Adults' Interaction With Children In the U.S. And Germany

I observed more than two places to figure out the differences and similarities on how adults interact with children in the U.S.. I watched children on the street with their parents, in restaurants, and stores. First of all I have to say that it was hard finding any differences, since the Americans treat their children almost as Germans would.

But I did realize that the children here are more free and independent from their parents. They let their children explore things even though they know that they might get hurt. I saw parents talking to other parents and allowing their children just to run around the area. Sometimes the children would walk very far away from their parents and I was wondering why they didn't look for them at least sometimes; not even a glimpse. In Germany the parents are very overprotective. They watch their children all the time and they are very concerned about them getting hurt. Even when they talk to an adult they still have an eye on their children and would call them back or go get them if they walked too far away. Most of the time you would see people holding their childrens' hands or carrying them so they cannot run away.

One similarity that I noticed was at the stores. The parents, both in the U.S. and Germany cannot say 'NO' to their childrens' requests and wishes. If they want to have something the parents will buy it right away. It didn't use to be like that in Germany but it changed into that trend. When I was young my parents were very strict and they would never buy me something in a store no matter how much I begged, but maybe this was the case because they are not German but Czech. Overall I have an impression that children in the Czech Republic are more polite and very strictly raised. They are not as spoiled as German or American children are. However, when it comes to food, parents in Germany are more strict. If their children want to have grease food or candies they tend to be more strict. Here in the U.S. children get everything they want.

Another similarity would be the supportive way of how adults interact with their children. Both in Germany and the U.S. parents are very concerned about the future of their children and they want their children to learn some kind of sport or instrument to support them in their development. However, I have to say that parents in Germany exaggerate with this 'support' . Many parents basically force their children to have piano lessons in the morning, then ballet lessons and in the afternoon they play the violin. Many children have a packed schedule like that. It is not, that they are interest in all that stuff but they just do it because their parents want them to. Maybe the parents always wanted to be a good musician or athlete and since their dream never fulfilled they will try to make it happen for their children. In America I think it is different. To my mind the parents let the children choose what they enjoy doing and they support them in any way possible.

German Families VS American Families

Families all over the world are very different. In the following I will examine some of the similarities and differences between German and American families.

In the United States many families hyphenate their last names when they marry. Their children, however, usually have the father’s last name. This also gets more common in Germany. However, the children get both last names, not only the father’s last name, which makes the names very long. The Germans also try to copy the Americans in many ways like giving their children 1,000 middle names.

In my opinion, families in the U.S. are very complicated. The divorce rate is one out of two marriages, which is a lot. The reason for this could be that the couples here marry very young and the words ‘Do you want to marry me’ just slip over their lips very easily and Americans always just seem to live for the moment and don’t think that much about the future. Later on they realize that it doesn’t work out. There are a lot of families with only one parent or with stepparents. That is also a reason why most kids spend their days in day care, beginning at a very young age. Even though most families try to eat their evening meals together at home, it is often not possible because of the parents’ work schedules or the children’s after-school activities like homework. Since divorce in Germany is very expensive most people that stayed together for a very long time and fell out of love just stay married out of comfort. Some people stay married but they live in separate homes or even countries like my parents. Ca 30% of the married people in Germany get divorced each year. But the divorce rate is increasing each year. Therefore it is less common in Germany than it is in the U.S. There are also a lot of single parents in Germany mostly women.

I also noticed that there are many couples living together without being married. Also homosexual couples with children are increasingly common but they rather live in larger cities where the tolerance is higher. This is also becoming more common in Germany. There are many partners living together for years without being married. Homosexual couples with children are unknown to me. I am sure it exists in Germany too but I don’t know a homosexual family.

From my point of view the families in Germany are more stable than the ones in the U.S.. Even though both parents work they might find a way to take care of their children by going to work at different times. The time management is more efficient in Germany. Parents always find time between work and the household to take care of their children. There are also exceptions but most people want to take care of their children themselves instead of putting them into day care. To me it seems that American families just don’t find the time and most of them are not capable of managing their time. For instance I spend one month at an American family in San Francisco, California. It was a single mother with three kids. She had a cleaning lady and a nanny for the kids. She had enough money that she didn’t have to work. Still she was too overwhelmed with the three kids and that’s why she needed help. My mother on the other hand is a single mother too and she goes to work and she also has three kids. She managed to cook for us, clean the house and go to work. This is just an example and I don’t want to imply that all American families are lazy or bad. There are always exceptions in every culture.

