Like Branches on a Tree

Like Branches on a Tree

Ernest Burgess said that the family is a "unity of interacting personalities" in 1926.  He went on to say that the family is a living, growing "super personality".  This weeks blog will focus on these statements and how the 'whole is greater than the sum of the parts'.  The "I" in Family shows that a family is a whole but it is a whole made up by different individuals.  Every individual family member is their own person with their own personality and role in the family structure, but each individual in the family is also interdependent, depending on other family members in different ways.  The following quote is something that stood out to me for this particular theory:  

"Family is like branches on a tree, we all grow in different directions, yet our roots remain as one."

This, to me, means:  Each individual family member grows to become their own person and may go a different direction than the rest of the family, but their roots go all the way back to their family. And while they are their own person they still depend on their family member just as branches on a tree depend on the trunk and other branches.

Here is a picture of a tree:  

At first glance, we look at trees as a whole.  But take a closer look..  A tree is made up of many different branches, visible to everyone.  Each individual branch may have different leaves or be of different lengths, representing that each individual family member is different with different personalities. Underneath the ground are the trees roots, which are not visible to everyone.  These roots are tangled into one, representing the family as one whole functioning 'system'.  

A bunch of individual branches and roots make up the component parts of a tree but when they are not attached to each other they are of no significance and are dead.  However, when they are all together as a living tree, they represent wholeness....They represent the family as a whole.  

References for pictures:

http://thisistherealstuff.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/quotes-for-family.jpg

http://www.lushland.co.uk/content/image/love-tree.jpg