Family Stories Month rolls around in November just in time for the holidays. When families gather it’s an excellent time to share stories and learn about family history. Throughout the month Family History Month encourages you to record or listen to stories from relatives of all ages.  

Family Stories Month is very important and revealing. Most people think the same as me, like Suzanne Hammer. Once she said “Some people in their lifetime share what’s important to them, and in doing so, they help others learn from their experience. Others keep their stories and wisdom to themselves, which can leave everyone guessing for decades to come.”  

The family system has not always been what we know it as today. Yes, a family has a universal and basic role in all societies, but those roles differ based on geography and the culture of every region. It’s these differences that inspired researchers to take an interest in and study the social history of families. Sociologists aimed to study and understand the impact of cultures on family structures as well as interrelationships between individuals and their relatives. In one of the articles that I read about Family Stories Month it stated that The study of family history has shown that family systems are flexible, culturally diverse and adaptive to ecological and economical conditions. This is why the study emerged as a separate field of history in the 1970s. According to Lawrence Stone, there are three major types of family structures in England. This is because each era brought with it a new family structure. It is also believed that the nuclear family became common in England at the beginning of the 13th century. 

Family Stories Month is Knowing and sharing the story of who you are from complements the current focus on knowing and sharing one’s geographic heritage, or where you are from. Knowing one’s family stories creates meaning that goes beyond the individual to provide a sense of self, through time, and in relation to family. Another way that this can be used is to children who are informed about their family history have higher self-esteem.