely unexpected, because his mother and all of his brothers had also died of a heart attack.

Dolly's father experienced a great degree of stress, in part related to his strained relations with his family. The move from Malaysia to Singapore was undertaken to offer both him and his children better prospects for jobs and education. Dolly's father may have been motivated by his own upbringing in a poor, illiterate family. Unlike Dolly's mother, her father grew up with financial stresses that he did not want his children to experience. When Dolly's dad started to earn more money in Singapore, he supported almost forty relatives back in Malaysia with his earnings. He was expected to do so, as a family obligation. Dolly and her sisters received an education equal to that of their brothers. They were the first females in their family to have an education. Moreover, none of the males in Dolly's father's family were educated either. This meant that Dolly's brothers were also the first in their family to receive an education. All of Dolly's male and female relatives on her father's side are poor and uneducated. The males work blue-collar jobs. This is the large family her father was supporting when he was still alive. When her father passed away, Dolly's brothers became heads of the household. They worked and attended school at the same time to support the family in their father's place. Their lack of connection with their relatives in Malaysia makes it less likely they will continue to support their more distant relatives unless they can.

III. Psychological Impact

Education, gender, and socioeconomic class are major themes in Dolly's family. These issues have had a direct affect on how individual family members create their identity. Education, gender, and socioeconomic class also affect interpersonal and familial relationships. Culture and religion combine to shape how individual family members view each other, themselves, and their communities. Worldviews are impacted by all of these interrelated themes. Until Dolly's father was born, few individuals broke significantly from family traditions. Individual family members lived according to the norms of race, class, and gender. Few if any had attempted to stretch their sociological boundaries.

However, Dolly's family has not been immune to historical events and realities. Around the time Dolly's grandfather passed away, the social, political, and economic landscape of Malaysia was changing dramatically. Dolly's father was born in a different world than the one his parents occupied. Opportunities for mobility, both geographic and socio-economic, opened. Dolly's father understood that moving his family to Singapore was a real possibility. In his father's time, such a move would have been unthinkable. The mobility of people has had some economic benefits, uplifting people from poverty. Yet as we can see with Dolly's family, mobility places a strain on families. Traditional families like Dolly's can be extraordinarily affected by dramatic changes. The move changes worldviews, exposing individuals to new thoughts, ideas, norms, and ways of living. Dolly's father also understood changes in gender roles and norms. Marriages no longer had to be arranged, although marrying out of love was still anathema to Dolly's parents. The education of women was once taboo, but by the time Dolly's parents married they could imagine raising their children in a more egalitarian society. The negative effects of moving a family from their village, severing ties, is offset by the positive impact it might have on future generations.

Dolly is the recipient of these complex themes. In fact, each of these issues is intertwined and impact Dolly psychologically. Estrangement has been a theme in Dolly's family, due to (a) her parents' decision to move them to Singapore; (b) her parents' decision to educate the women; (c) her sister's decision to marry outside of the religion and culture. Although Dolly is not herself ostracized, she has internalized her sister's isolation from the family. Her sister was already feeling like an outsider due to their living in Singapore and receiving an education. They were different from their female cousins, many of whom were suspicious. Some of their cousins believed that education would corrupt them, removing them further from their Muslim roots. Others simply believed that being educated would make them automatically wealthy.

Being wealthier than his family placed Dolly's father under a great degree of stress. He passed on this stress to his wife and children, who rarely saw him due to how hard he was working to send money home. When he died, the family did not have enough money. Dolly's father could not save anything for the family because of how much he was sending to his own brothers and sisters and their sons and daughters. Dolly's father was feeding a family of 40 people. When he died, Dolly's mother became dependent on her sons to take care of her. The family struggled emotionally as well as financially during this time. Dolly vowed to become financially independent when she was older and was grateful that her father worked hard to put his children through school, supporting the education of his female as well as his male children.

IV. Reframing

Dolly dealt not only with the death of her father but also that of her uncle and grandmother. The three deaths occurred all in the same six months. Dolly can reframe her father's death, using the opportunity to contemplate his legacy, what he did for her, and also how his death signaled positive growth for the family.

While he was alive, Dolly's father straddled two worlds. One world was at home in the village with his large extended family, his many siblings, nieces, nephews, uncles, aunts, and cousins. His life growing up was relatively simple. The family was poor but they counted on each other. Their family traditions gave them stability. Identity with their ethnic and religious faith also created family cohesiveness. However stable the family was, though, Dolly's father knew that change and growth were necessary.

Dolly's father took huge risks during the course of his life. Those risks now reverberate in Dolly's own life. The first risk was moving his family to Singapore. Because Dolly's mother did not receive much emotional or financial support from her family, it was relatively easy for her to leave. Women traditionally lived with their spouse's family, taking care of the mother-in-law and performing household chores. Dolly's mother was from an educated family, though. She welcomed the move to a modern city like Singapore and hoped to raise her children in an environment more tolerant of women's education and upward social mobility. Thankfully, Dolly's father shared the same values. Although their marriage was arranged, Dolly's parents loved each other. When Dolly's father died, her mother was devastated.

In Singapore, Dolly's father worked hard to earn more income and status. His work paid off, and he was able to not only support his growing family but also his extended family back in Malaysia. This showed how dedicated Dolly's father was to family traditions, even while he broke from them. He skillfully balanced past and future, custom and progress. Dolly has inherited her father's ability to respect tradition while moving forward. She and her siblings are open-minded, interested in making the world a better place for their own children and grandchildren.

Dolly's father worked hard even while knowing that one day he might die and leave his family with little to no life savings. When he did die, Dolly wondered if he knew how much of an impact he made on her and her sisters. Dolly would not be educated or able to work if it were not for her father. She might have been already assigned to an arranged marriage. In spite of the troubles that have befallen her disowned sister, Dolly values the contributions her father made to the females in the household. Dolly's father remained intensely traditional even while he was espousing progressive values.

Dolly uses the death of her father -- and also the deaths of her uncle and grandmother that took place the same year -- as a catalyst for growth. She can contemplate what her father envisioned when he encouraged his daughters to pursue careers instead of asking them to lead the traditional lives that his sisters and mother lived. She knows that her father risked isolating himself from his family so that she and her sisters could have human rights and liberties. Dolly also knows her father hoped that his children would retain some of their traditional values and heritage while they lived in the modern world.

Dolly will carry a piece of her father with her always. No matter who Dolly chooses to marry, she knows that her children will be afforded even more opportunities than she had because of what her father was willing to do. Like her father, Dolly can combine respect for her family's traditions with the promise of a better future. Her father was a pivotal figure in Dolly's life, and played a pivotal role in the family history. Before him, the females in the family were uneducated. After him, females in her family had access to education.

V. What Would I Change

Dolly's story asks us to think about how families can retain strong ties across geographic, generational, ideological, and cultural boundaries. How can estranged families like Dolly's rediscover their common ground or develop mutual respect? Perhaps more frequent visits to other family members might help. However, a traditional family like Dolly's is frequently intolerant of progress. Visiting might create more problems then it solves, reminding each side of their feelings of bitterness. It might be impossible for some family members to accept change. Dolly's sister might forever be disowned. Dolly and others like her must choose between repressive social norms and her family. The choice is not easy.