Earlier this week I stopped by Virginia Western, well, technically ODU on Western’s campus. Among other things, I went by the library and checked out a small stack of books. The first in the stack I started today, Dalton Conley’s The Pecking Order, a book about the affects of family on the economic prosperity, or disparity (as it were) on an individual – subtitle: “Which Siblings Succeed and Why”. The book is incredibly intriguing and has helped answer a lot of questions I have had about myself and my own familial influence.
Throughout the day I’ve been thinking about my family, the choices I have made and trying to connect the dots as I think back over the memories of my past. I remember my Mom as organized and my Dad as a hoarder and disorganized. I used these terms rather loosely, but it wasn’t until now that I realized I defined my parents by these terms. I didn’t know what to call it, it’s just what I did. Dalton changed that when he introduced me to the term “Master Status”:
[...] a perceived characteristic that colors the way everything else about a person is viewed. It becomes the first thing that someone thinks of when that person come to mind. Examples of master status include being completely bald (particularly for a woman) or having hair down past one’s buttocks (especially for a man); being a Kennedy, HIV-positive, or disabled; having won the Nobel Prize in literature.
He goes on to say that most of us do not have a master status, at least not in society at-large, in my opinion. As children we look up to our parents and inadvertently create a sort of perception of who our parents are and by this perception we know them. When someone asks me about my Mom I tell them she’s organized. Likewise, when asked about my Dad I tell them that he has a tendency to keep things and is seems to be most comfortable when things are in disarray. My daughter has cerebral palsy, her ‘master status’ with which I have a tendency to define her.
I continued to ponder on what this meant in terms of other people’s perception(s) of me. What do people think of me? What is my master status? I took it a step further, heavily influenced by my unborn 30-week old baby, and began to consider what my daughter does, and children will think of me. I have lived a rather chaotic life with little consistency and regularity and I can’t seem to identify a single characteristic or attribute that I would use on myself.
I guess as my children grow older, whether I want them to or not, they’ll develop their own master status of me. It’s possible one child will develop a different master status of their father than another, not likely, but possible. I say not likely because siblings tend to have a strong influence on each others perception of their parents, at least that’s how it is in my family.
I haven’t come up with my desired master status, but I can’t stop thinking about it and will likely share it when it comes to mind. Beyond a defining characteristic we also tend to have many other minor, or slave statuses – consistent behaviors or idiosyncrasies on which people rely to describe us. For as long as I can remember, my Dad would always fill the gas tank of all cars on Saturday night. This was to avoid the need to buy gas on Sunday, aka. honoring the Sabbath. This behavior was something my father did out of respect for the Lord, but developed in me a bizarre sort of trust in him. I knew I could count on his filling the gas tank, although his reasons were irrelevant, it was consistent and it encouraged me.
My mother and I are very alike in that we both flit from one all-consuming activity to another. I have a harder time isolating any ‘minor statuses’ of my hers although I know I can depend on her master status of organization. In each of her endeavors she carefully plans, and masterfully executes – in both of which I can trust and appreciate.
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