Sometimes you are given an assignment to write an essay about family – either your own, or an abstract one. Family is a thing that most of us take for granted as an integral part of our lives – and like many familiar things, it is quite difficult to write about.
So what are some good ideas for essays on family you can use?
Family Event
Family events are useful when writing on this topic because there are times when a family acts primarily as a family, not just as a collection of loosely connected individuals. It may be especially interesting if your family follows not very widely practiced customs reflecting your national or religious heritage that may be interesting to tell about in and of itself.
Lesson You Learned from an Interaction with Your Family
Family plays an important part in an individual’s life, and you are likely to have had some experience that to a certain extent defined your later life. Perhaps it was something one of your parents or relatives said when you were a child and which left a long-lasting impression on you. Or something you worked on together with your father or mother. Or something else entirely – try to remember any meaningful experience you had with your family.
How Your Family Helped You When You Were in Trouble
Have your family ever come to your help when you were in dire straits? Perhaps you were surprised back then because you were never on very good terms with them, and they still came to your side? Maybe it changed the way you look on life in general?
Siblings
Do you have a sibling or siblings? If yes, you can discuss the importance of them in one’s life. Specify how important your siblings were for you when you were growing up, how you helped each other out, what kind of relationship you had or still have.
Extended vs. Nuclear Family
In modern Western society, extended families (i.e., families including relatives beyond parents and children either living under one roof or having close connections with each other) are getting rarer and rarer – highly individualized nuclear families are completely prevalent. You may talk on strong and weak points of both types of families, tell which kind of family you have and which you believe to be better.
Importance of Grandparents
You may tell about how important grandparents for every family are – as a connection to the family’s past, its history, as hubs around which different branches of the family connect to each other. You may tell about your own relationships with your grandparents, either when you were a child or right now, how important they were in the formation of your character.
The family is a vast, multi-lateral topic that is hard to cover in a single essay – especially if you aren’t given a particular topic and have to think of something on your own. Stick to something in particular and support your writing with examples – this is probably the only tip that remains the same no matter what you are writing about.