psy 413 family assessment paper - Introduction and...

Introduction and Description
My immediate family is comprised of four people: my mom, my dad, myself, and my
younger sister. My sister and I are approximately two and a half years apart in age. They waited
about five years after marriage to have me, although my mother told me that they initially had
difficulty conceiving me due to my mother’s birth control, and had me when my mom was thirty-
two and my dad was twenty-nine. My mom was already working at Toyota, where she has
continued to work and my dad was working for mental health at a local hospital. He changed
jobs when I was fairly young and has been with the same company ever since. But both of my
parents were very solid in their careers before my sister and I were born. My mom is three years
older than my dad and is now fifty-four and my dad is fifty-one – I am twenty-two, and my sister
is nineteen. We lived in Long Beach, CA until I was nine and then moved a few miles away to
Los Alamitos where we have lived ever since. When my sister was seven, she was diagnosed
with Type I Diabetes, which has had several effects on our family structure and altered our
family functions because we had to compensate for her disease in several ways, particularly
when going out to eat when she was first diagnosed. She has lived with her disease for the past
twelve years and now it is just a part of our daily family operations.
My mother has been working at Toyota for almost twenty years and is currently working
in Toyota’s Quality Division and is managing a project regarding recovering and recycling
hybrid vehicle batteries. Previously, she has worked as a customer relations manager for 5 years
and a supply chain manager for Toyota for twelve years before that. My father is a marriage-
family therapist and works for the Employee Assistance Program. However, he works on site at
a branch of Northrop Grumman as a therapist for Northrop Grumman employees. My sister and

I are both attending four-year universities. I am finishing up my fourth and final year here at Cal
Poly and my sister just finished her second year at the University of San Francisco.
Although my immediate family is of average size for today’s time, both of my parents
come from much larger families. My dad is from New York and all of his family (with the
exception of us, of course) lives on the East Coast still in New York, North Carolina, and Florida.
He is one of five children – three boys and two girls – and is the second youngest, although he is
the youngest boy. My dad has always been the “black sheep” of his family, which I believe may
be part of the reason that we live so far away from his family. My mom was born and raised in
the Mid West and her family also still resides in states in that area like Wisconsin, Missouri and
Illinois. My mom is one of thirteen, so she comes for a very large family! She is the sixth child
in a family of eight girls and five boys. However, despite the distance and amount of siblings,
they are all very close.