family ties essay example

Essay about Family: What It Is and How to Nail It

Humans naturally seek belonging within families, finding comfort in knowing someone always cares. Yet, families can also stir up insecurities and mental health struggles.

Family dynamics continue to intrigue researchers across different fields. Every year, new studies explore how these relationships shape our minds and emotions.

In this article, our dissertation service will guide you through writing a family essay. You can also dive into our list of topics for inspiration and explore some standout examples to spark your creativity.

What is Family Essay

A family essay takes a close look at the bonds and experiences within families. It's a common academic assignment, especially in subjects like sociology, psychology, and literature.

So, what's involved exactly? Simply put, it's an exploration of what family signifies to you. You might reflect on cherished family memories or contemplate the portrayal of families in various media.

What sets a family essay apart is its personal touch. It allows you to express your own thoughts and experiences. Moreover, it's versatile – you can analyze family dynamics, reminisce about family customs, or explore other facets of familial life.

If you're feeling uncertain about how to write an essay about family, don't worry; you can explore different perspectives and select topics that resonate with various aspects of family life.

Tips For Writing An Essay On Family Topics

A family essay typically follows a free-form style, unless specified otherwise, and adheres to the classic 5-paragraph structure. As you jot down your thoughts, aim to infuse your essay with inspiration and the essence of creative writing, unless your family essay topics lean towards complexity or science.

Here are some easy-to-follow tips from our essay service experts:

• Focus on a Specific Aspect: Instead of a broad overview, delve into a specific angle that piques your interest, such as exploring how birth order influences sibling dynamics or examining the evolving role of grandparents in modern families.
• Share Personal Anecdotes: Start your family essay introduction with a personal touch by sharing stories from your own experiences. Whether it's about a favorite tradition, a special trip, or a tough time, these stories make your writing more interesting.
• Use Real-life Examples: Illustrate your points with concrete examples or anecdotes. Draw from sources like movies, books, historical events, or personal interviews to bring your ideas to life.
• Explore Cultural Diversity: Consider the diverse array of family structures across different cultures. Compare traditional values, extended family systems, or the unique hurdles faced by multicultural families.
• Take a Stance: Engage with contentious topics such as homeschooling, reproductive technologies, or governmental policies impacting families. Ensure your arguments are supported by solid evidence.
• Delve into Psychology: Explore the psychological underpinnings of family dynamics, touching on concepts like attachment theory, childhood trauma, or patterns of dysfunction within families.
• Emphasize Positivity: Share uplifting stories of families overcoming adversity or discuss strategies for nurturing strong, supportive family bonds.
• Offer Practical Solutions: Wrap up your essay by proposing actionable solutions to common family challenges, such as fostering better communication, achieving work-life balance, or advocating for family-friendly policies.

Family Essay Topics

When it comes to writing, essay topics about family are often considered easier because we're intimately familiar with our own families. The more you understand about your family dynamics, traditions, and experiences, the clearer your ideas become.

If you're feeling uninspired or unsure of where to start, don't worry! Below, we have compiled a list of good family essay topics to help get your creative juices flowing. Whether you're assigned this type of essay or simply want to explore the topic, these suggestions from our history essay writer are tailored to spark your imagination and prompt meaningful reflection on different aspects of family life.

So, take a moment to peruse the list. Choose the essay topics about family that resonate most with you. Then, dive in and start exploring your family's stories, traditions, and connections through your writing.

• Supporting Family Through Tough Times
• Staying Connected with Relatives
• Empathy and Compassion in Family Life
• Strengthening Bonds Through Family Gatherings
• Quality Time with Family: How Vital Is It?
• Navigating Family Relationships Across Generations
• Learning Kindness and Generosity in a Large Family
• Communication in Healthy Family Dynamics
• Forgiveness in Family Conflict Resolution
• Building Trust Among Extended Family
• Defining Family in Today's World
• Understanding Nuclear Family: Various Views and Cultural Differences
• Understanding Family Dynamics: Relationships Within the Family Unit
• What Defines a Family Member?
• Modernizing the Nuclear Family Concept
• Exploring Shared Beliefs Among Family Members
• Evolution of the Concept of Family Love Over Time
• Examining Family Expectations
• Modern Standards and the Idea of an Ideal Family
• Life Experiences and Perceptions of Family Life
• Genetics and Extended Family Connections
• Utilizing Family Trees for Ancestral Links
• The Role of Younger Siblings in Family Dynamics
• Tracing Family History Through Oral Tradition and Genealogy
• Tracing Family Values Through Your Family Tree
• Exploring Your Elder Sister's Legacy in the Family Tree
• Connecting Daily Habits to Family History
• Documenting and Preserving Your Family's Legacy
• Navigating Online Records and DNA Testing for Family History
• Tradition as a Tool for Family Resilience
• Involving Family in Daily Life to Maintain Traditions
• Creating New Traditions for a Small Family
• The Role of Traditions in Family Happiness
• Family Recipes and Bonding at House Parties
• Quality Time: The Secret Tradition for Family Happiness
• The Joy of Cousins Visiting for Christmas
• Including Family in Birthday Celebrations
• Balancing Traditions and Unconditional Love
• Building Family Bonds Through Traditions

Looking for Speedy Assistance With Your College Essays?

Reach out to our skilled writers, and they'll provide you with a top-notch paper that's sure to earn an A+ grade in record time!

Family Essay Example

For a better grasp of the essay on family, our team of skilled writers has crafted a great example. It looks into the subject matter, allowing you to explore and understand the intricacies involved in creating compelling family essays. So, check out our meticulously crafted sample to discover how to craft essays that are not only well-written but also thought-provoking and impactful.

Final Outlook

In wrapping up, let's remember: a family essay gives students a chance to showcase their academic skills and creativity by sharing personal stories. However, it's important to stick to academic standards when writing about these topics. We hope our list of topics sparked your creativity and got you on your way to a reflective journey. And if you hit a rough patch, you can just ask us to ' do my essay for me ' for top-notch results!

Having Trouble with Your Essay on the Family?

Our expert writers are committed to providing you with the best service possible in no time!

FAQs on Writing an Essay about Family

Family essays seem like something school children could be assigned at elementary schools, but family is no less important than climate change for our society today, and therefore it is one of the most central research themes.

Below you will find a list of frequently asked questions on family-related topics. Before you conduct research, scroll through them and find out how to write an essay about your family.

How to Write an Essay About Your Family History?

How to write an essay about a family member, how to write an essay about family and roots, how to write an essay about the importance of family.

Daniel Parker

is a seasoned educational writer focusing on scholarship guidance, research papers, and various forms of academic essays including reflective and narrative essays. His expertise also extends to detailed case studies. A scholar with a background in English Literature and Education, Daniel’s work on EssayPro blog aims to support students in achieving academic excellence and securing scholarships. His hobbies include reading classic literature and participating in academic forums.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

Related Articles

Essay on Importance of Family for Students and Children

500 words essay on importance of family.

In today’s world when everything is losing its meaning, we need to realize the importance of family more than ever. While the world is becoming more modern and advanced, the meaning of family and what stands for remains the same.

A family is a group of people who are related by blood or heritage. These people are linked not only by blood but also by compassion, love, and support. A person’s character and personality are shaped by his or her family. There are various forms of families in today’s society. It is further subdivided into a tight and extended family (nuclear family, single parent, step-family, grandparent, cousins, etc.)

Family – A synonym for trust, comfort, love, care, happiness and belonging. Family is the relationship that we share from the moment we are born into this world. People that take care of us and help us grow are what we call family, and they become lifelines for us to live. Family members have an important role in deciding an individual’s success or failure in life since they provide a support system and source of encouragement.

It does not matter what kind of family one belongs to. It is all equal as long as there are caring and acceptance. You may be from a joint family, same-sex partner family, nuclear family, it is all the same. The relationships we have with our members make our family strong. We all have unique relations with each family member. In addition to other things, a family is the strongest unit in one’s life.

Things That Strengthens The Family

A family is made strong through a number of factors. The most important one is of course love. You instantly think of unconditional love when you think of family. It is the first source of love you receive in your life It teaches you the meaning of love which you carry on forever in your heart.

Secondly, we see that loyalty strengthens a family. When you have a family, you are devoted to them. You stick by them through the hard times and celebrate in their happy times. A family always supports and backs each other. They stand up for each other in front of a third party trying to harm them proving their loyalty.

Most importantly, the things one learns from their family brings them closer. For instance, we learn how to deal with the world through our family first. They are our first school and this teaching strengthens the bond. It gives us reason to stand by each other as we share the same values.

No matter what the situation arises, your family will never leave you alone. They will always stand alongside you to overcome the hardships in life. If anyone is dealing with any kind of trouble, even a small talk about it to the family will make ones’ mind lighter and will give them a sense of hope, an inner sense of strength to fight those problems.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Importance of Family

One cannot emphasize enough on the importance of family. They play a great role in our lives and make us better human beings. The one lucky enough to have a family often do not realize the value of a family.

However, those who do not have families know their worth. A family is our source of strength. It teaches us what relationships mean. They help us create meaningful relationships in the outside world. The love we inherit from our families, we pass on to our independent relationships.

Moreover, families teach us better communication . When we spend time with our families and love each other and communicate openly, we create a better future for ourselves. When we stay connected with our families, we learn to connect better with the world.

Similarly, families teach us patience. It gets tough sometimes to be patient with our family members. Yet we remain so out of love and respect. Thus, it teaches us patience to deal better with the world. Families boost our confidence and make us feel loved. They are the pillars of our strength who never fall instead keep us strong so we become better people.

We learn the values of love, respect, faith, hope, caring, cultures, ethics, traditions, and everything else that concerns us through our families. Being raised in a loving household provides a solid foundation for anyone.

People develop a value system inside their family structure in addition to life lessons. They learn what their family considers to be proper and wrong, as well as what the community considers to be significant.

Families are the epicentres of tradition. Many families keep on traditions by sharing stories from the past over the years. This allows you to reconnect with family relatives who are no longer alive. A child raised in this type of household feels as if they are a part of something bigger than themselves. They’ll be proud to be a part of a community that has had ups and downs. Communities thrive when families are strong. This, in turn, contributes to a robust society.

Q.1 What strengthens a family?

A.1 A family’s strength is made up of many factors. It is made of love that teaches us to love others unconditionally. Loyalty strengthens a family which makes the members be loyal to other people as well. Most importantly, acceptance and understanding strengthen a family.

Q.2 Why is family important?

A.2 Families are very important components of society and people’s lives. They teach us a lot about life and relationships. They love us and treat us valuably. They boost our self-confidence and make us feel valued. In addition, they teach us patience to deal with others in a graceful and accepting manner.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

Importance of Family in Society Essay

The family institution has always played an essential role in forming society, civilization, and culture. The definition of family has changed throughout the history, and the reason for this was various factors: from ancient religious concepts and philosophies to modern political ideologies and economics. However, this essay provides a look at a family from a particular perspective. The family both forms and changes the worldview of parents who have taken responsibility for people close to them, and it brings up the children born in it as well. Thus, a family is two or more people united by love for each other and, most importantly, by strength and will to take responsibility for each other.

Family values, in their essence, have several elements necessary to create a strong foundation of mutual understanding and dialogue within the group. The central family values ​​include, for example, internal ones: the unity of culture and faith in the family, mutual understanding, love, and support between parents and children. Moreover, dialogue between all family members is significant because mutual understanding and communication are the essential elements of any strong relationship between people. External values are of no lesser meaning; these imply autonomy from the influence of the state and information coming from mass media. Additionally, public school education, school clubs, communities of children, and other activities imposed by the state fall into this category. The influence of these organizations alienates a person from the family, making them operators of political interests that encourage fragmentation within small communities and ideological centralization. To summarize, family values ​​comprise adherence to its firm foundation, consisting of love, shared views and dialogue within it, and autonomy from external influences outside it.

Next, responsibility plays an essential role in the formation of a healthy family. First of all, the authority of the parents as the prominent family members is relevant to this question. Family life for many modern people seems to be a heavy burden, which is easier to quit than to continue the long and challenging building of a strong union. This view comes from numerous factors inherent in modern society, mired in infantilism, skepticism, and reckless atheism, depriving a person of any responsibility to himself and community. Parents are responsible not only for their partners or children. More importantly, parents are responsible for themselves and their will, which keeps the family together. Thus, each parent’s responsibility is to be a person who can maintain the family’s coherence.

On the other hand, children have a colossal responsibility before their families. Sometimes this responsibility is higher than the parental responsibility even. Children might not meet the parents’ expectations to a great extent but instead accept the proper care, time, and resources that have been given to them. However, children succumb to the most crucial test of their will due to childish frivolity and youthful maximalism and the strength of those convictions that their parents helped them find. Therefore, children are responsible for themselves and the proper use of the family’s opportunities, which is sometimes difficult and requires discipline.

As to the discipline, there is a misconception that it should be supported by a steady hand, violence, and emotional pressure on children and partners. This approach has shown its inconsistency throughout the entire history of civilized humankind. For example, research from Howarth et al. (272) reveals that domestic violence “is associated with a significant risk to children’s physical and psychological safety and well‐being across the lifespan.” The key to maintaining discipline without aggression and trauma is dialogue, which includes communication, joint problem solving and discussing essential family members’ life details. In brief, a key to healthy discipline is dialogue instead of punishment and other violent actions among family members.

As a result, a particular foundation is needed for conducting a dialogue and determining the moral and ethical conditions. As such, religion dominates the family and acts as a vital factor in the consolidation and direction of family members’ development. In this essay, the suggested belief system is Christianity for several reasons. The basis of religion is love and compassion; this and the simple way of explaining humanistic values and Christian life in a community imply the importance of dialogue. Faith within the family allows for a discussion within the framework of common morality and ethics, allowing each member to reveal the essence of their thoughts and ideas. Thus, religion creates a moral and ethical consensus in the family, creating a general framework for discourse and setting its vector.

It could be seen that such a perception of the institution of the family is prevalent. In this context, the words of William Bennett (par. 5) are relevant: “it is the values ​​that a child is taught that will more determine that child’s fate”. Looking at modern society, one can notice that the influence of the family is the most critical factor of the personality, both in its initial period and in later life. In his article, Bennett reveals the issue of the family from the point of view, nowadays defined as “conservative.” This is reflected in criticism of the school system and popular culture in the lives of children. In short, Bennett considers the family’s moral and ethical ideals and imperative concepts to be the family’s foundation.

