Family folklore information

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Family folklore is the branch of folkloristics concerned with the study and use of folklore and traditional culture transmitted within an individual family group. This includes craft goods produced by family members or memorabilia that have been saved as reminders of family events. It includes family photos, photo albums, along with bundles of other pages held for posterity such as certificates, letters, journals, notes, and shopping lists. Family sayings and stories which recount true events are retold as a means of maintaining a common family identity. Family customs are performed, modified, sometimes forgotten, created or resurrected with great frequency. Each time the result is to define and solidify the perception of the family as unique.

Family folklore has long been included in the documentation of regional, ethnic, religious or occupational groups.^[1] Responding to a call in 1958 from oral history pioneer Mody Boatright to document the "family saga",^[2] folklorists responded with published accounts of stories and traditions passed down in their own families.^[3] In the 1970s began to be considered a defining element of the family group. L. Karen Baldwin's unpublished dissertation (1975)^[4] laid the further theoretical groundwork for family folklore "… not only is the family a folk group, but it is also the first folk group anyone belongs to."^[5]

Thereafter the field broadened to include the expanding definition of family. The conventional extended family, consisting of a heterosexual married couple with children and grandparents, now incorporates gay partners, unmarried committed relationships and children adopted or born through non-traditional methods and procedures. Family traditions themselves are changing accordingly.

The study of family folklore is distinct from genealogy or family history. Instead of focusing on historical dates, locations and verifiable events, this area of study looks at the unique stories, customs, and handicrafts that define the family as a distinct social group. Family lore often changes to convey a sense of the family and a set of values. Family lore defines the family story. In 1996, American folklorist Barre Toelken wrote:

For an individual family, folklore is its creative expression of a common past. As raw experiences are transformed into family stories, expression, and photos, they are codified in forms which can easily be recalled, retold, and enjoyed. Their drama and beauty are heightened, and the family’s past becomes accessible as it is reshaped according to its needs and desires. … Its stories, photographs, and traditions are personalized and often creative distillations of experience, worked and reworked over time.^[6]