Family is one of the main influences in a person's life. They are the people who support you, and you can always trust them. Erin Entrada Kelly made family an essential part of her book, We Dream of Space. It is one of the most important themes because family influence pushes Bird, Cash, and Fitch to act in different ways. 

I think family has the greatest influence on you because they are the ones that you are with all the time and look after you.When people are rude to you, you can count on them to be on your side and try to fix it because they are probably more reassuring than your friend who might not understand your problem properly and how bad it is for you. This is completely different from “We dream of space” because Cash, Bird and Fitch never had that relationship with their parents because they were to busy fighting to worry about their children's problems. This explains why Fitch has these anger problems, he is influenced by his parents, this shows how much he is mirroring their actions and how his friends influence is not making the same impact on him. 

Older people have more experience and can help you with problems at school or with your friends because they have already lived similar events in their life compared to your friends who are usually around your age.   When you don’t understand your homework because your teacher didn’t explain it well, your parents are most likely to know how to help you then your friend who doesn't understand ever. But once again in the book there is no such scene because their parents don’t help them with their school work at all. This shows why Cash has such bad grades and has failed year 7, his parents don’t help him even when it is obvious that he needs it, they don’t even realise how bad his grade is and if they do they don’t show much interest in it.

If you don’t have friends you know you can really trust it’s hard to tell them your problems and they won’t be able to help you they can also be unpleasant with you and discourage you. An example in the book is when Bird’s friends all tell her that her thing is not to be pretty but to be smart and even though they think this doesn't affect her it does and under all the pressure from her friends and family she does change and not in a way that she likes, she isn’t sure if she wants smart to be her thing anymore.  This shows us that friends do affect you a bit but not always in the best way and that sometimes it’s better to take advice from someone you really trust and appreciate.

  Therefore we see that family is an important element in a person's life, because they give you impressions that you can keep for the rest of your life.

In the book family plays a great part on the siblings affecting there everyday life and changing it to match their parents.  Families in real life sometimes have problems like this, when the parents are too preoccupied to look after their children properly and this is something that a child should not have to endure.