In addition, Bennett also expresses ideas about what positively affects the family in general and children in particular. His ideas include a strong religious and cultural unity within the family. Furthermore, he emphasizes a responsible and humanistic approach of parents to the upbringing of their children, i.e., guidance and upbringing with love and care, instead of harsh prescription and aggression. It also describes a critical element of the family: two parents, especially a father, in the process of raising a child. This is explained by the fact that in modern society, the irresponsible approach of parents to conceiving a child and forming a family leads to the absence of paternal guidance and maternal care. It is this that most fully corresponds to the definition of family discussed in this essay. Hence, Bennett’s position insists on the fundamental factors of family formation in the face of a humanistic approach and love and the presence of fatherhood and motherhood in education.

In conclusion, the family is the foundation of society, allowing an individual to live harmoniously, develop and stick together with people close to her, based on personal responsibility, love, and mutual understanding. Family values ​​are essential since they create relationships in a group, allowing the family to conduct a dialogue and understand each other. Importantly, dialogue requires mutual support; discipline and faith are critical for the comfortable living of several individuals in a unity named family. It is generally held together by the responsibility of both parents and children and the humanism and communication of its members.

Works Cited

Bennet, William. “Remarks by William Bennet — The Forerunner.” The Forerunner . Web.

Howarth, Emma, et al. “Towards an Ecological Understanding of Readiness to Engage With Interventions for Children Exposed to Domestic Violence and Abuse: Systematic Review and Qualitative Synthesis of Perspectives of Children, Parents and Practitioners.” Health & Social Care in the Community , vol. 27, no. 2, 2018, pp. 271–92. Crossref . Web.

• Business Plan of “L.k Bennett”
• The "Should Drugs Be Legalized?" Essay by Bennett
• "Should Drugs Be Legalized?" Essay by Bennett
• Experience and Resilience: Connection
• Personal Prosocial Behaviors During the Day
• Elusive Nature of Dreams: A Personal Exploration
• Cultural Competence and Cultural Humility
• Personal Experience With the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, October 23). Importance of Family in Society. https://ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-family-in-society/

"Importance of Family in Society." IvyPanda , 23 Oct. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-family-in-society/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Importance of Family in Society'. 23 October.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Importance of Family in Society." October 23, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-family-in-society/.

1. IvyPanda . "Importance of Family in Society." October 23, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-family-in-society/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Importance of Family in Society." October 23, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-family-in-society/.

• Entertainment
• Environment
• Information Science and Technology
• Social Issues

Home Essay Samples Life

Essay Samples on Family

This area of study will be relevant to students majoring in Education, Psychology, Healthcare, and Sociology. Those learners who must compose essays on family may deal with anything from legislation and divorce issues to domestic abuse and family relations all over the world. In case you are not able to provide an excellent paper on family, consider exploring your grading rubric again and think about something that inspires you. Think about family values and provide your readers with interesting facts or statistical information that is worth researching. When all else fails, take a look at our free family essay examples. These cover a wide range of subjects that will be suitable for educators, legal specialists, sociologists, and psychologists, among others. We even have case studies and family examples from famous literary works. Combine several examples as you compose your own to provide an even greater scope of a subject. Remember to provide citations for every idea that is not yours as a way to avoid plagiarism issues. When you explore our free family essay samples, see how to structure your writing by using the final part as a place to set a moral lesson or create a call to action.

How Does Family Influence Your Identity

Family is a powerful force that weaves the threads of our identity. The relationships, values, and experiences within our family unit play a significant role in shaping who we become. This essay delves into how family influences our identity, from the formation of core beliefs...

• Personal Identity

Cause and Effect of Broken Family: Exploring the Impact on Individuals and Society

A broken family, characterized by divorce, separation, or strained relationships among family members, can have profound effects on individuals and society as a whole. This essay delves into the cause and effect of broken families, and examines the far-reaching consequences on emotional well-being, academic performance,...

What Does Family Mean to You: A Lifelong Treasure

Family is more than just a group of people who share a bloodline or a last name. It is a profound and intricate web of connections, emotions, and shared experiences that shape us into who we are. When asked, "What does family mean to you?"...

• Family Values

My Family: Exploring the Roots of Love and Unity

Family is the cornerstone of our lives, the haven where we find solace, support, and unconditional love. As I reflect upon the significance of my family, I am reminded of the deep bonds that tie us together and the invaluable lessons I've learned from each...

• Family Relationships

How I Celebrate Christmas: One Holiday, Two Celebrations

Christmas is a cherished time for my family, where we celebrate the season in two distinct ways. In this essay I want to share how I celebrate Christmas and discuss the intricacies of each tradition, as they hold a special place in our hearts. Celebrating...

Stressed out with your paper?

Consider using writing assistance:

• 100% unique papers
• 3 hrs deadline option

A Reflection on What Family Means to Me

Most of us have the same description of the family, we describe it as a group of people with a relationship by blood or they are biologically connected to each other. The ideal family always starts with father and mother then followed by one or...

• Marriage and Family

Ethnographic Study Of One’s Family Origin

One may ask the question, exactly what is a family? A family is like a house, build on a strong foundation. The foundation is like the ancestors and grandparents, built to hold everything together. If the foundation breaks, then so does the family. The teachings...

• Ethnography

The Novel "Everyday Use" By Alice Walker: A Literary Analysis

In the story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker introduces two sisters with opposite personalities and unique views on heritage. The purpose of this essay is to conduct a literary analysis of the story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker.  Maggie and Dee -  different personalities, contrast...

• Alice Walker
• Everyday Use

My Experience Of Savoring Traditional Guatemalan Breakfast During The Family Visit

The last Sunday morning before I came to MSU my family and I decided to get together for breakfast. Since it was one of the last days that I was going to be in Guatemala we decided to make the traditional Guatemalan breakfast, the “Desayuno...

• Cultural Identity

Semiotic Analysis Of The American Family Image In Family Guy

The idea of family shifts as currently construed significantly differs from the notions held for the typical 50s family. For anybody who has watched the popular TV show Family Guy, representation of ideal family behaviors are but a façade. The expectations for a perfect family...

Mixing Reality with Dreams in Inception

Apart from Cobb’s own family, Saito plays a critical part in suggesting that in the ending, Cobb has returned to reality. This can be shown through the repetition and the correlation of few scenes. To start off, the lines “...to become an old man, filled...

Best topics on Family

1. How Does Family Influence Your Identity

2. Cause and Effect of Broken Family: Exploring the Impact on Individuals and Society

3. What Does Family Mean to You: A Lifelong Treasure

4. My Family: Exploring the Roots of Love and Unity

5. How I Celebrate Christmas: One Holiday, Two Celebrations

6. A Reflection on What Family Means to Me

7. Ethnographic Study Of One’s Family Origin

8. The Novel “Everyday Use” By Alice Walker: A Literary Analysis

9. My Experience Of Savoring Traditional Guatemalan Breakfast During The Family Visit

10. Semiotic Analysis Of The American Family Image In Family Guy

11. Mixing Reality with Dreams in Inception

• Perseverance
• Personal Experience
• Personality
• Affordable Housing

Need writing help?

You can always rely on us no matter what type of paper you need

*No hidden charges

100% Unique Essays

Absolutely Confidential

Money Back Guarantee

By clicking “Send Essay”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement. We will occasionally send you account related emails

You can also get a UNIQUE essay on this or any other topic

Thank you! We’ll contact you as soon as possible.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• HHS Author Manuscripts

Family Matters: Research on Family Ties and Health, 2010-2020

Debra umberson.

Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, 305 E 23 rd Street, Austin TX

Mieke Beth Thomeer

Department of Sociology, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Family ties have wide-ranging consequences for health, for better and for worse. This decade review uses a life course perspective to frame significant advances in research on the effects of family structure and transitions (e.g., marital status), and family dynamics and quality (e.g., emotional support from family members), on health across the life course. Significant advances include the linking of childhood family experiences to health at older ages, identification of biosocial processes that explain how family ties influence health throughout life, research on social contagion showing how family members influence one another’s health, and attention to diversity in family and health dynamics, including gender, sexuality, socioeconomic, and racial diversity. Significant innovations in methods include dyadic and family-level analysis and causal inference strategies. The review concludes by identifying directions for future research on families and health, advocating for a “family biography” framework to guide future research, and calling for more research specifically designed to assess policies that affect families and their health from childhood into later life.

Parents, children, intimate partners, and other family members have the power to improve—or undermine—health. Recent advances in research on family ties and health, built on increasingly sophisticated data and innovative methods, examine variation in these linkages across demographic and social contexts. These studies identify the specific and intersecting biosocial pathways through which family ties influence health in ways that sometimes vary by social position. Through these pathways, family ties exert both short- and long-term effects on health from childhood through later life. In this review, we highlight key themes and advances in the past decade of research on families and health.

We use a life course framework ( Elder, Johnson & Crosnoe, 2003 ) to organize this review. Research on family ties and health tends to fall into two camps: one focusing on health in childhood and the other focusing on health in adulthood. A life course perspective helps synthesize these literatures by emphasizing the inextricable links between these life stages. The life course concepts of cumulative advantage and disadvantage and stress proliferation help scholars show how social contexts and resources in childhood matter for health and well-being at older ages. A life course perspective highlights “linked lives” across life stages, the importance of early family experiences for lifelong health, and the significance of family ties and transitions throughout adulthood for health trajectories. No single theoretical paradigm dominates research of the past decade; however, a consistent theoretical strand across studies is attention to stress (either imposed on families or arising within families) and the associated accumulation of advantage or disadvantage in health through intersecting biological, psychological, and social pathways.

In this review, we focus on relationships with parents in childhood and relationships with intimate partners in adulthood, reflecting the primary areas of research on family ties and health over the past decade. We recognize the importance of other family ties, including children, siblings, and grandparents, but a detailed analysis of these areas is beyond the scope of this review and is addressed in other articles in this volume (see MS#6776, 2020 ; MS#6759, 2020 ). Life course approaches further emphasize the importance of social position—as patterned by gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic status—in shaping family ties and life course experiences that influence health. Social position matters in at least two important ways. First, some groups are exposed to more adverse family circumstances (e.g., higher rates of incarceration among minority families, lack of access to marriage for same-sex couples historically). Second, the effects of family circumstances on health may vary by social position (e.g., gender differences in effects of relationship stress on health). We call attention to such diversity throughout this review while recognizing that the complexity associated with each of these systems of stratification warrants fuller discussion than we can provide.

An exciting advance in research has been growing theoretical and empirical sophistication in clarifying the intersecting biosocial pathways through which family ties and social conditions influence health ( Repetti, Robles, & Reynolds, 2011 ). The increasing availability of quality biomarker data (i.e., medical indicators that can be measured objectively, accurately, and reproducibly, such as blood pressure and C-reactive protein) has yielded significant insights into how and when families impact health, even prior to any specific diagnosis. This work emphasizes the effect of family stress on physiological systems: for example, family stress activates cardiovascular arousal and inflammatory and immune responses that undermine health in childhood and have the potential to increase chronic disease risk with advancing age (see a review in Miller, Chen, & Parker 2011 ).

In this review, we focus first on family ties and child health and then on family ties and health in adulthood. We address the broad themes of: (a) family structure and transitions (e.g., marital status, divorce) and (b) family relationship quality and dynamics (e.g., emotional support and conflict in family ties). We then turn to innovations in data and methods that undergird research advances over the past ten years. In conclusion, we identify significant directions for future research and emphasize the critical value of this research for informing policies that affect families and their health.

Families and Child/Adolescent Health

A significant theoretical advance over the past decade has been the placement of research on family ties’ consequences for child health squarely within a life course perspective. This research has shown that family experiences early in the life course have the potential to launch trajectories of mental and physical health that extend beyond childhood (e.g., Gaydosh & Harris, 2018 ). Whereas past research on childhood tended to “stay in childhood,” life course scholarship shows that childhood experiences shape the accumulation of health-related advantage or disadvantage throughout life ( Avison, 2010 ). For example, exposure to social resources in childhood can add to cumulative advantage in health over time. For children, family contexts and relationships are the starting point of early-life exposure to both stress and resources, with implications for both later-life family relationships and later-life health ( Umberson et al., 2014 ). We first focus on recent work that considers family stress in relation to the health of children and adolescents and then turn to family resources that may protect children’s health. We conclude by discussing the impact of stressful family conditions in childhood on health in adulthood.

Childhood and the Stress Universe

The past decade of research on children’s health has advanced the perspective that family (structure) instability, stressful family dynamics, and family social position are inextricably linked. A key life course concept is stress proliferation—the idea that stressors often occur in tandem and one stressor triggers another, leading to a pileup of stressors that can be emotionally and physically overwhelming ( Pearlin et al. 2005 ). Avison (2010) has called for more attention to the “stress universe” of children, including family stress. Before turning to recent research that sheds light on major childhood family stressors that contribute to child health, we briefly describe how child health is typically assessed and discuss recent research on the pathways that link family stress to child health.

Child Health Measures

In the following review, we define health broadly. Most studies of children and adolescents focus on internalizing and externalizing symptoms as indicators of health and well-being. Internalizing symptoms include bodily complaints, social withdrawal, depression, and anxiety; externalizing symptoms include delinquent and aggressive behaviors. These measures typically rely on parent reports for younger children and self-reports for older children and adolescents, but some studies also consider reports from teachers (e.g., Early Childhood Longitudinal Study; https://nces.ed.gov/ecls/ ). The focus on emotional and behavioral symptoms reflects current concerns about mental health in the early life course; about 21 percent of children aged 2 to 17 have a diagnosed behavioral or psychological condition, and trend data indicate increasing rates of depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts and behaviors among youth ( The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2016 ). There have also been sharp rises in childhood obesity, asthma, bronchitis, and hay fever ( Delaney & Smith, 2012 ), and much of the influential research on childhood family environments and health focuses on these outcomes (e.g., Bair-Merritt, et al, 2015 ; Schreier & Chen, 2013 ).

