Josh Penaflor

AB Comm 1
Family Issues
Assignment 1

A.) I, along with my two siblings grew up in an environment in which our parents were mostly
absent. As my mother was a criminal attorney in private practice, in our youth she would often
come home very late and stressed because of the heavy workload she handled on a day to day
basis. My father who wasn’t employed, often accompanied her in her doings acting as a security
precaution since my mother primarily dealt with drug related cases. Due to these circumstances
we were mostly taken care of by our maids and drivers growing up. Though I wouldn't say they
raised us since we often replaced the personnel in our employment. This led to a distant
relationship between us kids and parents and us developing independent styles of personalities.
When my Father passed away when I was 12 due to a freak gun related accident, My mother
went into a complete emotional breakdown and was hospitalized. Me being the eldest child had
to guide my two other siblings along as we facilitated and attended our father’s wake without a
parental figure. This experience further solidified our sense of emotional independence or rather
sense of not being emotionally dependent on family.

B.) Our strained relationship with our mother due to our almost non-existent communication
dynamic.

C.) This issue has led to us not being able to converse with our parents; albeit for small, shallow
topics as no sense of comfort and connection was established during our formative years. The
issue has also become a source of conflict between us parents and children. As in our later
years we would often go out without permission, develop our own personal vices and such with
no discussion with our mother. Not necessarily as an act of rebellion but rather because we
never felt the need to much to their dismay. This would then develop into a bigger strain
between our relationship with our mother as she wasn’t able to understand us and vice versa.

D.) My mother has already remarried since then. Me and my younger brother are now in our
20’s while my sister is 16. Over time we’ve learned to respect her and took it upon ourselves to
try and understand the circumstances we faced in our childhood. Also the adjustment of
learning to live with a new parental figure has greatly helped us develop a new perspective in
dealing with and communicating with our mother. As our stepfather was/is a prominent figure in
our government, the transition of treating him almost as an authoritative figure into a parent was
identical to the transition of attitude we had towards our mother.