Created versus Inherited Family Cultures

Marcy and I have been talking a lot about our recent realization that the Second Essential in our book The Yes Child, “Create Your Own Family Culture” is so prominent. Marcy observed that people have an “inherited family culture”, but can create a “unique family culture.” This is a subject we look forward to discussing and developing with our readers during our June book tour.

An inherited family culture would be a near total adoption of one of the family cultures that were found in the parents’ childhood homes, same political and social affiliations, same church membership etc or possibly a blending of the two cultures. Most of us create our unique family culture by blending inherited rituals and beliefs from our families of origin with new rituals and beliefs adapted while we create our lives with our mates and/or children. While some people adopt a culture in their adulthood that mimics the culture of their family of origin, we believe that the more conscientious route is to examine habits and beliefs and rituals and deliberately adopt or discard them in light of the affirmative culture one is creating within a Yes Family.