Family Structure and Instability

Research on children and families focuses on varying levels of stability and stress within families as a major influence on children’s health. Overall, studies suggest that children of married parents have better mental and physical health than children of cohabiting parents ( Cavanagh & Fomby, 2019 ). The key explanation for this finding is the tendency of married couples’ families to feature less instability (i.e., disruption and change in family structure); instability contributes to parenting strain and distress, creates new economic strains, and disrupts children’s ongoing family relationships and routines. These strains and disruptions result in increasing stress for children, especially when there are multiple family transitions (e.g., parental divorce, re-partnering and remarriage, new half-siblings, and step-families; Lee & McLanahan, 2015 ), and this increasing stress reduces children’s health and well-being ( Cavanagh & Fomby, 2019 ).

However, recent work suggests two caveats regarding family instability. First, stability can be found in nontraditional family structures. For example, Reczek and colleagues (2016b) show that children’s health benefits from living with married same-sex as well as different-sex parents but that cohabiting parents (whether in same- or different-sex unions) do not provide the same health benefits because cohabiting unions tend to be less stable (e.g., more likely to dissolve). Second, the growing literature on family instability points to the need to clarify predictive and mediating factors that make family instability more (or less) harmful for children’s health. Fomby and Osborne (2017) emphasize the importance of family-level stressors in mediating the impact of both family instability and parents’ multi-partner fertility on children’s externalizing behavior. Also important is the timing of events and stress levels both preceding and following those events. For example, a father’s departure from the home seems to have less impact on adolescent delinquency if the departure occurs earlier in childhood ( Markowitz & Ryan, 2016 ). We need more work on the complex interrelationships between associated stressors, mediating factors, and timing of the family transitions that put children at risk, as well as protective factors that promote children’s resilience and health.

Growing evidence suggests that family transitions and instability characterized by the loss of a family member are particularly damaging to children. Stable attachment to family members is essential to child development and well-being, and loss may be a uniquely traumatic stressor. The death of a parent in childhood or adolescence has adverse effects on health that last into young adulthood ( Amato & Anthony, 2014 ; Gaydosh & Harris, 2018 ), and other studies show that early parental death increases health and mortality risk even into mid- and later life ( Guldin, 2015 ). Given the extent of mass incarceration in the United States, some of the most significant research of the past decade has addressed the impact of parental incarceration , another type of parent loss, on children’s health and well-being (e.g., Turney, 2014 ). Children of incarcerated parents are embedded in a dense constellation of risk associated with disadvantage before the parent’s incarceration, disadvantage associated with losing access to a parent, and stress proliferation that results from having an incarcerated parent ( Wakefield & Uggen, 2010 ). Much like incarceration, immigration status has taken on greater significance in the United States as family separation has become a greater threat to children ( Landale et al., 2015 ). Family separation due to military deployments has also been negatively linked to child health ( Paley, Lester, & Mogil, 2013 ). Notably, race, ethnicity, and social class are associated with the risk of parental loss through death ( Umberson, 2017 ), incarceration ( Wakefield & Uggen, 2010 ), and immigration policies ( Landale et al., 2015 ). Given the clear importance of family stability for children, future research should identify the mechanisms through which family separation and loss affect child health, sources of resilience, and later health into and throughout adulthood.

Parent Characteristics and Family Stress

Recent research has advanced understanding of how stress and health spread between family members and has directed attention to stressful family dynamics for children associated with parents’ financial resources, health problems, relationship problems, and aggression. Inadequate financial resources are a major source of children’s stress, and financial strain and poverty contribute to family instability and many of the specific family stressors described below. Child poverty rates have remained high (about 20 percent) since the 1970s ( Chaudry & Wimer 2016 ). Children in families of lower socioeconomic status are in poorer health for many reasons, including having more stressed/distressed parents and caregivers, more chaotic family routines, more conflict in family relationships, greater family embeddedness in poor neighborhoods and schools, and significantly higher levels of family instability ( Raver, Roy and Pressler 2015 )—all sources of childhood stress. Family socioeconomic status operates through multiple pathways to influence children’s health behaviors, psychological states, and physiological processes; low socioeconomic status undermines health by decreasing access to helpful resources while increasing exposure to harmful stressors ( Schreier & Chen, 2013 ).

Parents’ poor health, which often co-occurs with poverty ( Hardie & Landale, 2013 ), also has a negative impact on children’s health, indicating that these should be studied together and in relation to family instability in order to best assess risk to children’s health. Most studies of parental health problems have focused on the negative impact of mothers’ depression and have shown that the effect on child health is mediated by family instability and financial stress ( Turney, 2011 ). But parents’ physical health and health behaviors also matter for children’s health, sometimes through reciprocal pathways; for example, one study found that a parent’s drinking was associated with child and adolescent externalizing behaviors, which in turn exacerbated the parent’s drinking ( Zebrak & Green, 2016 ; see review in Shreier & Chen, 2013 ). Mothers’ health limitations may matter more for children’s well-being than father’s health limitations, and the life course timing of parental health problems may also contribute to heterogeneity in children’s responses; for example, Hardie and Turney (2017) consider children up to age nine and find that parental health problems have a greater impact when they occur in middle childhood than at older or younger ages.

Recent research on why divorce appears to negatively affect children’s well-being indicates that harmful effects on children are better explained by parents’ strained relationship dynamics, mental health problems, and lower socioeconomic status (all of which contribute to the risk of divorce) prior to divorce than by the divorce event itself ( Amato & Anthony, 2014 ). Parents’ relationship quality is dynamic, and the timing, persistence, and trajectory of parents’ relationship problems clearly matter for children’s well-being. For example, Bair-Merritt and colleagues (2015) link mothers’ exposure to intimate partner violence to their children’s cortisol reactivity and asthma problems. Marital conflict is especially detrimental for children’s externalizing behaviors if conflict is frequent and escalating ( Madigan, Plamondon, & Jenkins, 2016 ). Future research should identify other pre–family transition factors that protect children’s health or increase vulnerability following family transitions.

A substantial literature shows that child neglect and abuse activate biosocial processes that take a lasting toll on health, and numerous studies over the past decade have gone further to show that parents’ more routine patterns of hostility and aggression also affect children (see MS#6811, 2020 ; MS#6755, 2020 for more detailed discussion of this point). Miller and Chen (2010 : 854) find that “even mild exposure to a risky family in early life can shift the developmental trajectory toward a proinflammatory phenotype” evident in adolescence. There is also a growing consensus that spanking, widely used as a form of discipline by parents, is a significant stressor in the lives of children, with adverse short- and long-term effects on health and well-being that are consistent across social and cultural contexts ( Gershoff et al., 2018 ).

Family Resources for Children

The focus of most research has been on family factors that create disadvantages for children’s health, but several research themes identify ways that families protect children’s health. First, family practices that promote stability and routine and minimize physical punishment ( Cavanagh & Fomby, 2019 ; Gershoff et al., 2018 ; Schreirer & Chen, 2013 ) can benefit youth. Second, parents’ good health reduces the stress of parenting and contributes to family stability ( Hardie & Turney, 2017 ). Third, close and cohesive family relationships protect children and adolescents ( Maimon, Browning, & Brooks-Gunn, 2010 ). On this last point, emerging research suggests that parental support can mitigate stress for children and adolescents at high risk due to discrimination based on race ( Benner, et al., 2018 ), sexual orientation or gender identity ( Thomeer, Paine, & Bryant, 2018 ), and immigration status ( Mood, Jonsson, & Låftman, 2016 ). Additionally, close relationships with siblings may protect adolescents from family stress ( Waite et al., 2011 ). Future research should expand understanding of family contexts that protect children’s health and how these resources are unequally distributed in the population (e.g., by socioeconomic status).

Family financial resources are highly correlated with many other family resources that benefit youth (e.g., parents’ mental and physical health, safe neighborhoods), and it is possible that the key intervention to improve child well-being is to improve parents’ financial resources ( MS#6827, 2020 ). Critiques of policy programs that seek to improve children’s health and well-being by improving parents’ marital quality point out that the more effective path to improving both parents’ relationships and children’s health is to lift children out of poverty ( Turney, 2011 ). Financial resources may also alleviate parental stress and promote family stability, rendering these protective family factors more accessible. Financial resources further reduce family members’ risk of incarceration and death, both of which are highly stressful for youth. A family’s financial resources can mitigate the effects of stress on children and add to their cumulative advantage in mental and physical health beyond childhood ( Schreier & Chen, 2013 ).

The Long Arm of Family Ties in Childhood

In line with a cumulative disadvantage perspective, childhood family ties have consequences for health in adulthood. This occurs in part because stressful family environments in childhood activate physiological (e.g., cardiovascular reactivity), psychological (e.g., emotional reactivity), behavioral (e.g., self-medication with drugs, alcohol), and social (e.g., educational attainment) processes that affect health both directly and indirectly by increasing the risk of social isolation and relationship strain and instability throughout life ( Miller, Chen, & Parker, 2011 ; Repetti, Robles, & Reynolds, 2011 ). When activated early in life, these intersecting processes influence lifelong patterns in family relationships and psychological and physiological systems, which in turn create an increasing disadvantage for health ( Umberson et al., 2014 ).

In particular, studies using biomarkers provide a way to examine the same outcome at different stages of the life course, which makes it possible to unpack how family ties and health are linked as people age. There are theoretical reasons to expect family structures and processes to affect health differently at different ages, and researchers should assess these measures over time, and develop theories of why we might see this variation. For example, some family dynamics may be more important for health in the early life course (e.g., due to sensitive periods of development in childhood), whereas others may be more important in later life (e.g., as individuals become more physically fragile or vulnerable). These details are essential to understanding how early-life family experiences affect mid- to later life health disparities. Researchers have increasingly asked how family ties in childhood matter for health at older ages (e.g., Umberson et al., 2014 ), but most studies of connections between family relationships and health in adulthood continue to exclude discussion of the health impact of early life family ties. Future research can fill this gap by addressing these key life course linkages.

Family Ties and Adult Health

In the following discussion of family ties and health in adulthood, we describe advances in research on union status/transitions and health in adulthood, partner dynamics and intersecting pathways that affect health, and intertwined union status/parental status trajectories over the life course.

Union Status, Union Transitions, and Health

Decades of research have addressed the link between intimate partnership status and health. Over time, although the quality of data and methods has improved and research better reflects the diversity of people’s relationships and their movement in and out of these relationships, many basic findings regarding union status and health remain unchanged. The preponderance of the evidence suggests that the married are in better health than the unmarried, cohabitors are in better health than the unmarried but worse than the married, and men benefit from marriage more than women do ( Rendall et al., 2011 ). There are two primary explanations for these patterns. First, through selection, people who are healthier and wealthier are more likely to marry and remain married, making it appear that marriage benefits health when it is actually health that predicts marriage ( Tumin & Zhang, 2018 ). Second, the married enjoy certain resources that promote health, including pooled economic assets, greater access to emotional and social support, and the spouse’s encouragement and coercion of healthy behaviors (i.e., social control; Rendall et al., 2011 ). While the never married and cohabitors may have fewer of these resources, transitions out of marriage through divorce or widowhood are especially detrimental to health, because these transitions trigger a wide array of new stressors and diminished resources that combine to undermine health and well-being ( Dupre, 2016 ; Roelfs, 2012 ).

Men seem to benefit more than women from marriage because women typically provide more emotional support, social control of health behaviors, and caregiving to their spouses than men do; in addition to lower benefits, women may experience more costs associated with their relatively high levels of care work ( Glauber & Day, 2018 ). Health disparities by relationship status may be greater for those with higher household incomes and more educational attainment than for their lower-income and less educated peers ( Roxburgh, 2014 ). Such disparities may also be greater for white adults than black adults ( Roxburgh, 2014 ); for example, Dupre (2016) found that divorced white adults have a much higher risk of stroke than married white adults but found no difference between married and divorced black adults. More research is needed to unpack how and why the benefits of marriage and costs of dissolution vary by race, gender, class, and other sociodemographic factors.

Research over the past decade has innovated in two key areas concerning union status/transitions and health. First, this work has gone beyond the traditional focus on heterosexual relationships to include same-sex couples, leading to new ways of thinking about gendered dynamics within relationships. Second, scholars increasingly recognize that health is the outcome of accumulated experiences, including the unique relationship biographies that individuals form over the course of their lives. These biographies may include intertwined intimate relationship and parenting histories, as well as longer periods of singleness and social isolation, both of which may vary by systems of social stratification.

Same-sex Unions

An explosion of research over the past decade has focused on same-sex unions and health. In a significant historical shift, the United States extended constitutional protection for marriage equality in 2015, with proponents of this expansion arguing that same-sex marriage recognition could improve the health of sexual minority adults and their children and that restriction from marriage was discriminatory and negatively impacted health. MS#6668’s article in this issue provides a comprehensive overview of LGBTQ families (see also Thomeer, Paine, & Bryant, 2018 ); here, we briefly highlight findings related to same-sex union status and health. Theoretical work on minority stress and gender-as-relational perspectives undergirds much of the influential research in this area. Minority stress theory points to the unique stressors and stigma associated with sexual minority status ( LeBlanc, Frost, & Bowen, 2018 ), and gender-as-relational perspectives emphasize the different patterns that men’s and women’s partner interactions follow depending on whether they are in a same- or different-sex union ( Umberson et al., 2016 ).

Some of the first evidence to rely on nationally representative data emerged in 2013, when two studies concluded that same-sex cohabiting couples’ health is worse than different-sex married couples’ but better than that of unpartnered adults, and that same-sex and different-sex cohabitors report similar levels of health once socioeconomic status is taken into account ( Denney, Gorman, & Barrera, 2013 ; Liu, Reczek, & Brown, 2013 ). Although few studies have compared same-sex married couples to same-sex cohabiting couples, research suggests that greater legal recognition (i.e., marriages, civil unions, and registered domestic partnerships versus no legal status) is associated with better health and that same- and different-sex couples receive similar health benefits from marriage ( LeBlanc, Frost, & Bowen 2018 ; Reczek et al., 2016b ).

