Relationships & Self-Concepts: My Mother's Influence

Every human has a sense of self that includes specific roles, behaviors, associations, and attributes that we consider desirable and important about ourselves Personal identities are very progressive, especially when it comes to young people. A toddler’s sense of self is nurtured by protection and acceptance by adults that they are close to. As time goes on this toddler grows into an adolescent who attends school and becomes greatly influenced by all of the peer values and peer pressure surrounding them.

This person may soon find a significant other who will usually have a large influence over their sense of self, but if the protection and acceptance of the adults in their life was and continues to be powerful enough, their imbedded sense of self has a good possibility of being protected Throughout this essay I will analyze how my own sense of self has been affected by the significant relationship I have with my mother and how my sense of self has been affected by a former significant other using concepts discussed in Blumstein‘s article “The Production of Selves in Personal Relationships”.

It can be challenging to gain self-confidence as a young girl in a world obsessed with specific body types and features. One way for former generations to combat this in future generations is by placing less emphasis on looks and more on intelligence, individuality, and quality of life, I truly believe that my mother did a great job doing this starting from when I was just an infant.

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Throughout my life my self-esteem has always been noticeably high and I didn‘t truly understand why until recently. When I watch my mom interacting with her five- year—old niece, my cousin, I note that she leans towards saying things like “you are so clever”, “you are so smart”, “you are so kind” and “you are so special“ rather than “you are so cute” and “you are so pretty”. Studies show that constantly bombarding young girls with compliments on their looks will cause them to View their looks as the most important thing about them. My mom would tell me I was pretty, but only after pointing out how clever or talented I was.

My mom recently told me a story about how when I was six, her dad made a comment to me about my “spider legs’i My mom got extremely angry with my grandfather and told him never to comment on my body type again. For this and many other reasons, I now realize my mom is my hero In high school I went through a relationship with a boy that started out fine, but when I broke up with him he felt so defeated that he spat derogatory comments at me regarding his opinions on my morals, values, and appearance. Although the shock hit me hard at first, I found comfort in discussing this with my mom and remembering how much value she places upon my many great attributes. She reminded me how special I am to her and many other people in my life, Blumstein’s concept called couple identity work was put into play throughout my entire two-year relationship with this boy. Since we knew each other so well, he would say things like “don’t get into the car with Lindsay, she is a terrible driver‘h Due to the fact that he must have gained knowledge of this information and was able to form this opinion shows that “this reality was created over the months and years”, and that he was displaying a reality we had created, while at the same time we were allowing others to see a “sample of the processes through which this reality was created”.

Another one of Blumstein’s concepts called interpersonal control, which “links the motivational states of purposive actors to the self-presentational strategies they employ”, Due to the fact that my former boyfriend would constantly tell others and myself that l was a terrible driver, I soon began to adapt this trait as one of my own, and I began to strongly believe that I in fact was a poor driver. After getting into the car with him and some friends, he would state the above-mentioned dialogue, and after that, my friends would point out every single mistake or risky move that I made while driving, Now that I look back, I realized that my friends weren‘t any better at driving than I was, but due to the fact that my former boyfriend had planted this idea in their minds, they were constantly looking for mistakes to reprimand me on, furthering the beat down on my self identity.

Another result of my former boyfriend constantly stating that I was a bad driver was that either he or my friends would offer to drive instead, depriving me of the chance to practice my driving and get better at its Throughout my teenage years I feel very lucky that my mom never told me what I could and couldn’t wear, I went to a private school with uniforms, so being able to express myself on the weekends was crucial, and my mom understood and respected that. If I wanted to wear something out of the ordinary in public, my mom never made me feel ashamed of it, and never objectified me, which is extremely detrimental to young girls. My mom (or dad) never sexualized tank tops or short shorts on me, its Florida for God’s sake, and after the way my parents raised me I find it unfair and scary that adults would even dare comment on what a younger girl is wearing. This lack of emphasis on my looks allowed me to blossom into the confident college student that I am today. This reflects one of Blumstein’s concepts called role-support, “a set of reactions and performances by others the expressive implications of which tend to confirm one‘s detailed and imaginative view of him or herself”.

