Example Essay/Final Draft

Each Family Has Its Distinctive Lifestyle
Culturally, socially, religiously and many others, are ways that make all families different from other ones. I’ve always heard that no two people are exactly alike. Wouldn’t that be true for families also, since people make them up? It’s definitely true. Take any two families you know, even your own and compare it to another, you will find many differences.
Lifestyle is really key in defining variations in families. Differences that come to my mind are, the way a family dresses, where a family goes on vacation, or what a family thinks is a healthy meal. I see my family’s lifestyle best, when I compare it to any other family, it doesn’t matter if we are related or if I don’t know them at all. There is really no way to measure what kind of lifestyle a family has or how good it is, it’s just their own and it’s very different from any other one.
I didn’t realize until probably about middle school that every family wasn’t like mine. Spending the night away from home is a very good way to experience another family’s way of life. The first time I spent the night away from home was probably at my cousin’s house, even though they are “family”, I still didn’t live with them. I didn’t know that their dog wasn’t supposed to go outside, or that we were to join hands when we said the blessing. I was used to doing things the way my family did.
Another way that shows a family’s lifestyle is in what they eat. It’s really interesting to me, going to someone’s house and seeing what they serve together as a meal. Just the other day we had friends over and my mom ordered a pizza. When we sat down to eat, we offered our guests applesauce. Everybody thought it was really strange that we ate applesauce with pizza, but we have just always done that. I know my family and every other family probably does odd things, like having breakfast for supper, but it’s what we are used to.
A television show that demonstrates my point exactly is “Yes, Dear”. If you have ever watched this show in the afternoon, you should know what I am referring to. If not, this is a quick overview: Greg and Kim own a home with the luxury of having a guest house in the backyard. Kim’s sister Kristine, her husband Jimmy, and their two boys live in the guest house. I would say that they just sleep in the guest house and spend most of their time in the main house with Greg, Kim, and their two children. Even though these two families are related and live together, they have very different lifestyles. Greg and Kim are always trying to teach their children manners and values, while Jimmy and Kristine don’t really do much parenting. It usually shows them at the dinner table, and Greg and Kim are telling their children to eat all of their vegetables or they don’t get dessert. Jimmy and Kristine don’t really enforce rules so their kids get to eat dessert either way. That just shows that families also have different rules, values, and morals.
I think if every family had the same rules, dressed the same, and ate the same things for dinner, there would be no variety in the world and everybody would be very boring. When I think about my family compared to other families, I usually think about other American families and never really think about what kind of lifestyles families in foreign countries have. It would probably be very shocking for me, but fascinating to see how they live in other parts of the world; I could probably write a whole book of those differences. I will end though, thinking about my family and what quirky things we do or say, habits that have formed, and why I wouldn’t want to live any other way!