Notably, because most large-scale data collections have included only heterosexual couples, these prior studies on same-sex marriage have had to rely on cross-sectional data and smaller samples. Longitudinal data on same-sex couples is needed to better assess the long-term impact of marriage access on both overall health and health disparities. Future research should also focus on how these experiences may differ by class, race/ethnicity, and sexual identities beyond the heterosexual and gay/lesbian dichotomy (e.g., bisexual people). Gender differences have been a major theme of past research on union status and health for different-sex couples, and gendered patterns in relationships may unfold differently depending on whether one has a same- or different-sex partner. For example, compared to men, women in both same- and different-sex unions provide more care to a spouse during serious illness, but this care work is much more likely to be reciprocated and appreciated when women are in same-sex unions ( Umberson, et al., 2016 ). Given the current political environment, continued discrimination, and the disadvantage that the privileging of marriage may create for single adults, marriage’s availability to same-sex couples does not automatically translate into improved health for members of diverse sexual minority populations ( Thomeer, et al., 2018 ).

Transgender and gender-nonconforming partners.

Over the next decade, family scholars should consider relationship status and health for couples in which at least one partner is transgender or gender nonconforming, including variations by class, race, and ethnicity. Current research in this area is limited: most studies have focused on transgender men partnered with cisgender women and have relied on cross-sectional, non-probability samples. Despite these limitations, emerging evidence shows that an intimate partner relationship is a source of social support that can reduce perceived levels of discrimination for transgender people ( Liu & Wilkinson, 2017 ; Pfeffer, 2016 ), suggesting potential health benefits, although this remains to be tested. Moving outside the gender binary will provide new opportunities for understanding gendered health dynamics across intimate partnerships.

Marital Biography, Singleness, and Absence of Family Ties

Relationship histories are becoming increasingly complex as adults live longer, are less likely to marry and more likely to marry later, spend fewer years married, experience remarriages and stepfamilies, cohabit rather than marry, and express more sexual and gender fluidity as norms and stigma around sexual and gender identity shift (see MS#6668, 2020 and MS#6760, 2020 this issue). At the same time, research has documented the accumulation of health benefits and risks over the life course. One advance of the past decade is research on how complex marital biographies—with variability in number, duration, type, and timing of unions and transitions—shape later health. For example, Reczek and colleagues (2016a) analyzed dyadic longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS; http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/ ) to look at individual- and couple-level trajectories of heavy alcohol use in relation to personal histories of marital status and transitions. Marriage and remarriage were associated with less drinking from mid- to later life for men but not women, and divorce increased men’s heavy drinking while leading women to drink less.

A marital biography focus also advances understanding of how time spent unpartnered shapes health. This research has focused on divorce and widowhood and has found that years spent divorced or widowed add to subsequent health risk whereas years spent married are protective ( McFarland, Hayward, & Brown, 2013 ). Moreover, there may be race and other population group differences in these patterns; Dupre (2016) found that stroke risk was increased more for white than black respondents with a history of marital dissolution. Marital biography studies have primarily addressed transitions in and out of marriage, but recent evidence points to the importance of other types of unions by showing that cohabitation breakups can affect health similarly to divorce ( Kamp Dush, 2013 ). The health effects of periods of social isolation and lack of family ties are also important features of a marital biography and need more attention in future research.

A life course approach emphasizes the linked lives of family members beyond the marital relationship. Studies using a relationship biography approach have innovated by studying the interdependent effects of parenthood and partnership histories on health. For example, Williams and colleagues (2011) found that women who were unmarried at the time of their first birth experienced worse health, more chronic disease, and higher mortality risk by age 40, yet this effect was attenuated for white women (but not black women) who eventually married and remained married to the child’s father. Future research should weave together the different strands of family biographies that coalesce to uniquely shape health, perhaps differently for different groups.

Loss of family ties may contribute to racial disparities in family and health disadvantage. Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to experience the death of a child, sibling, parent, and spouse over their lifetime and to experience these losses earlier in the life course, potentially adding to social isolation, caregiving burdens, strains within families, and cumulative disadvantage in health ( Umberson, 2017 ). Mass incarceration and current immigration policies also sever family ties and increase social isolation; these experiences affect health and are disproportionately common for racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. ( MS#6752, 2020 ; Wakefield & Uggen, 2010 ). Family scholars should identify who is most likely to lack and lose family ties, the duration of and reasons for socially isolated periods of the life course, the extent of loneliness in relation to social isolation, and variations in these experiences’ consequences for health across and within diverse socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic communities.

Relationship Processes and Adult Health

Research over the past decade has illuminated the processes through which family ties affect adults’ health by highlighting the dynamics and quality of adults’ intimate partnerships. We call attention to innovation in two main aspects of the relationship between health and the dynamics and quality of social ties: (a) the impact of relationship quality (e.g., strain, support) on health, and (b) the role of social contagion (i.e., the spread of health across individuals within social networks).

Relationship Quality

Recent research shows that the quality of an intimate relationship can affect health more than marital status per se ( Miller, Chen, & Parker, 2013 ). Over the past decade, family scholars have expanded understanding of how relationship quality matters for health by taking advantage of longitudinal and dyadic data, including biomarkers as mediators and outcomes, and innovating methodologically to identify key mechanisms linking relationship quality to health. Longitudinal data have made it possible to draw on multiple waves of data collection covering twenty or more years. This research has made significant advances by demonstrating that changes in marital quality are related to changes in health over time and that this link is likely causal as well as bidirectional ( Robles et al., 2014 ). These studies show that marital quality is more salient for health at older ages than at younger ages and that negative marital interactions (e.g., conflict, demands) have stronger effects on health than do positive interactions (e.g., support, closeness; Miller et al. 2013 ). The growing availability of longitudinal data that follow individuals and couples over decades will provide rich opportunities for research over the next decade. For example, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health Study (Add Health; https://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth ) began collecting data from children when they were in grades 7–12 in 1994–95, and they have continued data collection since then, providing unique opportunities to study health and family relationships starting in adolescence and aging into midlife. The collection of longitudinal data is difficult, given that it takes many decades before data can be analyzed; alternative strategies include cohort studies (e.g., multiple age cohorts followed over shorter periods of time).

Like research on families and childhood health, research on the biological pathways through which relationships impact adult health has advanced significantly over the past decade ( Kiecolt-Glaser & Wilson, 2017 ). This research has shown how multiple dimensions of relationship quality (e.g., strain, support, closeness, satisfaction) shape biomarkers. For example, recent studies find that relationship quality is inversely associated with inflammation across multiple markers (e.g., interleukin‐6 and C‐reactive protein; Bajaj, et al., 2016 ). Biomarkers reveal complex and interrelated physiological responses to marital dynamics and suggest that women’s physiological responses to marital stress are stronger than men’s ( Kiecolt-Glaser & Wilson, 2017 ).

Relationship quality studies have also benefited from dyadic data that has made it possible to analyze the perspectives and experiences of both members of a couple. Dyadic studies allow researchers to identify how gender operates within intimate relationships and better test theories related to “his and hers” marriages in relation to each partner’s health ( Iveniuk et al. 2014 ; Thomeer, Umberson, & Pudrovska, 2013 ). Researchers are also beginning to move beyond the “his and hers” model to queer notions of intimate relationships. These studies use dyadic methods to critically examine whether the assumptions we make about relationship quality and health in heterosexual couples apply to same-sex couples ( Umberson et al., 2016 ). However, due to a lack of longitudinal and nationally representative data, dyadic studies of relationship quality in same-sex couples lags far behind research on different-sex couples—an important data challenge that needs to be addressed in the next decade.

Another important advance in studies of relationship dynamics involves social contagion—the idea that health can “spread” across relationships or “spill over” from one family member to another. Over the past decade, longitudinal studies have shown that the depressive symptoms of one spouse—especially the wife in a different-sex couple—influence the other spouses’ depressive symptoms over time (e.g., Thomeer et al., 2013 ). Similarly, health behaviors such as alcohol use and unhealthy eating can also “spread” within a couple ( Reczek et al., 2016a ); for instance, a study found that when one spouse became obese, the other spouse’s risk of obesity almost doubled over a 25-year period ( Cobb et al. 2015 ). Recent work considers how biomarkers spread within couples. For example, a recent study found that spouses have more similar gut microbiota (i.e., microbe population in the intestine) than siblings, but only if spouses report having a close relationship ( Dill-McFarland et al., 2019 ).

Health contagion between partners is due partly to assortative mating but also to shared resources, environments, and life events—including shared stressors—and mutual influence between spouses (e.g., one spouse’s mood spreading to the other spouse and vice versa; see Kiecolt-Glaser and Wilson 2017 for an overview). Future research can use longitudinal data, qualitative data, biomarker data, and mixed methods approaches to unpack the many mechanisms that help explain processes of contagion. The gut microbiotas are a key pathway through which a couples’ shared stressors, emotions, lifestyles, and routines may get “under the skin” in ways that jointly influence the couple’s health ( Kiecolt-Glaser, Wilson & Madison, 2018 ). There is also evidence of cortisol synchrony in long-term couples, such that partners’ levels of physiological arousal become linked over time—a phenomenon that has implications for both partners’ health ( Timmons, Margolin & Saxbe, 2015 ).

Advances in Data and Methods

Overall, research on families and health has generally followed the methodological innovations of relationship quality research, owing in large part to the greater availability of nationally representative longitudinal data, inclusion of biomarker data and explanatory mechanisms, and novel smaller-scale data collection efforts. We highlight three key advances: (a) biosocial processes linking family to health, (b) dyadic and family-level analysis, and (c) strategies for addressing selection and causal inference. We also identify areas for future research.

Biosocial Mechanisms Linking Family to Health

Research over the past decade has made important contributions to understanding the mechanisms through which family structures and dynamics are related to health throughout the life course. These innovations have progressed in large part due to increased commitments to interdisciplinary partnerships and collection of biomarker data in large-scale and longitudinal datasets. Advances in data and analysis of biosocial mechanisms has been especially influential in clarifying how physiological functioning is impacted by social conditions (e.g., family structures and dynamics) in ways that impact health. Even studies that do not explicitly discuss these biosocial pathways often build their arguments on an understanding that family experiences somehow “get under the skin” to shape both specific health outcomes and overall health. For example, family stress is theorized to increase a person’s allostatic load (i.e., cumulative “wear and tear” on the body across multiple health systems including immune, cardiovascular, and metabolic systems), thus contributing to symptoms across multiple health domains ( Miller, Chen, & Parker, 2011 ; Repetti, Robles, & Reynolds, 2011 ). Our understanding has benefited from the inclusion of biomarkers within study designs, especially longitudinal designs with repeated measures of specific biomarkers. Yet few studies that consider biomarkers theorize about why family ties would affect some biomarkers but not others.

A theoretically driven selection of biomarkers and other specific health outcomes will provide new insights into the complex and intersecting behavioral, psychological, social, and biological mechanisms through which families matter for health from childhood through later life. Inclusion of multiple biomarkers and health outcomes allows for a more robust understanding of how family ties affect overall health and especially how these outcomes might be connected to one another or cluster together ( Kiecolt-Glaser & Wilson, 2017 ; Repetti, Robles, & Reynolds, 2011 ). Future research should seek to disentangle the complex interconnections among the multiple pathways that are most predictive of specific health outcomes and identify how these interconnections vary depending on social contexts and genetic vulnerabilities.

Dyadic and Family-Level Analysis

Carr and Springer (2010) called for more dyadic and family-level data to address the failure of individual-level data “to capture the complexities of family life, including the possibility that two romantic partners, siblings, or co-parents experience their relationship (and the health consequences thereof) in starkly different ways” (p. 755). Dyadic, family-level analysis has advanced significantly over the past decade and has been featured in more than fifty studies in JMF alone. Dyadic and family-level methods allow researchers to more effectively study linked lives over the life course. For example, studies of sexual behavior such as condom use and oral sex that rely on dyadic data (e.g., Cordero-Coma & Breen, 2012 ) allow us to consider the perspectives and experiences of both partners in relation to their sexual encounters. Quantitative dyadic studies typically use Actor-Partner Interdependence Models (APIM) and adopt special protocols when individuals within dyads are indistinguishable such as same-sex couples or same-sex siblings ( Kroeger and Powers 2019 ). But qualitative dyadic studies have also emerged (e.g., Reczek & Umberson, 2016 ), and blended methods have the potential to spur new insights into dyadic processes that influence health.

Dyadic data offer three significant innovations for family research. First, studies of discordance and concordance within a dyad promote a fuller understanding of the couple’s dynamics and the health consequences of the two members’ discordance or concordance. Second, dyadic data tell us how one partner influences the other by drawing on information that each member provides independently. Third, data can be collected from both members of the dyad at the same time to develop a holistic narrative about the dyad and their interactions ( Thomeer et al. 2018 ). This is a common approach in experimental studies, including Kiecolt-Glaser and Wilson’s (2017) research on couple interactions (e.g., marital conflict), which combined observational data with biomarker assessments of the physiological consequences of the interactions for both partners. Some family-level studies move beyond the dyad to include more family members (e.g., children, siblings, parents). Like dyadic data, family-level methods give researchers access to different family member perspectives, which enhances understanding of what may be going on within the family. Ethnographic studies can also provide rich examples of family-level data. For example, the Three-City Study ethnography project ( http://web.jhu.edu/threecitystudy/index.html )—which also collects survey and interview data—followed 256 low-income mothers and their children over a six-year period to understand the unfolding processes of childhood illness, family comorbidities, and domestic violence in families and communities ( Burton, Purvin, & Garrett-Peters, 2015 ). Over the next decade, family and health studies would benefit from more studies that include multiple family members and blend ethnographic inquiry with quantitative data (e.g., Bair-Merritt et al., 2015 ; Burton, Purvin & Garrett-Peters, 2015 ) to assess the complex ways that families and health are related.

