What social factors affect your family life? In what ways is your family life different from that of your grandparents when they were your age? Response The social factor that has affected my family life the most has to do with my dad. He is one of the most well liked people you will meet in life. Everyone who meets him is drawn to him because of his personality and ability to talk with everyone. He was employed with Chatham County for approximately 21 years. He is a certified law enforcement officer and was with the Chatham County District Attorney’s office for most of his years.
In his last position, he was the Assistant Director of Child Support. He was over the investigators who tracked down parents who were not paying child support. With his position, he also did off duty work, so that my mom could stay home with me and my two older brothers. It seems that just one day out of the blue, he was on the way home from work and did not feel well. He was dizzy and felt funny in the head. He thought this was due to the long hours he had been working recently.
This dizzy feeling did not go away and seemed to be happening more often when he was driving. He went to the doctor and test were ordered and he saw many specialists. After consulting with numerous doctors, he was diagnosed with vestibular disease disorder. There are not a lot of people who have this disease and because it involves the inner ear and parts of the brain, there is no known treatment for it. Upon receiving this medical information, his employer felt that he was a risk to them so they put him out of work of disability.
I can vaguely remember the day that he came home and said that he did not have a job anymore. My family’s life changed. We were a family of five that lived comfortably and laughed all the time. My parents fought for over three years for disability for my father. In the end, he was put on social security disability, however, his income was nothing like it used to be. My mother had to look for employment immediately and my dad became the stay at home parent. This was a major adjustment for our family.
Our family has strong ties and we have stuck together and weathered this storm. This was an extremely difficult time for my father as one day he was healthy and able to support his family to the next day being considered disabled. This event has made me and my brothers a lot stronger and even more determined to succeed. How is my life different from my grandparents when they were my age? They always talk about how hard times were when they were growing and compare their life with mine.
They talk about not having money to buy clothes and things like that, but things are a lot different today. Today, you are judged on the clothes that you wear, what brand they are, where you live, what you drive and the list goes on and on. I don’t ever remember hearing my grandparents talk about these issues when they were growing up. Listening to them talk, I sometimes think it would be fun to go back in the day and live like they did. We could see what it was like and see how easy life really is for us.
