Peggy Jaeger's Blog - Posts Tagged "family-dynamics"
Families... can't live with them, don't want to live without them
I'm fascinated by families and birth order. As an only child, I was the solitary kid in rooms always filled with adults. I think one of the reasons I'm such a good and thorough observer is because I was raised in that era where children were seen but never heard. I learned very early in life how to watch people without them noticing, how to gage emotions and reactions during situations, and most importantly, how to describe what I was seeing.
From the time I knew I was the only kid in my family's realm, I dreamed of having siblings. It didn't matter to me if I was the oldest, youngest, or came somewhere in the middle of the food chain. I wanted other people like me around the house. Sadly, it didn't happen. My life long fascination with birth order and how siblings react and interact with one another is the reason I like writing about big families. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to invent the families I always wanted as my own. I would have liked nothing more while growing up than to have older brothers looking out for me and sisters guiding my way to adolescence.
Families come with their own sets of rules on behavior and thinking and actions. Most of it is based on the shared history they have, and much of it is situational.
When I start a new book series, the dynamics in the family comes first. Is there a father figure present and if so, how does he rule? If no dad is around, how does the mother keep order, pay the bills, provide for her children? What roles do the oldest and youngest play int his scheme? All these questions are thought out prior to my ever typing a word of the story. I need to now "my families" before I can write about them.
What about you? Come from a big family, or are you an only like me? Where is your birth order and did it play a role in making you the person you are? Or did it hamper your dreams and desires because things were "expected of you?"
Birth order, sibling dynamics, and families are truly fascinating to read - and write - about.
From the time I knew I was the only kid in my family's realm, I dreamed of having siblings. It didn't matter to me if I was the oldest, youngest, or came somewhere in the middle of the food chain. I wanted other people like me around the house. Sadly, it didn't happen. My life long fascination with birth order and how siblings react and interact with one another is the reason I like writing about big families. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to invent the families I always wanted as my own. I would have liked nothing more while growing up than to have older brothers looking out for me and sisters guiding my way to adolescence.
Families come with their own sets of rules on behavior and thinking and actions. Most of it is based on the shared history they have, and much of it is situational.
When I start a new book series, the dynamics in the family comes first. Is there a father figure present and if so, how does he rule? If no dad is around, how does the mother keep order, pay the bills, provide for her children? What roles do the oldest and youngest play int his scheme? All these questions are thought out prior to my ever typing a word of the story. I need to now "my families" before I can write about them.
What about you? Come from a big family, or are you an only like me? Where is your birth order and did it play a role in making you the person you are? Or did it hamper your dreams and desires because things were "expected of you?"
Birth order, sibling dynamics, and families are truly fascinating to read - and write - about.
Why I write about families....
If you could come up with one sentence about what I write that defines my “brand” it would be Writing about families and everlasting love. The love part is easy to understand: I write romantic fiction. The family part needs a little explaining.
I was, and still am, an only child. Both my parents remarried after they divorced each other, but neither had more children. I’m it. Some people might think this is like winning the presents and attention lotto. I’m the only one who gets birthday, Christmas, Easter and every other gift-giving holiday, presents. I’m also the one who gets all the individual attention from the parental units. I don’t need to share my parents with anyone else.
In a perfect world this would be great. But we don’t live in a perfect world.
My biological parents despised one another and their anger and disgust filtered down to me. I don’t have any memories in childhood where one of them actually said something nice about the other. It was always a negative comment. In fact, I was told I was so much like the other parent (from both of them ) that this increased the animosity they had for one another and the anxiety I had being around them. When I would dream at night I frequently dreamed of either being an orphan or being in a humongous clannish family.
All 4 of my parents (step and biologic) are still alive, so no orphan state. But I did – luckily – marry into a huge family that I feel is clannish, but in the best sense of the word.
So, when I started writing romance I knew what I wanted to write about were families. The good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful – of which there are equal parts in every family structure.
Since I am an only child, I know firsthand how to write about that. And I have. Many of my stories are about an only child struggling to find the perfect life. Throwing an only into a large family pond is a great way to increase conflict, bring about change both internally and externally, and to encourage growth to happen on every character’s part.
Large families have their own individual ethics, rules and codes for everything from acceptable behavior, to kitchen duties. Throwing an independent only child as an adult, into this dynamic where everything from work to feelings are shared as a whole, and not singularly, is a sure-fire way to ramp up the conflict and tension between the main characters, especially if the only is stuck in his or her ways.