Causal Inference

Decades of research make it clear that family ties and health are closely linked, but questions remain about the extent to which these linkages reflect selection versus causation. Selection bias is likely an important driver in many of the observed differences in health among people with different family structures and family dynamics. For example, prior research finds a strong association between parental divorce and children’s poor health. It is difficult to claim that this link is causal, however, because many of the same factors that predispose people to divorce (e.g., poverty, mental disorders) also negatively impact children’s health ( Amato & Anthony, 2014 ). Recent methodological innovations have allowed for better disentanglement of the processes that link family ties and dynamics to health and specifically enable researchers to address the role of selection. For example, researchers increasingly use matching techniques, which reduce imbalance, model dependence, and the influence of confounding variables and provide insight into long-assumed causal family-health linkages. Tumin and Zheng (2018) used a composite of demographic, economic, and health characteristics to generate propensity scores for estimating the likelihood of marriage and found that once these propensities for marriage were taken into account, married adults were only modestly healthier than unmarried adults both physically and mentally. Other techniques to address causal inference, such as fixed-effect models, placebo regressions, and inverse‐probability‐weighted estimation of marginal structural models, are also gaining popularity in family and health studies ( Gangl, 2010 ). Each of these techniques has key limitations, however, including limitations related to unobserved heterogeneity despite attempts to eliminate this issue.

Going forward, two approaches are particularly likely to spur innovation and new insights into causal processes. First, quantitative behavior-genetic designs may allow researchers to better understand causal paths and the role of selection by ruling out possible confounding genetic factors ( Oppenheimer, Tenenbaum, & Krynski, 2013 ). For example, the quality of the parent-child relationship is associated with child-adjustment outcomes, but it may be that these links reflect gene-environment interplay effects ( Oppenheimer, Tenenbaum, & Krynski, 2013 ). Genetically informed studies over the past decade have interrogated whether the well-documented associations between marital status or marital quality and health may be artifacts of genetic and/or shared environmental selection; many of these studies have used population-level twin samples (e.g., Dinescu, et al., 2016 ). Studies with a behavior-genetics design can also provide insight into why some people’s health is more sensitive than others’ to family dynamics. Second, natural experiments in which people are exposed to either the experimental or the control condition by an external force (e.g., natural disaster, public policies) are a useful way to test causal inferences about family and health ( Craig, et al., 2017 ). For example, Everett and colleagues (2016) compared depressive symptoms before and after the passage of an Illinois law recognizing same-sex civil unions. They found that this supportive social policy benefited the health of sexual minority women, especially sexual minority women of color. Regardless of the specific approach, any research attempting to make causal claims about family ties and health must recognize methodological limitations and carefully interpret findings within the context of rich theoretical frameworks and critical descriptive research.

Research on families and health is thriving. It is moving in exciting, new directions and offers great potential to inform efforts to improve population health and reduce health disparities, especially those connected to the family. Many of the major research advances over the past decade were made possible by innovative and novel sources of data and methods, particularly high-quality longitudinal data, dyadic and multiple-family-member reporting, inclusion of underrepresented populations (e.g., sexual and gender diverse populations, children in nontraditional families), and the increasing sophistication of biomarker measures to help explain the impact of family ties on health from childhood through adulthood. Significant advances include: (a) growing evidence that family structures and dynamics in childhood have lasting effects not only into adolescence and early adulthood but throughout the life course, even affecting later life risk for chronic diseases and mortality; (b) biosocial approaches that take into account multiple levels of analysis to show how family experiences activate psychological, physiological, behavioral, and social pathways that intersect and cascade to influence health from childhood through adulthood; (c) attention to reciprocity and contagion to show how family members influence each other’s health and well-being over time; and (d) increased recognition and understanding of sociodemographic variability and the role of selection bias in the linkages between family ties and health.

Future research on families and health should extend these accomplishments by more fully addressing the complexity of family structures and dynamics over the entire life course and expanding knowledge about the factors and mechanisms that protect and promote the health of multiple family members. The lifelong health consequences of childhood family environments point to the need to bridge the literature on family ties and child health with that on family ties and adult health—now two largely separate literatures. This will require long-term investment in longitudinal data collections that follow individuals from childhood into later life and inclusion of wide-ranging explanatory mechanisms and health outcomes. Typically, researchers analyze very different outcomes when they study health at different ages. For example, studies of children and adolescents rely heavily on measures of externalizing behaviors, mental health, asthma, and obesity, but studies of older adults primarily consider mortality, disability, and cognitive decline. Longitudinal studies—together with a strong theoretical foundation and richly textured biosocial measures that can be assessed across the lifespan—can further clarify how family and health are connected and how explanatory biosocial mechanisms unfold over time (e.g., family stress in childhood might contribute to asthma which leads to midlife inflammation and later-life chronic conditions). Similar consideration should be given to measures of family dynamics across the life course; for example, a life course approach to family and health would benefit by comparing types and degree of support and conflict between adolescent children and their parents to support and conflict those same children have with their parents in midlife. Across these areas, research should attend to diversity in family and health experiences associated with race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and socioeconomic status, as well as the health effects of the absence of family ties and socially isolated periods over the lifespan.

Recent advances in research on family instability in childhood ( Cavanagh & Fomby, 2019 ) and marital biographies in adulthood ( McFarland, Hayward, & Brown, 2013 ) take into account life course relationship experiences that accumulate over time to predict health. These advances suggest the usefulness of developing a family biography approach to promote and synthesize future research advances. A family biography would take into account family experiences throughout childhood (e.g., timing and sequencing of major transitions and periods of instability); document subsequent family structures and transitions as individuals grow older (e.g., intimate partnerships, parenthood, unpartnered periods); consider how childhood family experiences are linked to subsequent family ties; assess how the entire family biography coalesces to protect or undermine health (including both specific health outcomes/causes of death and overall health and mortality risk), and address how these processes vary across diverse populations. A family biography approach could serve as an organizational tool for future research on families and health and would be useful across theoretical perspectives and methods. Indeed, richer theoretical and methodological breadth at any point in the family biographical timeline would enrich our understanding of when, how, and for whom family ties shape health trajectories and turning points over the lifespan. A life course approach that addresses childhood through adulthood also provides a framework for clarifying the transmission of family dynamics and health across generations.

Research over the next decade should be designed with attention to policy and practice. Growing attention to the lifelong consequences of childhood family experiences highlights the potential lifelong reach of early-life interventions and policies that support families and children. Yet family ties and transitions throughout adulthood also offer opportunities to promote health and well-being across diverse populations. To successfully support the health of individual family members, intervention strategies and policies must be based on sound evidence. For example, Gershoff and colleagues (2018) rally substantial empirical evidence pointing to the need to better educate parents about the adverse short- and long-term effects of spanking on the health and well-being of children and to implement social policies and laws that prohibit physical punishment of children. Such policies offer the opportunity to reduce stress and promote childhood health. Research specifically designed to assess the efficacy of policies and interventions is also needed. For example, studies conducted over the past decade establish the potential population health benefits of marriage equality for same-sex couples ( Denney, et al., 2013 ; Liu, et al., 2013 ). Yet LeBlanc and colleagues (2018) show that legal changes do not fully address the negative mental health effects of institutionalized discrimination against same-sex couples. These studies underscore the need for nuanced and methodologically sophisticated research that will generate the evidence needed to design effective policies and interventions and to evaluate their effectiveness and consequences.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

This work was supported in part by grant P2CHD042849, awarded to the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and grant R01 AG054624 (PI, Debra Umberson) awarded by the National Institute on Aging.

Contributor Information

Debra Umberson, Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, 305 E 23 rd Street, Austin TX.

Mieke Beth Thomeer, Department of Sociology, University of Alabama at Birmingham.

