“Family culture” is a phrase that can feel big and vague, but ultimately it’s pretty straightforward— it’s how we interact with one another, what we value, how we spend our time together (and what we choose not to do), and in general, how we, as a family, show up in the world.
Gabrielle started getting a clear picture of her childhood family culture at age eleven. In sixth grade, Gabrielle went to a new-to-her school, where her father was a teacher. Before the first day of school, Gabrielle’s mom prepped her. She knew there would be kids (and their parents) who would harass Gabrielle about her dad. He was a big, loud, nonconformist, who wore head-to-toe yellow and was one of about five Democrats in their little town. People had strong opinions about Gabrielle’s dad. Her mom told Gabrielle that there were two ways she could respond if anyone said anything mean to her about her dad: 1) Gabrielle could put her thumb on her nose, stretch out her fingers and wiggle them—essentially an eleven-year-old-appropriate hand gesture for get lost. Or, 2)she could say, Well, you should hear what he says about you! And then walk away.
Both these suggestions came in handy.
Gabrielle’s mom was teaching the lesson that standing up to people and standing up for people—whether it was defending a family member or cheering for the underdogs at the baseball field—was one part of their family culture.
So was a love of camping; being loud, opinionated, and sarcastic; pilgrimages to Tijuana to have an old VW, bought from newspaper classifieds, painted and reupholstered to resell; the importance of a side hustle (paper routes, babysitting, collecting aluminum cans, stenciling house numbers on curbs, etc.); being early adopters of new tech; and embracing and participating in big cultural moments (like the LA Olympics and Hands Across America).
Ben’s family culture was deeply informed by his father’s career: learning and teaching foreign languages. Partly because of this, Ben’s childhood home often included weeks- and monthslong guests from other countries: Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Mainland China, Taiwan, Mongolia, France, Finland, Russia, Lithuania, and more. His childhood was colored by these close encounters with people who came from very different cultures and often didn’t speak much English. Ben and his siblings were encouraged to learn a few phrases like hello, goodbye, what time is it?, and what is that?, and how to count to ten in different languages. Ben learned that struggling to communicate didn’t necessarily mean you couldn’t or shouldn’t try to understand or be understood.
Ben also remembers that his childhood home was more open to welcoming and hosting guests than most of his friends’ homes, whether the guests were from other countries or not. Other things that were a part of Ben’s family culture: singing together with piano accompaniment; collecting books (Ben’s family was frugal with money, but it was always okay to splurge on a book); and showing what you knew or had learned (Twenty Questions and College Bowl were favorite family games). Video games were deemed a waste of time—though this didn’t stop Ben from spending a good chunk of change on Super Mario Bros. at the arcade. And a common saying reinforced by Ben’s mom was “Blairs don’t hate anyone.” This extended to referees and opponents in sports. Ben’s family wouldn’t participate in booing at sporting events and even would applaud opponents’ good plays.
Whether you’re aware of it or not, you’re actively creating a family culture for your own kids every single day. We all are. So take some time to consider what your family culture is, what you would like it to be, and how, with intention, you can direct and cultivate it.
It’s a wonderful exercise to sit down and think about what you want your family culture to be. In five or ten years, if you asked someone to describe your family culture—a friend or a sibling or someone who has interacted a lot with your family—what would you want them to say? What would you want them to have noticed about your family?
When we think about the family culture we’ve tried to create, this is what we picture: a culture of enjoying and sincerely liking one another. A culture of inclusiveness—if we see someone feeling left out in any social situation, we try to make them feel welcome and included. An embrace of hard work—that no work is demeaning, and we shouldn’t fear or avoid hard work. A culture of participation—we make the most of any activity we’re doing. Appreciating where we live—seeking out the favorite local foods and landmarks, getting involved in the community. A culture of creativity and problem solving. A culture of interacting with all ages—being at ease talking with a toddler or a septuagenarian.
The work we put into thinking about and developing our family culture isn’t something we do alone as parents. Our children are a big part of it as well. Each of our kids has pushed our family to new activities, and each has demonstrated an interest in building a supportive and encouraging family culture.
From 2012 to 2014, our family made a video series called Olive Us. We shot more than forty professional videos over three years. There were many reasons we were interested in making these videos: They were an opportunity for everyone to participate in a meaningful and rewarding activity, and we could have something permanent to show for it. They were an opportunity for our children to learn about the process of filmmaking, and what goes into a film, and we could promote messages and ideals that we hoped would reach our children and other viewers.
At the time we started the series, we had noticed that so many shows aimed at children and young teens (think of what’s on the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon) portrayed siblings who were mean to one another—the default stance was that the siblings were always on one another’s nerves, and there was usually some competitive, sarcastic undertone in all interactions. Though there was sometimes a momentary resolution to a skirmish between siblings at the end of an episode, the overriding message was that siblings are annoying.
When we started making Olive Us, we wanted to normalize healthy and encouraging interactions between siblings. In one episode, one of the sisters makes a lemonade stand, and her brother comes to see how it is going. The sister is frustrated because she hasn’t had a customer yet. If this were a typical show, the brother would likely make fun of her, point out the mistakes she made, and probably make his own lemonade stand to compete. Their competition would escalate throughout the episode, with each sibling getting increasingly combative and annoyed with the other, until the very end, when they finally come to some resolution and conclude that they should still tolerate one another after all.
