Appendix B: Comparison of Family Rituals and Family Routines
Characteristic |
Family Ritual |
Family Routine |
---|---|---|
Meanings |
Have special meaning and symbolic significance |
Often have special meaning or symbolic significance |
Associations |
Closely tied to extraordinary events |
Closely tied to ordinary family life |
Usually tied to culture, religion or faith, ethnicity, and social customs |
Meaningful behaviors tied to family identity, member needs, and valued family events |
|
Initiation |
Often intergenerational; becomes more tightly enacted as the family is more committed over time and interests in retaining and transferring meaning to the future increase |
Initiated when members identify themselves as family and desire a collective identity; tend to become more patterned and organized over time |
Traits |
Repetitive and highly structured actions related to celebrations, traditions, and cultural customs that include the entire family and have accompanying role expectations |
Repetitive, with both highly and somewhat structured actions related to daily life and family function that may include the entire family, dyads, or triads and have accompanying role expectations |
Continue relatively unchanged across the life course |
Changes based on members’ and family household needs |
|
Systematically planned according to revered practices and customs |
Response to valued behaviors, stress, change, transitions, development, and predictable life events |
|
Mostly based on esteemed family traditions |
May be intentional, deliberate, and directed by shared values of multiple family members, but may also be unplanned |
|
Intergenerationally transmitted with few changes |
Some may be transmitted across generations, but patterns may change |
B.1: Licenses and Attributions for Appendix B: Comparison of Family Rituals and Family Routines
B.1.1: Open Content, Original
“Appendix B: Comparison of Family Rituals and Family Routines” by Monica Olvera is licensed under CC BY 4.0.