• Amato PR, & Anthony CJ (2014). Estimating the effects of parental divorce and death with fixed effects models . Journal of Marriage and Family , 76 , 370–386. 10.1111/jomf.12100 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• The Annie E.Casey Foundation. (2016). Kids Count Data Center . https://datacenter.kidscount.org
• MS#6668. (2020). A decade of research on gender and sexual minority families . Journal of Marriage and Family 82 ( 1 ): pp. XXX. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• MS#6752. (2020). Spanning borders, cultures, and generations: A decade of research on immigrant families . Journal of Marriage and Family 82 ( 1 ): pp. XXX. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• MS#6755. (2020). Children’s and adolescent’s development and well-being: Family processes and features . Journal of Marriage and Family 82 ( 1 ): pp. XXX. [ Google Scholar ]
• MS#6759. (2020). Parenthood, childlessness, and well-being research in the 2010s . Journal of Marriage and Family 82 ( 1 ): pp. XXX. [ Google Scholar ]
• MS#6760. (2020). The demography of families: A review of the 2010s . Journal of Marriage and Family 82 ( 1 ): pp. XXX. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• MS#6776. (2020). Families in later life: A decade in review . Journal of Marriage and Family . 82 ( 1 ): pp. XXX. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• MS#6811. (2020). Intimate partner violence: A decade in review . Journal of Marriage and Family . 82 ( 1 ): pp. XXX. [ Google Scholar ]
• MS#6827. (2020). Families across the income spectrum: A decade in review . Journal of Marriage and Family . 82 ( 1 ): pp. XXX. [ Google Scholar ]
• Avison WR (2010). Incorporating children’s lives into a life course perspective on stress and mental health . Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 51 , 361–375. 10.1177/0022146510386797 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bair-Merritt MH, Voegtline K, Ghazarian SR, Granger DA, Blair C, Family Life Project Investigators, & Johnson, S. B. (2015). Maternal intimate partner violence exposure, child cortisol reactivity and child asthma . Child Abuse & Neglect , 48 , 50–57. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.11.003 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bajaj A, John-Henderson NA, Cundiff JM, Marsland AL, Manuck SB & Kamarck TW (2016). Daily social interactions, close relationships, and systemic inflammation in two samples: Healthy middle-aged and older adults . Brain, Behavior, and Immunity , 58 , 152–64. 10.1016/j.bbi.2016.06.004. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Benner AD, Wang Y, Shen Y, Boyle AE, Polk R, & Cheng YP (2018). Racial/ethnic discrimination and well-being during adolescence: A meta-analytic review . The American Psychologist , 73 , 855–883. 10.1037/amp0000204 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Burton LM, Purvin D, & Garrett-Peters R (2015). Longitudinal ethnography: Uncovering domestic abuse in low-income women’s lives. In Hall J (Ed.), Female Students and Cultures of Violence in Cities (pp. 37–88). New York: Routledge. [ Google Scholar ]
• Carr D, & Springer KW (2010). Advances in families and health research in the 21st century . Journal of Marriage and Family , 72 , 743–761. 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2010.00728.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cavanagh SE, & Fomby P (2019). Family instability in the lives of American children . Annual Review of Sociology , 45 . 10.1146/annurev-soc-073018-022633 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Chaudry A, & and Wimer C (2016). Poverty is not just an indicator: The relationship between income, poverty, and child well-being . Academic Pediatrics , 16 , S23–S29. 10.1016/j.acap.2015.12.010 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cobb LK, McAdams-DeMarco MA, Gudzune KA, Anderson CA, Demerath E, Woodward M, … Coresh J (2015). Changes in body mass index and obesity risk in married couples over 25 years: The Aric Cohort Study . American Journal of Epidemiology , 183 , 435–443. 10.1093/aje/kwv112 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cordero‐Coma J & Breen R (2012). HIV prevention and social desirability: Husband–wife discrepancies in reports of condom use . Journal of Marriage and Family , 74 , 601–613. 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2012.00976.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Craig P, Katikireddi SV, Leyland A, & Popham F (2017). Natural experiments: an overview of methods, approaches, and contributions to public health intervention research . Annual Review of Public Health , 38 , 39–56. 10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031816-044327 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Delaney L, & Smith JP (2012). Childhood health: Trends and consequences over the life course . The Future of Children , 22 , 43–63. PMC3652568 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Denney JT, Gorman BK, & Barrera CB (2013). Families, resources, and adult health: Where do sexual minorities fit? Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 54 , 46–63. 10.1177/0022146512469629 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Dill-McFarland K, Tang Z, Kemis J, Kerby R, Chen G, Palloni A, Sorenson T, Rey FE, & Herd P (2019). Close social relationships correlate with human gut microbiota composition . Scientific Reports , 9 , 703. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Dinescu D, Turkheimer E, Beam CR, Horn EE, Duncan G, & Emery RE (2016). Is marriage a buzzkill? A twin study of marital status and alcohol consumption . Journal of Family Psychology , 30 , 698–707. 10.1037/fam0000221 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Dupre ME (2016). Race, marital history, and risks for stroke in US older adults . Social Forces , 95 , 439–468. 10.1037/fam0000068 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Elder Glenn H. Jr., Johnson MK, & Crosnoe R 2003. “The emergence and development of life course theory.” Pp. 3–19 in Handbook of the Life Course , edited by Mortimer JT and Shanahan MJ. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. [ Google Scholar ]
• Everett BG, Hatzenbuehler ML, & Hughes TL (2016). The impact of civil union legislation on minority stress, depression, and hazardous drinking in a diverse sample of sexual-minority women: A quasi-natural experiment . Social Science & Medicine , 169 , 180–190. 10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.09.036 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fomby P, & Osborne C (2017). Family instability, multipartner fertility, and behavior in middle childhood . Journal of Marriage and Family , 79 , 75–93. 10.1111/jomf.12349 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gangl M (2010). Causal inference in sociological research . Annual Review of Sociology , 36 , 21–47. 10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102702 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gaydosh L, & Harris KM (2018). Childhood family instability and young adult health . Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 59 , 371–390. 10.1177/0022146518785174 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gershoff ET, Goodman GS, Miller-Perrin CL, Holden GW, Jackson Y, & Kazdin AE (2018). The strength of the causal evidence against physical punishment of children and its implications for parents, psychologists, and policymakers . American Psychologist , 73 , 626–638. 10.1037/amp0000327 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Glauber R, & Day MD (2018). Gender, spousal caregiving, and depression: Does paid work matter? Journal of Marriage and Family , 80 , 537–554. 10.1111/jomf.12446 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Guldin M-B, Li J, Pedersen HS, Obel C, Agerbo E, Gissler M, … Vestergaard M (2015). Incidence of suicide among persons who had a parent who died during their childhood: A population-based cohort study . JAMA Psychiatry , 72 , 1227–34. 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2015.2094 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hardie JH, & Landale NS (2013). Profiles of risk: Maternal health, socioeconomic status, and child health . Journal of Marriage and Family , 75 , 651–66. 10.1111/jomf.12021 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hardie JH, & Turney K (2017). The intergenerational consequences of parental health limitations . Journal of Marriage and Family , 79 , 801–815. 10.1111/jomf.12341 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Iveniuk J, Waite LJ, Laumann E, McClintock MK, & Tiedt AD (2014). Marital conflict in older couples: Positivity, personality, and health . Journal of Marriage and Family , 76 , 130–144. 10.1111/jomf.12085 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kamp Dush CM (2013). Marital and cohabitation dissolution and parental depressive symptoms in fragile families . Journal of Marriage and Family , 75 , 91–109. 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2012.01020.x [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kiecolt-Glaser JK, & Wilson SJ (2017). Lovesick: How couples’ relationships influence health . Annual Review of Clinical Psychology , 13 , 421–443. 10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-032816-045111 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kiecolt-Glaser JK, Wilson SJ, & Madison A (2018). Marriage and gut (microbiome) feelings: Tracing novel dyadic pathways to accelerated aging .” Psychosomatic Medicine . DOI: 10.1097/PSY.0000000000000647 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kroeger Rhiannon A and Powers Daniel A. 2019. “Examining same-sex couples using dyadic data methods.” Pp. 157–86 in Analytical Family Demography : Springer. [ Google Scholar ]
• Landale NS, Hardie JH, Oropesa RS, & Hillemeier MM (2015). Behavioral functioning among Mexican-origin children: Does parental legal status matter? Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 56 , 2–18. 10.1177/0022146514567896 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• LeBlanc AJ, Frost DM, & Bowen K (2018). Legal marriage, unequal recognition, and mental health among same‐sex couples . Journal of Marriage and Family , 80 , 397–408. 10.1111/jomf.12460 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lee D, & McLanahan S (2015). Family structure transitions and child development: Instability, selection, and population heterogeneity . American Sociological Review , 80 , 738–763. 10.1177/0003122415592129 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Liu H, Reczek C, & Brown D (2013). Same-sex cohabitors and health: The role of race-ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status . Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 54 , 25–45. 10.1177/0022146512468280 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Liu H, & Wilkinson L (2017). Marital status and perceived discrimination among transgender people . Journal of Marriage and Family , 79 , 1295–1313. 10.1111/jomf.12424 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Madigan S, Plamondon A, & Jenkins JM (2016). Marital conflict trajectories and associations with children’s disruptive behavior . Journal of Marriage and Family , 79 , 437–450. 10.1111/jomf.12356 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Maimon D, Browning CR, & Brooks-Gunn J (2010). Collective efficacy, family attachment, and urban adolescent suicide attempts . Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 51 , 307–324. 10.1177/0022146510377878 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Markowitz AJ, & Ryan RM (2016). Father absence and adolescent depression and delinquency: A comparison of siblings approach . Journal of Marriage and Family , 78 , 1300–14. 10.1111/jomf.12343 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• McFarland MJ, Hayward MD, & Brown D (2013). I’ve got you under my skin: Marital biography and biological risk . Journal of Marriage and the Family , 75 , 363–380. 10.1111/jomf.12015 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Miller GE, & Chen E (2010). Harsh family climate in early life presages the emergence of a proinflammatory phenotype in adolescence . Psychological Science , 21 , 848–856. 10.1177/0956797610370161 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Miller GE, Chen E, & Parker KJ (2011). Psychological stress in childhood and susceptibility to the chronic diseases of aging: Moving toward a model of behavioral and biological mechanisms . Psychological Bulletin , 137 , 959–997. 10.1037/a0024768 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Miller RB, Hollist CS, Olsen J, & Law D (2013). Marital quality and health over 20 years: A growth curve analysis . Journal of Marriage and Family , 75 , 667–680. 10.1111/jomf.12025 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mood C, Jonsson JO, & Låftman SB (2016). The mental health advantage of immigrant‐background youth: The role of family factors . Journal of Marriage and Family , 79 , 419–436. 10.1111/jomf.12340 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Oppenheimer DM, Tenenbaum JB, & Krynski TR (2013). Categorization as causal explanation: Discounting and augmenting in a Bayesian framework. In Ross BH (Ed.), Psychology of Learning and Motivation (Vol. 58 , pp. 203–231). Academic Press. 10.1016/B978-0-12-407237-4.00006-2 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Paley B, Lester P, & Mogil C (2013). Family systems and ecological perspectives on the impact of deployment on military families . Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review , 16 , 245–265. https://doi-org/10.1007/s10567-013-0138-y [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pearlin LI, Schieman S, Fazio EM, & Meersman SC (2005). Stress, health, and the life course: Some conceptual perspectives . Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 46 , 205–219. 10.1177/002214650504600206 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pfeffer CA (2016). Queering families: The postmodern partnerships of cisgender women and transgender men . New York: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Raver C Cybele, Roy Amanda L and Pressler Emily. 2015. “Struggling to Stay Afloat: Dynamic Models of Poverty-Related Adversity and Child Outcomes.” Pp. 201–12 in Families in an Era of Increasing Inequality : Springer. [ Google Scholar ]
• Reczek C, Pudrovska T, Carr D, Thomeer MB, & Umberson D (2016a). Marital histories and heavy alcohol use among older adults . Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 57 , 77–96. 10.1177/0022146515628028 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Reczek C, Spiker R, Liu H, & Crosnoe R (2016b). Family structure and child health: Does the sex composition of parents matter? Demography , 53 , 1605–30. 10.1007/s13524-016-0501-y [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Reczek C, & Umberson D (2016). Greedy spouse, needy parent: The marital dynamics of gay, lesbian, and heterosexual intergenerational caregivers . Journal of Marriage and Family , 78 , 957–74. 10.1111/jomf.12318 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rendall MS, Weden MM, Favreault MM, & Waldron H (2011). The protective effect of marriage for survival: A review and update . Demography , 48 , 481–506. 10.1007/s13524-011-0032-5 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Repetti RL, Robles TF, & Reynolds B (2011). Allostatic processes in the family . Development and psychopathology , 23 , 921–938. 10.1017/S095457941100040X [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Robles TF, Slatcher RB, Trombello JM, & McGinn MM (2014). Marital quality and health: A meta-analytic review . Psychological Bulletin , 140 , 140–187. 10.1037/a0031859 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Roelfs DJ, Shor E, Curreli M, Clemow L, Burg MM, & Schwartz JE (2012). Widowhood and mortality: A meta-analysis and meta-regression . Demography , 49 , 575–606. 10.1007/s13524-012-0096-x [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Roxburgh S (2014). Race, class, and gender differences in the marriage-health relationship . Race, Gender & Class , 21 , 7–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43496982 [ Google Scholar ]
• Schreier H, & Chen E (2013). Socioeconomic status and the health of youth: A multilevel multidomain approach to conceptualizing pathways . Psychological Bulletin , 139 , 606–654). 10.1037/a0029416 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Thomeer MB, LeBlanc AJ, Frost DM, & Bowen K (2018). Anticipatory minority stressors among same-sex couples: A relationship timeline approach . Social Psychology Quarterly , 81 , 126–148. 10.1177/0190272518769603 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Thomeer MB, Paine E, & Bryant C (2017). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families and health . Sociology Compass , 12 , e12552. 10.1111/soc4.12552 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Thomeer MB, Umberson D, & Pudrovska T (2013). Marital processes around depression: A gendered and relational perspective . Society and Mental Health , 3 , 151–69. 10.1177/2156869313487224 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Timmons AC, Margolin G, & Saxbe DE (2015). Physiological linkage in couples and its implications for individual and interpersonal functioning: A literature review . Journal of Family Psychology , 29 , 720–731. 10.1037/fam0000115 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tumin D, & Zheng H (2018). Do the health benefits of marriage depend on the likelihood of marriage? , Journal of Marriage and Family , 80 , 622–636. 10.1111/jomf.12471 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Turney K (2011). Maternal depression and childhood health inequalities . Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 52 , 314–332. 10.1177/0022146511408096 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Turney Kristin. (2014). Stress proliferation across generations? Examining the relationship between parental incarceration and childhood health . Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 55 , 302–319. https://doi.org/0.1177/0022146514544173 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Umberson D (2017). Black deaths matter: Race, relationship loss, and effects on survivors . Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 58 , 405–420. 10.1177/0022146517739317 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Umberson D, Thomeer M, Reczek C, & Donnelly R (2016). Physical illness in gay, lesbian, and heterosexual marriages: Gendered dyadic experiences . Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 57 , 517–531. 10.1177/0022146516671570 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Umberson D, Williams K, Thomas PA, Liu H, & Thomeer MB (2014). Race, gender, and chains of disadvantage: Childhood adversity, social relationships, and health . Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 55 , 20–38. 10.1177/0022146514521426 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Waite EB, Shanahan L, Calkins SD, Keane SP, & O’Brien M (2011). Life events, sibling warmth, and youths’ adjustment . Journal of Marriage and Family , 73 , 902–912. 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2011.00857.x [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wakefield S, & Uggen C (2010). Incarceration and stratification . Annual Review of Sociology , 36 , 387–406. 10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102551 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Williams K, Sassler S, Frech A, Addo F, & Cooksey E (2011). Nonmarital childbearing, union history, and women’s health at midlife . American Sociological Review , 76 , 465–486. 10.1177/0003122411409705 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zebrak KA, & Green KM (2016). Mutual influences between parental psychological distress and alcohol use and child problem behavior in a cohort of urban African Americans . Journal of Family Issues , 37 , 1869–1890. 10.1177/0192513X14553055 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

• PRO Courses Guides New Tech Help Pro Expert Videos About wikiHow Pro Upgrade Sign In
• EDIT Edit this Article
• EXPLORE Tech Help Pro About Us Random Article Quizzes Request a New Article Community Dashboard This Or That Game Popular Categories Arts and Entertainment Artwork Books Movies Computers and Electronics Computers Phone Skills Technology Hacks Health Men's Health Mental Health Women's Health Relationships Dating Love Relationship Issues Hobbies and Crafts Crafts Drawing Games Education & Communication Communication Skills Personal Development Studying Personal Care and Style Fashion Hair Care Personal Hygiene Youth Personal Care School Stuff Dating All Categories Arts and Entertainment Finance and Business Home and Garden Relationship Quizzes Cars & Other Vehicles Food and Entertaining Personal Care and Style Sports and Fitness Computers and Electronics Health Pets and Animals Travel Education & Communication Hobbies and Crafts Philosophy and Religion Work World Family Life Holidays and Traditions Relationships Youth
• Browse Articles
• Learn Something New
• Quizzes Hot
• This Or That Game
• Train Your Brain
• Explore More
• Support wikiHow
• About wikiHow
• Log in / Sign up
• Family Life

What Does “Familial Ties” Mean?

Last Updated: November 13, 2023 Fact Checked

Familial Ties Definition

Using “familial ties” in a sentence, examples of familial ties.

This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Aly Rusciano . Aly Rusciano is a Creative Writer based outside of Nashville, Tennessee. She has over ten years of experience in creative, academic, and professional writing. Aly’s writing has been nationally recognized in the Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle and featured in Blue Marble Review, The Sunshine Review, PopMatters, and Cathartic Literary Magazine. She graduated from The University of Tennessee at Martin with a BA in English, focusing in Creative Writing and minoring in Theatre. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 5,717 times. Learn more...

Familial ties—what are they, and what kinds are there? If you’re interested in learning about this legal phrase, you’ve come to the right place! "Familial ties" is an umbrella term to describe the connections you have with family members. In this article, we’ll explain the main types of familial ties and provide plenty of examples that use the term in a sentence.

• To break it down even further, “familial” relates to families. [2] X Research source Meanwhile, “tie” describes a connection between 2 things. [3] X Research source

• Historically, houses were divided by familial ties.
• Back in the day, familial ties determined the highest social classes.
• She allegedly has familial ties with him. Maybe it’s her brother.
• To gain custody, you must declare your familial ties with the minor.
• I have familial ties with them on my father’s side, but we don’t really talk.

• For example, a sister-in-law is a legally recognized family member because she became your sister when you married her sibling.

• Be of a certain age (this depends on the state).
• Have a long-term relationship.

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

• ↑ https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w18966/w18966.pdf
• ↑ https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/familial
• ↑ https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/tie
• ↑ http://services.dpw.state.pa.us/oimpolicymanuals/ltc/Popups/blood_relative.htm
• ↑ https://www.inimoigustegiid.ee/en/themes/family/what-is-family/different-family-ties
• ↑ https://communitylaw.org.nz/community-law-manual/chapter-12-relationships-and-break-ups/marriages-civil-unions-and-de-facto-relationships/de-facto-relationships/

About This Article

• Send fan mail to authors

Did this article help you?