Large families are fun. They can also be soul sucking, heartbreaking, and destructive. But when they are accepting, open and loving, the plot almost writes itself.
I was, and still am, an only child. Both my parents remarried after they divorced each other, but neither had more children. I’m it. Some people might think this is like winning the presents and attention lotto. I’m the only one who gets birthday, Christmas, Easter and every other gift-giving holiday, presents. I’m also the one who gets all the individual attention from the parental units. I don’t need to share my parents with anyone else.
In a perfect world this would be great. But we don’t live in a perfect world.
My biological parents despised one another and their anger and disgust filtered down to me. I don’t have any memories in childhood where one of them actually said something nice about the other. It was always a negative comment. In fact, I was told I was so much like the other parent (from both of them ) that this increased the animosity they had for one another and the anxiety I had being around them. When I would dream at night I frequently dreamed of either being an orphan or being in a humongous clannish family.
All 4 of my parents (step and biologic) are still alive, so no orphan state. But I did – luckily – marry into a huge family that I feel is clannish, but in the best sense of the word.
So, when I started writing romance I knew what I wanted to write about were families. The good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful – of which there are equal parts in every family structure.
Since I am an only child, I know firsthand how to write about that. And I have. Many of my stories are about an only child struggling to find the perfect life. Throwing an only into a large family pond is a great way to increase conflict, bring about change both internally and externally, and to encourage growth to happen on every character’s part.
Large families have their own individual ethics, rules and codes for everything from acceptable behavior, to kitchen duties. Throwing an independent only child as an adult, into this dynamic where everything from work to feelings are shared as a whole, and not singularly, is a sure-fire way to ramp up the conflict and tension between the main characters, especially if the only is stuck in his or her ways.
Large families are fun. They can also be soul sucking, heartbreaking, and destructive. But when they are accepting, open and loving, the plot almost writes itself.
4 More days....
Christmas is this week and, as usual, I am in a moody funk. Growing up, most of my Christmas days were spent being shuffled from one parent to another and then on to my Irish grandmother’s house for what came to be known to me as the twelfth circle of hell. My mother was the middle of three girls, the oldest had died when I was a baby and the youngest was grandma’s absolute favorite. As was her daughter, my cousin. My mother and I were barely tolerated. We were only invited to her home simply because Irish Catholic guilt won over my grandmother each year and she didn’t want to be seen by the neighbors and those who knew her as “neglectful” of her family.
crazyfamily
So dumb.
The yearly torture would start on Christmas Eve when we would trek to my stepfather’s large Italian family for La Vigil. As the baby in his family, my stepfather was warmly welcomed and much loved. Not so much my mother and I. We were the ultimate interlopers, despised by his mother who never spoke in English when we were around so we wouldn’t know what she was saying about us. After taking 7 years of Italian in middle school and high, she stopped doing that when I translated then repeated everything she’d just said about my mother’s outfit to the dinner table.
Score one for the fat Irish kid.
We’d sit through the seven courses of various fish prepared by my stepfather’s sister and mother and then we’d open gifts. My mother and I were routinely forgotten even though we’d brought presents for all of them – the dozens of children included. As a child I’d watch kid after kid open a cool toy or get a great outfit to wear while I just sat there ignored, jealous, sad, presentless.
They were not the nicest people on the planet. Not even close.
crazy3
On Christmas day I’d wake up and after a morning shipped off to my father and stepmother,( who by the way was a lovely person – my father so did not deserve her) I was brought back to my mother and stepfather and then – because neither one of them drove a car, we’d run to the bus stop so we wouldn’t miss it ( buses only ran every hour on the holiday), get to the ferry and wait to take that ( ferries also only ran every hour and somehow they were never timed with buses.) Off the ferry and then two long subway rides and a half mile walk to grandma’s fourth-floor walkup apartment. And when I say walk up, I mean it. No elevator.
By now it would be about three-thirty and the drinking would be in full swing, having started at the noon hour. Something would always cause an argument between my mother and hers, which many times ensued in the three of us leaving before dinner was served, or in the police being summoned by a neighbor who’d heard the shouting. Sometimes, we’d actually make it to dinner and presents before a blow-up would start.
I’m telling you this because I’m trying to explain why the holiday season has never been fun for me and why, when I write about families now, I always depict them as being loving, accepting, and actually liking one another.