This is not how the Olive Us “Lemonade Stand” episode unfolds. Instead, the brother asks the sister how her lemonade stand is going, she expresses disappointment, and he suggests they take a break and see if they can come up with some ideas together to improve the situation. They talk with each other and their other siblings, and then work together to make a successful lemonade stand. And that’s it.
The thing is, it doesn’t feel strange or inauthentic for siblings to be supportive and encouraging. Olive Us was an effort to capture what we wanted to build in terms of a family culture. Many episodes portray siblings collaborating or sharing an experience and appreciating one another’s company. And we don’t portray this as strange or exceptional. We show these interactions as normal because they are, or should be.
Other aspects of the family culture we wanted to build were also showcased in the series—things like problem solving, appreciating where we live, the value of participation, a willingness to do hard work, and a culture of kindness and caring for one another.
Family culture is not a fixed, inflexible set of activities and behaviors. Kids grow up, their interests change, and circumstances do too. Establishing a family culture is not about controlling what matters to your family! But as parents, especially when your kids are young, you have a lot of influence on which experiences or values your family really leans into and embraces.
Also, consider that, for young kids, what they remember as beloved family traditions may be something that only happened a few times. Let’s say you introduce a “family movie night,” with some out-of-the-ordinary details—like a fancy popcorn bowl reserved only for family movie night and a special system for picking the movie (maybe the youngest gets to pick a submission out of a jar filled with favorite movies). And let’s say you have this special family movie night three different times over the year. There’s a good chance, thanks to time and memory and the funny way it works for young kids, it could feel like family movie night was a big part of their childhood.
Ben has often told our kids that his family always skied on Christmas morning and then opened presents in the afternoon. But as he looks back, the reality is the Christmas morning skiing probably happened twice, or maybe three times? But to Ben, it feels like this was a pillar of Christmas. And it’s funny to think that his older siblings—all of whom had grown up and moved out before the skiing years—won’t remember Christmas skiing as part of the family culture at all.
It doesn’t need to take a lot to change your family culture either. Try a new activity as a family—take a hike on a new path, try oil painting, winter swimming, bird-watching, or take a music lesson. If one of these activities is a hit—meaning the whole family really enjoyed it—then do it again. And again. Maybe give some equipment related to the activity (like binoculars) for a birthday. Lean into it. After not too long, bird-watching (or whatever activity you’ve embraced) will be part of your family culture.
It’s okay to introduce new activities or ideas, even if you can’t predict if they’ll be a hit. For our first Christmas as newlyweds, a couple of years before we had kids, Gabrielle made a holiday journal. The idea was that we would take turns writing an entry at the end of each holiday season with favorite memories, how the Christmas tree looked, if we traveled or hosted guests, stuff like that. And then it would get packed away with other holiday items and would be fun to read through when we brought it out again the following December. Gabrielle was picturing twenty years in the future and how fun it would be reading back over all those holiday memories.
The journal had a slow start. There were years when we had lots of very young children where we don’t even remember bringing out the journal, and if we did write an entry, it was very short, and we were probably irritated that we felt pressure to write a paragraph or two. But then something happened. Our kids learned to read and write. They discovered the journal among the holiday books, and they loved it. They got a kick out of reading a note about the gifts they received as a baby, or how we spent a Christmas traveling to Grandma’s house. The kids took over the holiday journaling responsibilities and, some years, there are pages and pages of notes with lots of different writers contributing. Gabrielle hasn’t felt pressure to add to the journal in decades.
It’s great that the journal has become a family treasure, but if it hadn’t, that would have been okay too. If we had attempted it and the family wasn’t into it, then it would have been fine to let it go. We can’t always tell which traditions will become important or meaningful, so it’s okay to try things and find out.
While the holiday journal has had a twenty-nine-year life and counting, other meaningful family culture activities we’ve established weren’t so long-lived. Starting around 2006, we began conducting interviews with the kids. The plan was that it would be quarterly, and that it would be one child with both parents. We would talk about how they were doing in different areas of their life (physically, socially, intellectually, and spiritually). It would be a chance for a child to report on how they were feeling, ask questions, bring up any concerns, or frustrations, or areas where they needed our help. We would respond to them or take notes with action items to address later. For many years this plan worked well. But there were other years we only managed to do interviews once. Eventually the interviews tapered off—we’ve only done them once in the last four years.
The needs of your family will change over time. When there were six kids at home, the interviews helped us keep track of things we might have missed in all the chaos of raising a large family with young children. These days, it’s easier to keep track of what our kids at home need, and the interviews don’t feel as important. If an activity that was informing your family culture has fulfilled its purpose, it’s okay to retire it.
It’s safe to assume everyone wants a positive family culture. But we may not know how to articulate what that looks like, or it may not be clear how to get there from wherever we are. If building or improving your family culture is important to you, start by talking with your kids about it. How would they describe your current family culture? How would they describe the family culture of another family they appreciate or admire? How do your kids wish your family culture was different? Happily, the pathway to that desired family culture is straightforward. Talk about it, write down what family members want the culture to be like, and come up with activities, traditions, movies, books, and projects that will reinforce the hoped-for family culture. And then revisit the conversation as often as you like, so that you can make adjustments.