Castaneda 1

Briana Castaneda
English 113B
Professor Spitler-Lawson
May 11, 2016
Project Text Final Draft
Word count: 1066
Family Differences
Many families are not all the same due to the way they were brought up. They have many
differences and ways of interacting with one another. Family is very important because family
members are the ones who uplift you and motivate you to do better, but not all of them are the
same. In some cases a family is brought up with only one parent or some families aren't even
biologically related. In family you tend to feel what love really is and you enjoy the company of
one another. In the book, The Giver by Louise Lowry, the families in the community are
controlled by others, the mother and father are selected by the committee and are chosen who
they will marry and what children they will receive. In each family they are assigned to have
only one son and one daughter, but none can be related. Although in the real world families are
nothing like in The Giver, you are not chosen who you will marry nor what children you may
have.
In The Giver family is considered the opposite of what the real world portrays such as no
one is allowed to have any emotions or feelings, which in reality everyone tends to have
emotions and feelings such as love, happiness, sadness, and pain. To feel any emotion in the
community of The Giver it is considered wrong and no one should know it is possible. The
author mentions, I like the feeling of love, [Jonas] confessed. He glanced nervously at the

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speaker on the wall reassuring himself no one was listening. The author explains how in their
society no one is allowed to feel any emotion and if the community finds out someone has
feelings towards another person, it is wrong. In the real world anyone and everyone is allowed to
have feelings. Families are created without a choice, they are not assigned to a family. In The
Giver there is a rule where families are assigned the rule is Two children-one male, one femaleto each family unit, (Lowry 8). The parents are assigned to each other as well as the children are
assigned to parents who are not birth parents. These types of families are not seen in the real
world.
In the real world not all families are biological, many cases some families have children
who are considered their adoptive children. Adoption is when two parents agree to give away
their child to a family that will take care of and raise a child that is not their own. Adopting a
child is nothing like being assigned to a child because in adoption you have the choice to choose
what kind of child you will want to raise such as age, ethnicity, or gender. Millions of children
around the world have been adopted according to Alan Greenblatt in his article International
Adoption, In 2010, only 30,000 of the world's nearly 18 million orphans were adopted by
parents from other countries. Not all children are from the same country from the adopted
parents. The difference between the real world and The Giver is that it is okay to choose who to
be your child when it comes to adoption rather than in that society you are given what is chosen
for you.
Not all families stay together after they are legally married some families begin to break
apart when the spouses decide to no longer continue their marriage. After you are legally married
and decide to leave your partner it is called divorce. Divorce means the legal dissolution of a
marriage by a court, if a family with children decides to get a divorce it goes through a court

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process. During the court process the judge decides whether or not the parents equally share
custody of the children or one gets more custody than the other. Many families suffer when it
comes to a divorce because it begins to feel broken and there is no choice into fixing it when the
spouses have came to a conclusion. In The Giver there is no such thing as divorce but in reality
studies show that, ...bad marriages often end up doing more harm than good to the whole
family. Family isnt perfect but the way it is set up in the society of The Giver they make it seem
so perfect but it is runned by the society and the rule they must follow.
Many people don't have a choice when it comes to marriage just like in The Giver, there
is a such thing called an arranged marriage. Arranged marriage is a marriage planned or chosen
by the family with no say or little say in themselves, as well as in The Giver. The percentage of
arranged marriage worldwide is 53.25% and the global divorce rate of arranged marriages is
6.3%. Not only do those in arranged marriages suffer because of being forced to marry but they
also suffer when it comes to a divorce. A lot of the time woman suffer most when it comes to
supporting their children/family on their own with no male figure. Most of the time a male is
who has more rights than women do when it comes to a financial matter. Karen Foerstel says in
her article Women's Rights, Women around the world have made significant gains in the past
decade, but tens of millions still face significant often appealing hardship. Now a days when
women don't have the extra hand to provide for their family, the whole family begins to suffer.
For example, if the Woman of the household has to stay home to take care of a sick child no one
else besides the parent will work and make the money of the losing day of being off.
There are many different types of families all around the world who go through different
types of situations rather from The Giver because in their society the whole community is
already planned and organized to being a certain way and no one is allowed to be different. In the

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real world there happens to be many issues that has caused families to be different than each
other in many ways. The real world allows to have feelings and emotions and many families
suffer through different things, but although not every family is the same nor perfect, family will
always be family.