Voting Process in Germany VS U.S.

The election of the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the State Elections were held this year. I was excited to experience the election process in the U.S.. Since both, Germany, and the U.S. are democratic countries, the voting process I observed was quite familiar to me.

First of all I would like to give a short summary of how the German political system is compounded. The ‘Bundestag’, which is the parliament of the ‘Bundesrepublik Deutschland’, based in Berlin, is directly elected by the nation and is held every four years. The ‘Bundespräsident’ and the ‘Bundeskanzler’ are elected secretly by the German assembly of the ‘Bundestag’. The candidates need to have the absolute majority. The election on the ‘Bundespräsident’ is held every 5 years, whereas the ‘Bundeskanzler’ is elected every 4 yours. The ‘Bundesrat’, which represents the different German regions, is also elected by the ‘Bundestag’. So the only entity which is directly elected by the nation is the ‘Bundestag’ (below you can see a picture of the different German parties, which can be voted). The exact date of the election is chosen by the ‘Bundespräsident’ and must be a Sunday or public holiday. Everybody over the age of 18 who has resided for at least 3 months in Germany is eligible to vote. The elections are held in the city halls of every town and little villages.

The election process in the U.S. is a very important event as well as in Germany. Posters of the different parties will be seen all over town and commercials will be seen on TV and the internet. To come to the actual voting process now, the voters first have to register with their ID’s at the front desk, both in the U.S. and Germany. After that they have to sit down at a covered desk so nobody can see who they are voting. On the desk there is only one ballot and a pen. In the U.S. they will be brought to their respective ward and ballot, according to their region, where they will also have to go to a covered place to vote. The ballot in the U.S. will be inserted into a machine and the machine will count their vote automatically. In Germany however, the ballots will only be put in a big box but no one really knows how they are counted. After this the voting process is done.

In Germany there are many people that do not vote. Their voice will be used to support the more ‘weak’ parties of Germany. So by not voting, some people, unknowingly, give their voice to the less popular parties.

Minorities in the US and Germany

“When different cultures and races around the world clash, there will always be some issues”.

In the U.S. there are many different ethnic minorities. The three biggest groups are the Native Americans, the African Americans and the Hispanics. Each one of these groups has been treated very badly in the past and still today in different ways. The Native Americans have been slaughtered and robbed of their land (since they were the first human beings in the U.S.). The African Americans on the other hand were brought to the U.S., against their will, as slaves. The Hispanics, however, chose to come to the States, because they lived in very bad conditions in their home countries (mostly Mexicans) and they had no other prospective in life so they tried to cross the border illegally, in order to have a better life.

There are many undocumented Hispanic workers, especially in the south of the U.S.. They are cheap workers, for instance, in the garden or the household. On TV I saw a report on Mexican immigrants who come to the states illegally to work for white Americans. They never complain about the little money they get because they are afraid that somebody will deport them. Sometimes they don’t even get paid for their work. I also saw a white American lady talking about going to the store and get some groceries and also three Mexicans to help her with some work in the garden and to clean her car. This was very shocking to me that this lady talked about the Mexicans as if they were some kind of objects.

Hispanics nowadays are treated worse than Native Americans and African Americans. There are still many issues the other ethnic minorities have today but this would stretch my blog out into infinity.

In Germany there are only two big minority groups; the Turks and the Russians. They came to Germany as guest workers. Companies were looking for cheap laborers, mostly Turkish, Russian or even Polish men. After some time they brought their entire families to Germany or some of them moved back to their home countries. Those Turkish and Russian families are already in their second or third generation. Their children grew up with two languages but do not speak either one (German/Turkish or Russian) perfectly. They have their own German slang and they are viewed as uneducated. Those children have big problems assimilating to the German culture and can neither identify with the culture of their parents home countries.

This situation of the Turkish and Russian people in Germany can be compared to the situation of the Hispanics, Native Americans and African Americans in the U.S.. It is quite similar and this phenomenon occurs in many other places around the world too. To my mind these problems that occur when people from different races and cultures meet will always continue to exist until all races have mingled and there will be no distinction between colors anymore.

The Ropes Course

1. What was the experience like for you?

Being on the ropes course was a great experience for me. It was so much fun seeing my other classmates in another situation as well as location.

2. Where there any benefits to you as an individual?

Yes, there were a couple of benefits for me. Although I have already been on a similar course I learned different things in this ropes course. The other one was more about overcoming fear from height for example. This one was more about strategies and teamwork. I learned that I am a kind of person who likes to give contributions and suggestions but not necessarily being the leader of the group.

