Cultural Biography of Christina Marie Gray

Names

I was named Christina for different reasons by both of my parents. My mother tells the story that

she named me Christina Marie for religious reasons. The name Christina was a take after

Christ, and the Marie for his mother Mary. My father on the other hand likes to tell the story that

I was named after Christina Applegate from the hit show Married with Children. Neither of them

have ever broken on their story, and I personally like to think it was a mixture of both stories.

Each story has it’s own personality and shows that both parents had an actual reason for my

name and it was not simply picked out of a book.

Ethnic Ancestry

My Great Grandparents on my mothers side imigrated directly from Ireland. My Grandmother

was 100% Irish as was my mother as my Grandmother married an Irish man. My Father

chooses not to share his ethnic history so I have had many thoughts about having a test done to

really get to know my history.

Birth Order

I am the second of five children. My older brother was born with a different father; however, my

father raised him as his own. My father was in the military and spent a good amount of time in

Korea when I was a child, and my mother mostly worked graveyard. I spent a large amount of

my time raising my younger siblings so naturally they had a bit more freedom than I.

Family Structure

Until I was about the seven years of age our household was a basic nuclear family; however,

my parents did divorce at that time and my household turned into a single parent household.

While we did have visitation with my father, my mother was the primary caregiver.

Socio-economic Status
My father has been in the military since he was 17 and my mother has always worked in retail.

She has spent most of her career at Albertsons, but after she was hit by a drunk driver she

became disabled and now works in a gas station. She is an extremely strong individual. Our

family was mostly middle class growing up, but my wife and I have moved our way up to around

upper middle class.

Linguistic

English is the only language I have ever spoken. I attempted to once take French, but it was

unsuccessful. I am planning on taking Spanish in the upcoming years as I feel it is an extremely

important language and is growing all over the world.