It was the opposite way I grew up, you see. Every year I asked Santa for siblings to share with, parents who loved me, grandparents who spoiled me and a socio-economic situation that did not include the cops knowing our phone number by sight when it was dialed into the police station. When these things didn’t materialize under the tree – or in my life – I imagined them. The families in my imagination were warm, funny, sweet and sober. Tables didn’t get flipped in anger, food didn’t get tossed at a crying child and the police dealt with real criminals.
These families lingered in my mind until I started committing them to paper and into my novels, where they bring me joy.
So.
carzyfamily2
My grandmothers – Irish and Step-Italian – are long dead, and I have no contact with their families any longer. It was a mutual divorce on both our counts. I have my own wonderful family to spend the holiday with now, and am finally able to spend Christmas the way I’ve always wanted: with a happy, warm, loving and accepting group of people.
I hope your holidays are spent this way as well.
Peace. Love. Joy, and A Very Merry Christmas from me to you.
And here’s a little sumthin’ sumthin’ coming on the next major holiday : VALENTINE’S DAY: The CandyHearts Series. Click and see all the covers starting on January 4, 2016. And here’s a little hint – mine is releasing on 2/8/16. Enjoy.
to enjoy the pictures and the link, click to my blog page: http://peggyjaeger.com
crazyfamily
So dumb.
The yearly torture would start on Christmas Eve when we would trek to my stepfather’s large Italian family for La Vigil. As the baby in his family, my stepfather was warmly welcomed and much loved. Not so much my mother and I. We were the ultimate interlopers, despised by his mother who never spoke in English when we were around so we wouldn’t know what she was saying about us. After taking 7 years of Italian in middle school and high, she stopped doing that when I translated then repeated everything she’d just said about my mother’s outfit to the dinner table.
Score one for the fat Irish kid.
We’d sit through the seven courses of various fish prepared by my stepfather’s sister and mother and then we’d open gifts. My mother and I were routinely forgotten even though we’d brought presents for all of them – the dozens of children included. As a child I’d watch kid after kid open a cool toy or get a great outfit to wear while I just sat there ignored, jealous, sad, presentless.
They were not the nicest people on the planet. Not even close.
crazy3
On Christmas day I’d wake up and after a morning shipped off to my father and stepmother,( who by the way was a lovely person – my father so did not deserve her) I was brought back to my mother and stepfather and then – because neither one of them drove a car, we’d run to the bus stop so we wouldn’t miss it ( buses only ran every hour on the holiday), get to the ferry and wait to take that ( ferries also only ran every hour and somehow they were never timed with buses.) Off the ferry and then two long subway rides and a half mile walk to grandma’s fourth-floor walkup apartment. And when I say walk up, I mean it. No elevator.
By now it would be about three-thirty and the drinking would be in full swing, having started at the noon hour. Something would always cause an argument between my mother and hers, which many times ensued in the three of us leaving before dinner was served, or in the police being summoned by a neighbor who’d heard the shouting. Sometimes, we’d actually make it to dinner and presents before a blow-up would start.
I’m telling you this because I’m trying to explain why the holiday season has never been fun for me and why, when I write about families now, I always depict them as being loving, accepting, and actually liking one another.
It was the opposite way I grew up, you see. Every year I asked Santa for siblings to share with, parents who loved me, grandparents who spoiled me and a socio-economic situation that did not include the cops knowing our phone number by sight when it was dialed into the police station. When these things didn’t materialize under the tree – or in my life – I imagined them. The families in my imagination were warm, funny, sweet and sober. Tables didn’t get flipped in anger, food didn’t get tossed at a crying child and the police dealt with real criminals.
These families lingered in my mind until I started committing them to paper and into my novels, where they bring me joy.
So.
carzyfamily2
My grandmothers – Irish and Step-Italian – are long dead, and I have no contact with their families any longer. It was a mutual divorce on both our counts. I have my own wonderful family to spend the holiday with now, and am finally able to spend Christmas the way I’ve always wanted: with a happy, warm, loving and accepting group of people.
I hope your holidays are spent this way as well.
Peace. Love. Joy, and A Very Merry Christmas from me to you.
And here’s a little sumthin’ sumthin’ coming on the next major holiday : VALENTINE’S DAY: The CandyHearts Series. Click and see all the covers starting on January 4, 2016. And here’s a little hint – mine is releasing on 2/8/16. Enjoy.
to enjoy the pictures and the link, click to my blog page: http://peggyjaeger.com