3. What were the benefits to us as a class?

The activities on the ropes course made me to get to know my classmates better. This could be helpful with the group work in class, since we feel more comfortable with each other now.

4. Compare and contrast how this activity relates to the themes in Ch 4

On the one side the activities on the ropes course relate to the themes Inventiveness and Can-Do-Spirit in Ch 4. We realized that every problem, like the wooden boards for instance, has a solution. On the other side the concepts of Self-Reliance and the Rugged Individualist was left out, since we were supposed to work in teams.

5. Is this activity uniquely "American" or is this something your culture has or could have as well?

We also have similar courses like that in Europe. It's definitely not an "American" thing. Our ropes course was a lot more dangerous than this one and a lot bigger. I am really not afraid of height but sometimes I had to overcome many fears.

Homecoming 2010 in Eau Claire

I was really excited about my first Homecoming in my life. I had a lot of expectations because I have just heard about it, but never really knew what it was. This semester I finally had the chance to make this wonderful as well as shocking experience and I am going to share it in the following.

Homecoming is the tradition of welcoming back former alumni of a university. The elections for the Homecoming queen and king took place a week before Homecoming even started. You would see a lot of creative and funny posters all over campus to make people vote for the Homecoming queen and king. You could also hear the marching band practicing. I never saw it but I could hear the music from across the river.

My Homecoming weekend started with the short but nice parade. We could see the marching band and also a couple of dancers, soldiers again and some students performing.

I could also see that there were a lot of house parties going on all over Eau Claire. Everywhere you could see fenced off areas around houses and people standing with the typical red cups and drinking alcohol. It was only 10 o’clock but the most shocking part was that the bars opened at 7 o’clock on this day and people already started having some drinks at the bars. People from everywhere participated in this event. Even people, who have never belonged to the university. Unfortunately this event is mostly used as an excuse to get drunk all day long.

Furthermore I noticed that everyone wore a t-shirt which either said: Homecoming 2010, UWEC or Blugolds. Almost everyone was wearing Blue and Gold clothing. I really liked this because it shows the strong cohesion of the Americans through events like the Homecoming.

Homecoming usually includes activities for students and alumni, such as sports. Like the football game we saw on Saturday. It was the first football game that I saw in my life and the experience was great, even though I was not able to really understand the game, but the feeling was unforgettable. The marching band and the cheerleaders were amazing. One just gets carried away by the mood and everything.

All in all I thought that Homecoming was a really great experience and I am sad that we do not have something like that in my home country.

Immigration Story

The family I interviewed on their immigration story was a very interesting one, which will be shared in the following. The family ******* has done a lot of genealogy research to learn about their family history. Most people only know vaguely where their ancestors came from.

It was around the 1860’s that the family ******* came to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They came on a freight sailing vessel. Their mother, apparently, selected the cheapest way to cross the ocean. They were about seven people in the family that immigrated and the mother, the only adult since their father had died when they were little. They only had a few dollars and they used this money to come to America. All of them only spoke Polish and a little German, since they came from a German village. This was another reason for moving to Milwaukee, since there were a lot of German immigrants at that time.

They traveled for over eleven weeks on that boat. After arriving on Ellis Island they had to find jobs first to precede their journey to Milwaukee. First they had to make some money because no one was permitted to leave the island without any funds. The oldest son got many jobs to keep his family alive and to get them off the island. He worked on farms and at the markets. The mother also got a job in a kitchen and she saved some of the food for her children. They would have to face a lot of challenges until they could provide a decent standard of living for their family.

After a couple of months they had enough money saved to travel to Milwaukee, where they knew a couple of Polish people. They built their own house. It was a shack but it was theirs and it cost them a lot of energy to build it and they were very proud of it.

In the first couple of years in Milwaukee they had to struggle with financial problems but soon more and more Polish people began to arrive in large numbers in Milwaukee. Due to the accumulation of Polish immigrants they would soon have their own church and school.

The next generation of that family moved to Eau Claire, Wisconsin in the next decade due to a job offer. Nevertheless some family members stayed in Milwaukee.

Conclusively, Polish is no longer spoken in the family. They seemed quite sad about telling me this because they wished they would have kept up some of their ancestors’ traditions. When asking them about having maintained contact with any relatives in the old country they said it is too long ago to trace their relatives back to Poland (if there still are some relatives who survived). Although they wish that they would have maintained some of their families traditions and also the language, they are very proud of this quite detailed knowledge about their ancestors.