I feel comfortable going to class without makeup on sometimes, I feel comfortable wearing gym clothes on campus, and I feel comfortable expressing myself any way I want to because of all of the emphasis that is placed on other important things by my mom specifically Things like like what a good job I am doing in my classes, how proud of me she is for eating healthily and going to the gym, and how great of an influence I am for my younger family members. This role-support that I constantly receive from my mom pushes me to “enact identities consistent with that self in order to maximize the likelihood of receiving that role-support”, When it comes to two related concepts that Blumstein discusses in his article called power and competence, I believe that I had advantage over my former partner due to the fact that I had more resources and alternatives to him such as my mom, my dad, my siblings, and a plethora of friends. He only had his mother and sister to depend on because he hadjust moved to Florida when I met him and had not yet made any friends.

Due to this advantage, I was more powerful than him because he was more dependent on my attention since he didn‘t have as many people to turn to. Due to the fact that he was the less powerful partner, according to Blumstein, he was more likely to resort to interpersonal tactics of indirection, and “one form of indirection may be the subtle yet constant efforts to change alter‘s self so that he or she will behave more cooperatively. Although I was the more powerful partner due to my resources and was in a better position to change my partner‘s definition of himself, him, being the less powerful partner had a greater desire to change my self identity because he did not have as many alternative means to change my behavior. Due to this he would attempt to verbally put me down in multiple ways, Blumstein discusses the contrast effect, which occurs when “two people become intimately acquainted with one another, and they simply will note that they react differently to a situation”, An example of this in my former relationship was our views on security.

My mom has always chosen very upscale neighborhoods in upper class areas to raise her family in, and due to this we never felt the need to place emphasis on locking the front door of our house, closing our garage, or locking our car doors. My mom admits that she believes that she is too lax on this subject, but nothing has ever happened due to us being lax on security. My former boyfriend however, grew up in a rough, low class neighborhood where a lot of crime was committed and due to this, his mom raised him to be very secure with his belongings and with their house We would argue when I found it extremely inconvenient when he would constantly lock his car door on camping trips, seeing as most of my belongings were in his car, belongings which I needed random access to throughout the day, causing me to have to get the keys from him every single time to open to trunk of the car As a couple we also experienced two other concepts discussed by Blumstein, called division of labor and avoidance of competition.

My former partner always wanted to perform tasks with me in order to maximize the amount of shared couple time, but the pressure of efficiency always overcame me, and I would get angry when he refused to go pick us up some dinner while I did my hair and makeup so that we could go out with friends lateri Instead, he demanded that I come with him to pick up dinner and do my hair and makeup after, decreasing efficiency and thoroughly frustrating me After reading Blumstein’s article I realized that my former partner and I were very competitive with each other, and comparison processes, “which involve the sense of diminished worth of our own performance in comparison to the superior performance of the other”. Due to this, I found us defining each other as different from the other, causing us to behave differently from one another, which became detrimental to our relationship, finally causing its demise.

In conclusion, Blumstein’s article caused me to gain knowledge on how social factors and interaction play major roles in formation of the self I included the descriptions of my relationship with my former significant other AS WELL AS the relationship I have with my mother because I believe that the relationship between my mother and I is so strong and that the way she raised me has had such an impact on my life that I was unable to properly write about myself without writing about the way she raised me I discovered the importance of role-support, and how detrimental it is when people do not receive this, and I discovered issues within my former relationship such as division of labor, contrast effect, power, competence, and comparative processes. Although attractiveness towards our relationship emerged from predictability, we were unable to survive in that relationship because of many other previously stated factors that were discussed throughout this essay and in Blumstein’s article “The Production of Selves in Personal Relationships?