SHAPING YOUR FAMILY’S FUTURE


CHAPTER 5 Skill-Building Genogram Exercise


Your homework for this chapter will take far more than a few days. In fact, it might take years to complete it. Now that you’ve worked through the ways that your family of origin impacted your views of faith, yourself, marriage, family life, and the broader community, it’s time for you to take all you’ve learned and launch yourself into the next stage of your life as a person and as a parent. The genogram that you are completing can be the springboard for ongoing growth.


In thinking of how your family relates to the larger community, a similar kind of project that you might consider completing is called an ecogram. Like a genogram, an ecogram looks at the relationships and factors that shape you and your behavior, both individually and as a family. However, the ecogram turns attention to social factors outside of the family that affect the family and the individuals in it. If you complete an ecogram, you will look into schools and extracurricular activities, churches and social organizations, as well as doctors, jobs, economic conditions, environmental disasters, and everything that influences your family’s life. Even if you don’t forge ahead with that project, your genogram will have laid the foundation for you to understand the potential impact that the larger world has on each family unit.


GENOGRAM—STEP 6


1. As you were growing up, to what degree did you feel your family was involved in the larger community: a lot, a little, or not at all? Describe the community that served as the social network for your family. What kinds of groups did your family contribute to or rely upon for help? How involved were you personally in social groups outside of your family? What social groups were most important in shaping you and which ones meant the most to you at the time?


2. How did your family view popular culture and its influence on you? Was the culture in which you lived just taken for granted? Was it something your family talked about, but accepted because it could not be changed? Or, did your family view culture as something not to be trusted, an enemy to fight against? Can you think of a story from your past that best illustrates what you remember about this?


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APPENDIX B


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