Featured Articles

Trending Articles

Watch Articles

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell or Share My Info
• Not Selling Info

wikiHow Tech Help Pro:

Develop the tech skills you need for work and life

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

• Essay Database >
• Essay Examples >
• Essays Topics >
• Essay on Literature

The Color Of Family Ties Essay Example

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Literature , Race , Democracy , Family , Education , Community , Finance , Internet

Words: 1400

Published: 02/15/2020

ORDER PAPER LIKE THIS

The Color of Family Ties: Race, Class, Gender and Extended Family Involvement by Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian, attempts to correct the misconception in the family ties among minorities in the United States of America. The general tone is to the extent that racial differences are not necessarily the course of the family ties. Rather, the authors argue that differences in family ties are a direct consequence of class. Ideally, it needs to be noted that class has no bearing on the race. According to the America US Census data, all the races belong to the different classes with whites equally falling in the impoverished classes but in lesser numbers. The authors argue thus that the race should not be considered as the determinant of the family ties. In that breadth, the authors seek for an extended application of social policy to include the extended family ties dimension which is common among the minority group. The paper shall discuss the article in detail. It would be split in two parts. The first part would be a summary of the article while the second part of the paper shall be a critical thought together with the overall conclusion about the article. Within that comparison, the authors draw the attention of the audience to the social class rather than the ethnic composition. The argument according to their narrative is that social class would determine both the disposal income and the time for one another. In that context, the authors raise the issue of financial abilities of the communities. Incidentally, the white communities have access to higher education and consequently are good in emotional and financial support. This characteristic, the authors conclude, emerge due to their acquisition of higher education which leads them to better jobs and hence more financial capacity. Similarly, it is that education that exposes their women into sharing their problems and offering advice. Unfortunately, such higher education misses in the minority communities. Indeed, data from US Census data indicate that minority communities lag behind in terms of access to education especially higher education. This has a negative bearing on their financial abilities and emotional capacities. However, the authors rightly observe that for the minorities who have access to education and able financially, no difference suffices in terms of emotional and financial support. The case is equally similar for the impoverished whites who display rather same mannerisms as their minority counterparts. What suffices, therefore, is that social class is the determinant rather than the racial groups. However, within the same context, the authors lead evidence to prove that minority groups are actually in a better standing in terms of family ties as compared to their white counterparts. For this statistics to come out clearly, one must consider the extended family and not merely the nuclear family. As the authors point out, there are a number of barriers and conditions that prevent the minority groups from marrying. In that context, it is too simplistic to sum up that since the marriage levels in the white community is larger as compared to the statistics in the minority communities, family ties are lower. It is essential to appreciate the authors’ position that practical, emotional and financial challenges actually lead to and improve the family solidarity. If this is the case then the family ties among the minorities would be higher as the family challenges are often higher among them as compared to the challenges that confront the white community. In addition, the authors observe that while the levels of financial and emotional support is higher in white communities as compared to the minority groups, the latter were more likely to help each other with household duties and child care. This suggests that the minority are equally with strong family ties only that their financial and emotional capacities are low hence present a limiting factor. This position is further ascertained by the fact that minority communities were more likely to be living with extended family members. In addition, in cases where they were not living with one another, they were equally more likely to be supporting one another. However, the authors are keen to appreciate the challenges that are ever present in marriage which may hinder extended family ties. In fact, the authors observe that extended families form networks of help. These networks may even unconsciously hinder marriages that they deem would affect their family orbits. In that strain, the authors observe that women have opted to rely on the extended family network for help rather than marry. In many cases marriage has proved unreliable and the woman has had to fall back to her extended family network. In that context, the authors argue that it would be simplistic to conclude that the family tie is weak on the basis of poor nuclear family ties. The extended family ties are actually intact and stronger. Now to the second part of this paper I concur with their arguments by the author. Foremost, it is important for studies to be as representative as possible. It is too simplistic to consider only the nuclear family and omit the extended family in arriving at conclusions on family ties. Ideally, the extended family for minority communities forms an essential component of the family. This is because of the minority family stratification. Minority families have had an isolated and oppressed life due to different reasons that often stick them together. In fact, as noted by the authors, some of the ties have been explained negatively like in the African case of the slavery legacy. However, in the current context, the minority family ties can be seen in contemporary challenges. For instance, minorities occasionally suffer from cases of discrimination based on race and at times gender. These special situations join them together making them bond together as one. This has been brought clearly out by the authors who argue that minorities often assist one another in the best ways possible. In addition, illegal immigration, terrorism, economic difficulties, among other factors continue to bond the extended families of minorities. It must be appreciated that the marriage institution has not worked well for most of the minority communities. For that reason, they tend to shy away from marriage and retain their extended family networks. It is for that reason that extended family members may end up opposing potential marriages if indications are that it would disturb the family network. In the same strain, I do believe the authors’ argument on the social class rather than the racial standing as the determinant of the family ties. Ideally, we need to appreciate that the more financial resources one has, the more help he is able to give. In that vein, it is too simple to conclude that whites had better family ties simply because they gave and received financial aid from one another in larger amounts. Rather, what needs to be considered as wholesome factors such as living together. Again, reverting to the authors’ observation the minority groups tended to live with their extended families in larger numbers as compared to their white counterparts. The family ties should also be seen on a case by case basis. Some families are naturally brought up together hence closer ties while others due to physical barriers, financial barriers, among others were scattered all over the nation hence did not have sufficient time to bond. For the latter group, it would be the case that family ties would be on the low. In conclusion, it must be appreciated that family ties among the races are not as different as is assumed from previous studies. Actually the ties among the minority communities are stronger if looked at from the extended family spectrum. In that respect, it is essential for social policy to be all encompassing and take into consideration the extended families. In that respect, it should be the norm rather than the exception that extended families find themselves in the category of beneficiaries in services such as the ones under the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Gerstel, Naomi and Sarkisian Natalia. "The Color of Family Ties: Race, Class, Gender and Extended Family Involvement." Cootnz , Stephanie, Maya Parson and Gabrielle Raylay. In its American Family: A Multicultural Reader. New York: Routledge, 2008.

Cite this page

Share with friends using:

Removal Request

Finished papers: 1154

This paper is created by writer with

If you want your paper to be:

Well-researched, fact-checked, and accurate

Original, fresh, based on current data

Eloquently written and immaculately formatted

275 words = 1 page double-spaced

Get your papers done by pros!

Other Pages

Healthcare delivery systems essay sample, example of research paper on apple computer inc, example of web of crime internet gangs go global article review, obama health care plan essay sample, paradigms of health essay examples, economics essay examples, essay on letter for future students, example of essay on business, living with schizophrenia research paper examples, photosynthesis course work, report on reoprt, managerial leadership essay sample, example of my personal mission statement course work, economic policy essay sample, division of labour critical thinking examples, course work on technology information systems, health care nursing staff budget proposal course work examples, motivation letter admission essay examples, education case study examples, free report on economic theory, essay on work citied, civilization creative writings, facebook creative writings, military creative writings, welfare creative writings, entertainment creative writings, european union creative writings, infrastructure creative writings, vehicles creative writings, victimology creative writings, friendliness research papers, acknowledgement research papers, individuation research papers, tax policy research papers, dominion research papers, lizard essays, happy hour essays, ultimatum essays, shanty essays, henig essays, swann essays, ladue essays, kress essays.

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — American Literature — Family Ties in “The Grapes of Wrath”

Family Ties in "The Grapes of Wrath"

• Categories: American Literature Grapes of Wrath Grapes of Wrath Theme John Steinbeck

About this sample

Words: 830 |

Published: Jul 17, 2018

Words: 830 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Karlyna PhD

Verified writer

• Expert in: Literature

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays

The Lambert family, the protagonists of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, view the world through a lens which attaches monetary value to people, objects, and actions. Money is a constant presence in their lives, whether [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• school Campus Bookshelves
• menu_book Bookshelves
• perm_media Learning Objects
• login Login
• how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
• hub Instructor Commons

Margin Size

• Download Page (PDF)
• Download Full Book (PDF)
• Periodic Table
• Physics Constants
• Scientific Calculator
• Reference & Cite
• Tools expand_more
• Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

6.12: Family Ties

• Last updated
• Save as PDF
• Page ID 16809

• Melissa Tombro
• SUNY The Fashion Institute of Technology via OpenSUNY

\( \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\)

\( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\)

\( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\)

\( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\AA}{\unicode[.8,0]{x212B}}\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorA}[1]{\vec{#1}}      % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorAt}[1]{\vec{\text{#1}}}      % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorB}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorC}[1]{\textbf{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorD}[1]{\overrightarrow{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorDt}[1]{\overrightarrow{\text{#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectE}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash{\mathbf {#1}}}} \)

Family Ties

Zachary volosky.

I buttoned the last button on my sea-foam green shirt. Luckily for me, it was one of the shirts that my grandmother had ironed the night before. It was a little too tight around my shoulders and about two inches too short to stay tucked into my pants, but it was good enough for school, plus, it matched perfectly with the blue and green tie that was draped around my shoulders. I opened my closet to grab the light blue pair of pants that went so well with the rest of the outfit. I stepped out of my closet as a knock sounded from the other side of the door. I knew it was either my brother or my mom, so I didn’t care that I wasn’t wearing pants.

“Yeah?” I answered.

My mother opened the door enough for her to respect my privacy but still enough that I could see her face. Her eyes were puffy and her voice was soft, exactly how she was every morning after she just got up.

“Can I come in?” She spoke in a quiet tone filled with grogginess.

I decided to tease her a bit because she was never that polite about coming into my room when I was only in my boxers.

I mimicked her drowsy voice, “No, no, no. You cannot come in.” I smiled at my own silliness as my mom came in anyway.

She looked up at me and my smile instantly fled. She wasn’t groggy. She wasn’t drowsy. She had been crying.

“Grandma died last night,” she choked.

My first reaction was to hug and comfort my mom. I knew how close she was to her mother. We were all close to her. She lived next-door to us, so around eleven o’clock every day she would shuffle down the sidewalk in her little slippers and quietly walk into our house. When I say little slippers, I mean little slippers.

The woman was five-foot-two and barely a hundred pounds. Every evening at dinner she would yell at my father for how much food he would put on her plate when she asked for a spoonful of potatoes, or carrots, or peas. Truthfully, the helpings were barely large enough to fill me up when I was nine. She had your stereotypical short, white grandma-hair and a thin pair of glasses that she was always afraid of losing but never did. After she would shuffle her way to our house, she would put on her headphones and turn on the AM radio that she kept in her pocket so that she could listen to the local news station while she did our chores. She would empty our dishwasher, fold and put away our laundry, and then sweep the kitchen floor. She would even leave five dollar bills on my dresser for me to find after she left for the night. I never thanked her for those.

I held my mom for a brief minute or two and then come to the sudden realization that she wasn’t crying. She wasn’t the one that needed comforted, I was. The minute I realized this I started to sob uncontrollably.

“I saw her last night,” were the only words that I could manage to say.

I got home from practice the night before in the usual bitter mood. When you’re on a rowing team in March, things aren’t exactly at their best. Practice would be from 5:30 until 8:00 in temperatures that are forty-five degrees or below, so when practice ends it’s already dark and cold and, because it takes almost an hour to get home, when I finally did it would be darker and colder. So now, because it’s 8:30, I have less than an hour and a half to eat, shower, do two hours’ worth of homework, and get ready for practice the next day because getting your daily eight and a half is the only way I would survive school tomorrow. This was especially frustrating because I never had time to iron the balled-up dress shirts that came out of my gym bag earlier that week. Time and time again, my grandma would offer to do it, but I always refused because it wasn’t her responsibility. I should have to take care of myself.

Anyway, like any other night, I came home and burst through the door, bitter and crabby. After I closed the door, dropped my bags, and began to plan the rest of the night, the door behind me opened and a little woman in slippers holding eighteen freshly ironed shirts was standing there looking up at me with a tiny grin on her face.

My grandmother laughed her usual raspy, lung-congested laugh and said, “I ironed all of them for you so you wouldn’t have to worry.”

I smiled, thanked her quickly, and took the shirts. Truthfully, I only wore about four of those eighteen shirts, but I still appreciated the thought. A gesture like this was so typical of her, I really didn’t think twice about it. She came in and chatted with my mom in the kitchen over a glass of wine while I ran around upstairs trying to get my work done so I could get to sleep on time.

Five hours later the blood vessels in her lungs ruptured from the pressure of the mucus and sputum that was built up in her airways due to an illness called bronchiectasis. Her right lung began to fill with blood and no matter how much of it she coughed up, the blood continued to fill the lung until she became asphyxiated and slowly but painfully stopped breathing. Six hours after that, I would learn all of it before I put pants on.

I became painfully aware that I was standing in the middle of my room holding my mom and sobbing while wearing nothing but a shirt and underwear. It occurred to me how ridiculous I looked.

Trying to choke back tears so that I could talk normally I said, “I’m going to put pants on.”

“Okay,” my mom replied. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I answered. I wasn’t.

I finally put on my pants and continued my morning routine because it was the only thing that I knew how to do. When I came downstairs to eat breakfast, my mom informed me that she had arranged for me to come into school late. Any high school sophomore would jump at the chance to miss a little bit of their school day. I wasn’t exactly jumping.

I got to school during my second period. I sat in the art room and drew the same line over and over again, erasing it just to draw it again. When I went to Chemistry the following period, I was relieved to remember that the kid who sat in front of me was twice my size in both directions so it was virtually impossible to see me behind him. The teacher usually forgot I was there. Just when I was about to get into a comfortable and hidden position to fall asleep and forget for a while, a student with a note from our Assistant Principal’s office came in looking for me. I was being called to the principal’s office. I was never called to the principal’s office.

When I got to the office, I walked in and saw our vice-principal, Mr. Bernot, a tall bald-headed man (or did he shave his head purposely?) who had a passion for following the rules. If you followed the rules, you were always good in his book. I was also surprised to see my brother sitting in one of the two chairs in front of the desk. He looked about as gleeful as I did. The person that surprised me even more was standing behind our principal: Dr. Petrone, the school’s therapist. I suddenly knew why I had been called into the office that day.

“Have a seat Mr. Volosky.” Mr. Bernot motioned toward the only empty chair in front of his desk. I sat down next to my brother who half-grinned at me as I rested in the chair. “Now, I don’t know if you gentleman are familiar with Dr. Petrone, but he is part of our support services here at Central Catholic.” Mr. Bernot motioned to Dr. Petrone as he stepped forward and sat on the front corner of the desk. He looked exactly how one would think a psychologist looks. He was balding (definitely no shaving there), he wore thick black glasses, and had an impressive assortment of sweater-vests.

“Now boys,” Dr. Petrone started, “I understand that you guys had a loss in the family recently. Your grandmother?”

My brother and I nodded in unison. The air of the room suddenly felt awkward and I could tell that my brother felt it too.

“Was it unexpected?” Mr. Bernot asked.

I looked at my brother to see who would answer. He stared back blankly and I could tell that it was going to be me.

“Yeah, we saw her last night.”

“Wow…” the two adults replied, both trailing off. There was an uncomfortable beat.

Dr. Petrone picked it back up, “You boys should know that Central Catholic has many resources that we offer to students who need help in times that their lives become complicated. Please don’t be afraid to come talk to me whenever you need some extra help or if you just want to say ‘hi.’”

Dr. Petrone seemed like a remarkably nice guy. He always had a content smile on his face and the students who knew him never hesitated to say “hi” when they saw him in the hallway, whether they were walking past him or heading up a stairwell and saw him far below on another landing. I wanted to be that friendly with him but not now. Not under those circumstances.

My brother and I both said “thank you” to Dr. Petrone’s offer and were excused. We stepped outside the office.

“That was weird,” my brother said, trying to force out a chuckle.

