Kinship Interview!

For this blog post I got to interview my Father, Dan Vaughn, and explore a side of my family that I thought I knew a lot  about, oh how wrong was I. My Father is a Black man who was born in Los Angeles, CA with 2 other siblings and a non-present biological Father (except with the oldest child) who she eventually divorced from. His Mother on the other hand, moved to different places to live with the three boys and on the way met their Step-Father and got married and he was their true live in Father. 

As the anthropologist interviewing my Father I still felt very comfortable at times when I thought I was asking my interviewee discomforting questions about his Father's involvement but I was able to play the questions by what the interviewee wanted to share the most about. I do not think my choice affected my interview because I was able to learn things through creating a semi-normal conversational flow with my interviewee. If I was unrelated to they person I was having this interview with I would probably start with multiple questions to get a gauge as to what topics my interviewee was comfortable with talking about and which topics changed their body language. I would tell build-up to the more uncomfortable questions after building-up rapport with the interviewee to have them feel like they can trust me. 

In my family I see a closeness in the children that were from the same Father even though they weren't as close to each other as the step-siblings when they were younger but with age the were closer. There is most definitely an emphasis on the maternal lines of the family. When I talked to my interviewee he knew more about the Mothers in the family than the Father's, and the Mother's took care of him in a more constant way that the man figures. Older individuals seemed to be held at a different standard than the younger ones. There was a trend towards lots of individual families as the generations got closer to me. For instance when talking about his Grandmother she was born into a family of 12, His Mother was the only child and within his family(generation) their were only three kids, from his Father and Mother, but his Father also had more kids by different women all the while. With each mother there were only 2 or less (that he knows about). My interviewee's Grandmother's Mother was full Native American but that was so far removed that it really didn't effect his quality of life.

To conclude my thoughts about my Dad's side of the family. I have always knew about my Mother and Father's side of the family. I actually socialize much more with my Mother's side of the family because I was with that side of the family the most since my Mother and Father never got married.

The Grandmothers in my family have always had more influence in the family matters. I think things are more maternal because women have stayed with their children while the Fathers have been in-and-out throughout the course of both my parents lives. 

Family members that were married into the family, though they were few, were treated like another part of the family. It might be because there was so many different families and infidelity that a strong close knit defensive group. 

There are slight differences between genders when it came to who took care of who. The Father's have been unstable and therefore been misunderstood because my parents did not know about there Father's when they were younger. And since my Father's biological Dad died when he was 18 years old so there was an emphasis on the Mother.

I learned that my Father's side of the family is more intricate than I previously thought. I'm realizing that I never knew anything about my Great-Grandparents Parents and I feel like I am missing out on an important connection to my family history.