The Slovak-American “Swaddling Ethos”: Homeostat for Family Dynamics and Cultural Continuity

This paper explores the systemic relationships among cultural ethos, family dynamics, personality configuration, and child-rearing patterns among multi-generation Slovak-Americans. The “swaddling ethos” is posited to serve as a homeostat whose regulatory function can be discerned through the analysis of family structure and process, in particular through the explication of values, affective patterns, roles, boundaries, and structural units within the family. The core of the ethos is a dependency-security complex that attaches the individual to an extended family network of obligation, indebtedness, and reciprocity (ethnic, Slovak); induces rebellion against such attachment (mainstream, American); and undermines efforts toward separation-individuation, resulting in the perpetuation of an ethnic tradition.