“Yeah, really,” I replied, faking a smile. We both stood there and looked at each other for an uncomfortable minute. Before we went our separate ways back to class, I gave him a pat on the shoulder for one reason or another. Maybe it helped him, or maybe I wanted to feel like it helped him.

When the final bell rang that day, I picked through my locker and got whatever I needed to get out of school as quickly as possible. I don’t know why I was rushing home. I didn’t want to be home because I knew that she wouldn’t be there. I closed my eyes and slept the entire way to my house.

My brother and I didn’t say a word when we got home. My dad was sitting in his armchair when we walked in. I had never seen him cry but I could tell that he had been. The television was off and he was just staring forward. He stood up when we walked in and hugged us as we entered. Displaying emotions with my father was always an uncomfortable experience, but I knew that this is what families did when an important member passes. He smelt of his usual musk of Brylcreem and beer. His embrace was so warm and comforting that I wanted to let out the tears I had been holding in all day. When I remembered that this embrace was with my father, I became uncomfortable again and held the tears in.

“I love you guys,” he said in my ear.

“Um. I love you too, Dad.” The sentence came out awkwardly, and I cringed at my inability to show affection toward my father. After he let go, I slowly went up to my room where I spent the rest of the night failing to distract myself from what was happening downstairs.

I knew that my mom was on the phone with either her brothers or her aunts or any of the number of people that you call when you are organizing a funeral. Unfortunately, the planning was thrown upon her because she was the closest to my grandma. She was the youngest of four kids and the only girl. One brother, my Uncle Bill, was a police officer who lived about half an hour away, and another brother, Dan, lived in Illinois. They would both be knocking at our door in the next couple of days. Her third brother would not.

When I was about eight years old, I used to sit on the first step of the stairway to the second floor of my grandmother’s house. I would doodle on a yellow legal pad that my grandma would keep in the same place for me when I felt like drawing. I used to sit there for hours trying to draw superheroes over and over again.

Every now and then, she would come and check on what I was drawing and say, “You’re just like your Uncle Tony. He loved to draw. He was such a good boy.” My mom always got quiet and changed the subject when she would say that to me.

That night, I heard the phone ring and my mother’s groggy voice answer it. She didn’t know that I was still awake because she stood outside my bedroom door and had the volume on the phone loud enough that I was able to make out the whole conversation.

“Hello?”

“Joanne?” the voice asked.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Tony,” the voice replied

“Who?” my mom asked, both confused and frustrated.

“Tony…,” he repeated. “Your brother.”

“Oh.” I expected my mom to say something after this but she was silent.

“I heard about mom,” Tony said. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” my mom said. Still nothing more than a word.

“I won’t be able to make it to the funeral. I’m sorry. I have to go now though. Goodbye, Joanne.” Tony rushed out these last words because I think he could feel my mother already growing weary of the conversation. He was right. Without saying another word, I heard the electronic beep of the phone hanging up and my mom slamming it down on the charging dock.

My mother hadn’t the faintest idea that I heard the whole thing. After she went downstairs, I closed my bedroom door and sat on the floor, leaning up against the side of my bed with a blanket my grandma had made for me wrapped around my shoulders. I sat there for a while, crying and cursing God. He never said anything back.

Through my teary eyes, I noticed my alarm clock turn from 11:59 to 12:00. That miserable day had ended but I didn’t feel any better. I actually felt worse. Not because it was the first of many days without my grandmother, but because right then I remembered that it was her birthday.

Discussion Questions

• Why would somebody want to read this piece (the “Who cares?” factor)?
• Can you clearly identify the author’s intention for the piece?
• How well does the author support the intention of the piece? Cite specific details that support or take away from the author’s intention.
• Is there information missing from this piece that would make its intention clearer? What else would you like to know?
• Does the author portray herself as a round character? How does she do this?
• Do you trust the author of this piece? Why or why not?
• How clearly does the author establish a sense of setting/space in this piece? Cite specific details that support your claim.
• How clearly does the author establish characters other than the self in this piece? Cite specific details that support your claim.
• Did you learn anything new from reading this piece? If so, what?
• Are there particular passages with engaging language/description that stood out to you? Describe the appeal of these passages.
• Would you read more writing from this author? Why or why not?

Lupus: Family Ties and the Genetic Puzzle

This down-to-earth essay tackles the complex question: Is lupus hereditary? It paints lupus as the body’s security system gone awry, attacking itself rather than foreign invaders. The piece explores the role of genetics in lupus, likening it to inheriting a mixed bag of traits from a family. While genetics do play a role, the essay clarifies that there’s no single “lupus gene” passed down. Instead, a combination of genes might increase susceptibility, but it’s not a guaranteed path to developing the disease. The essay also highlights environmental factors like sun exposure and stress, which might trigger lupus in genetically predisposed individuals. Importantly, it reassures those with family history of lupus, emphasizing that while their risk is higher, it’s not a certainty. The essay concludes by stressing the importance of awareness and early diagnosis in managing lupus, painting a hopeful picture of better understanding and treatment as research in genetics and autoimmune diseases continues to advance. In summary, the essay demystifies the hereditary aspects of lupus, offering a blend of scientific insight and practical advice. Moreover, at PapersOwl, there are additional free essay samples connected to Genetics.

How it works

Let’s chat about lupus and its family connections. If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with lupus, you’ve probably wondered if it’s something that runs in families. It’s a bit like asking if a love for spicy food is hereditary – the answer isn’t just yes or no, but rather, it’s complicated.

Lupus is like the body’s security system mistakenly targeting its own premises. It’s an autoimmune condition where the immune system, which is supposed to guard against invaders like viruses and bacteria, ends up attacking healthy tissues.

This can affect various parts, including skin, joints, and organs, and symptoms can range from mild to seriously life-altering.

Now, the million-dollar question: Is lupus hereditary? Well, it’s sort of like inheriting a mixed bag of traits from your family. Sure, genetics play a role, but it’s not as if there’s a specific “lupus gene” that gets handed down. What scientists believe is that a combination of genes can make a person more susceptible to developing lupus. But here’s the kicker – many people with these genes never actually get lupus. And on the flip side, there are lupus patients who don’t carry these genetic markers. It’s a bit like having a family recipe but not all the ingredients.

The environment also throws its hat in the ring. Things like sun exposure, infections, and certain medications might trigger lupus in someone who’s genetically inclined. It’s as if the environment flips a switch in those who are predisposed. And let’s not forget the potential roles of stress and hormones, especially since lupus is more common in women during their childbearing years.

If you’re worried about the family angle, here’s some food for thought. If you have a relative with lupus, your chances of getting it are higher than someone with no family history, but it’s still not a guarantee. Think of it more like a slightly increased chance, not a family curse.

So, what’s the takeaway for anyone fretting about the hereditary nature of lupus? Firstly, remember that genetics is just one part of the story. Secondly, being clued up about lupus symptoms and getting an early diagnosis can be a game-changer. It’s like knowing what to look for in a complex treasure hunt – the earlier you figure it out, the better you can manage it.

In summary, lupus and genetics share a complicated relationship. It’s not a straightforward case of inheritance but a mix of genetic, environmental, and possibly hormonal factors. For those with lupus in the family tree, it’s less about worrying and more about being informed and vigilant. And as we continue to unravel the mysteries of genetics and autoimmune diseases, we’re inching closer to better understanding and managing conditions like lupus. Just like a family mystery, every new piece of information helps us see the bigger picture a little more clearly.

Cite this page

Lupus: Family Ties and the Genetic Puzzle. (2024, Feb 01). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/lupus-family-ties-and-the-genetic-puzzle/

"Lupus: Family Ties and the Genetic Puzzle." PapersOwl.com , 1 Feb 2024, https://papersowl.com/examples/lupus-family-ties-and-the-genetic-puzzle/

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Lupus: Family Ties and the Genetic Puzzle . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/lupus-family-ties-and-the-genetic-puzzle/ [Accessed: 28 May. 2024]

"Lupus: Family Ties and the Genetic Puzzle." PapersOwl.com, Feb 01, 2024. Accessed May 28, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/lupus-family-ties-and-the-genetic-puzzle/

"Lupus: Family Ties and the Genetic Puzzle," PapersOwl.com , 01-Feb-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/lupus-family-ties-and-the-genetic-puzzle/. [Accessed: 28-May-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Lupus: Family Ties and the Genetic Puzzle . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/lupus-family-ties-and-the-genetic-puzzle/ [Accessed: 28-May-2024]

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Hire a writer to get a unique paper crafted to your needs.

Our writers will help you fix any mistakes and get an A+!

Please check your inbox.

You can order an original essay written according to your instructions.

Trusted by over 1 million students worldwide

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

How to Write Home / Family Ties in Canada Study Visa SOP

by Contentholic | Jan 9, 2023 | SOP Writing | 2 comments

International students have always been welcome in international universities and colleges. Countries like the UK, USA, Australia, Ireland and Canada etc have recently established themselves as one of the most popular destinations for international students. Without a doubt, these countries are excellent places to call home and advance your career, with multicultural cities, top universities, and amazing natural landscapes. However, studying in a country other than your home country is not for the faint of heart. Months of planning and strategizing are required to meet the requirements of the country in which you intend to study.

Securing admission to a university or college in an alien country is only the first step in your international student journey. Before you begin packing your belongings, you must first qualify for that particular country’s study permit. Along with standard documentation such as your school’s letter of acceptance and proof of sufficient funds, you may be required to submit a statement of purpose (SOP).

SOPs are precisely written and signed statements that you make to convince the visa officer of what you intend to submit when applying for a visa. An application for a student visa can be supported with a Visa Statement of Purpose. We’ve listed a detailed guide below that will help you write an SOP reasoning your family ties or the best ways to write about your reasons for leaving a particular country.

How to prove you will leave Canada?

Aside from being the top country for international students, Canada makes a point of ensuring that students planning to study abroad present compelling reasons for returning to their home countries after completing their studies. This section of the SOP for Canada Visa is very important in your selection. Continue reading to learn how you can demonstrate that you will leave Canada after completing your studies. Here are a few things to consider if you plan to leave Canada after finishing your studies:

Put forward convincing documents in this section of your student visa application for Canada to answer questions like, “What are the possible Reasons to return to your home country in SOP ?” However, keep in mind that the Canadian Visa officer will only forward your application if they are absolutely convinced and satisfied with the student’s reasons for wanting to return to their home country after completing their required studies.

Collect all of the factual information about your family, home, and job. These are the strongest evidence that you will return home once your studies are finished. You must be able to Describe your personal ties to your Home Country . And make no plans to live abroad by mentioning close family ties or any assets you own. Possibly financial prospects that you or your heirs will inherit, investments, owning a house or apartment, and so on will be beneficial. These reasons must outweigh the reasons for staying in Canada. They should make it clear that you intend to leave the country once your studies are completed.

Coming from a joint family and being the youngest of all, I was always pampered and loved by all the members of our family. My entire life has revolved around computers and programming. My uncle gave me a computer when I was very young. Since then, there have been a few days when I have not been on my computer, learning something new or doing something interesting.  My parents agreed to take me on an international trip for my 13th birthday. We made the decision to travel to Canada. When I was there, I felt like I was in a home away from home. I was completely taken aback when I saw the students, universities, and libraries there. It was at that point that I decided to study in Canada. My parents, on the other hand, did not want me to be away from them. As a result, we abandoned the plan. Nothing else mattered to me at the time because I had computers.  Slowly, the hobby turned into a passion, and I became determined to pursue a career in computer science. This interest in computers led me to pursue a Bachelor of ______ at _____ University.

Additionally, I have participated in extracurricular activities and worked on personal projects to inspire myself and broaden my perspective outside the classroom during my undergraduate studies. I enjoy participating in sports. My father always encouraged me to participate in sports such as basketball, cricket, and judo. All of my previous endeavors have left me feeling highly motivated and energized to adopt new attitudes and encounter new things. I am extremely grateful to my family for always motivating and supporting me. This is undoubtedly why I have chosen to continue my education by applying for a graduate degree in ______, Canada.

When it came to choosing a country for my post-graduate studies, Canada was my first and final choice because of its educational system. Furthermore, Canada is a safe and peaceful country with excellent healthcare facilities.

My parents would be expecting my return, so I can’t imagine being away from my family for an extended period of time. As a result, I am eager to return to India and reunite with my entire extended family as well as my parents. Thus, after finishing my master’s degree in Canada, I plan to return to my home country as a computer engineer and work in the IT industry, which is thriving in India.

Rather than stressing the possibility of working or residing there before or after graduation, emphasize your studies. However, it is possible that many students will choose to work on- or off-campus all through their studies. Make sure you don’t write about staying or working in Canada and that you clearly state your intention to return home at the end of your program. You can accomplish this by demonstrating strong economic and social ties to your home country.

Although your SOP is important in determining whether your study permit application is approved, don’t let this process overwhelm you. As long as there is no missing or incorrect documentation, most Canadian study permit applications are approved. If you cover all the key aspects a visa officer will look for in your SOP, you’ll be on your way to studying in Canada in no time. You can also seek assistance from the Best SOP Writing Services , such as SOP Pro which employs Professional SOP Writers to assist applicants in writing SOP and making this part of their journey less stressful.

I need assistant on how to write my SOP. THANK YOU

This is great,I love it

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Quick Enquiry

Recent posts, recent comments, enquire about the sop, get started with platinum package, get started with gold package, get started with silver package, get started with bronze package, custom package plans.

Home / Essay Samples / Government / Philippine Government / Family Ties and Political Dynasties in the Philippines

Family Ties and Political Dynasties in the Philippines

• Category: Government , Education , Science
• Topic: Philippine Government , Political Correctness , Political Culture

Pages: 3 (1541 words)

• Downloads: -->

Introduction 

--> ⚠️ Remember: This essay was written and uploaded by an--> click here.

Found a great essay sample but want a unique one?

are ready to help you with your essay

You won’t be charged yet!

Microbiology Essays

Biodiversity Essays

Cell Essays

Natural Selection Essays

Evolution Essays

Related Essays

We are glad that you like it, but you cannot copy from our website. Just insert your email and this sample will be sent to you.

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service  and  Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Your essay sample has been sent.

In fact, there is a way to get an original essay! Turn to our writers and order a plagiarism-free paper.

samplius.com uses cookies to offer you the best service possible.By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .--> -->