Divorce

Couples typically get divorced for 5 different reasons: 1) set in their ways, 2) skill sets, 3) children are expensive, 4) children, and 5) the belief that divorce is an option

My father has been married twice. His first wife pretty much walked out on him. He has since gotten remarried to my mom. My dad had contact with his 3 daugthers for a while and had them for part of the summers. Then things became distant and he almost lost contact with his daughter. The oldest was the first to contact my dad and had a relationship with my dad and she still does. He talked to the 2 younger siblings for a while but eventually they didn't want anything to do with him and have not had the best of luck with husbands. They both have been married twice, and had children with multiple husbands. My dads ex-wife would tell nasty rumors about him that weren't true so that led the girls to think that their father was a bad person, which he isn't.

Divorce is a sticky situation and effects families in many different way. Think twice before getting married and how your life is going to change. If you aren't ready for this change, stop the relationship before it gets too far. If you are thinking about divorce think how it will effect others and what you can do to stop the divorce from happening, such as counseling, and seeking help from others.

Parenting

Parenting can be one of the hardest things we do in life. It won't be easy. There will be times when it will be hard and unmanagable. It will take practice to learn the right and the wrong things to do. When we try something with one child it may not work with another child. We need to use our best judgement and hope that we don't screw up. We need to teach our children cooperation and how to work well with others. We also need to teach them respect. This is not necessarily something that we teach as parents, it is more of something they see by our example and how we treat them and how we treat others with respect. We also need to teach them responsibility. We need to teach them that they need to be responsible for their duties and tasks and to take responsibility for their actions. We need to give them tasks and chores to complete and have them suffer the consequences sometimes if they don't do these tasks and they will learn from this. Courage is another thing we need to teach them. We as parents need to encourage our children and show them that we really do care and have their best interest at heart and want them to succeed. We need to build up their self-esteem and tell them they are beautiful, wonderful and they can do anything they set their mind to. This message needs to come from the heart and we need to be sincere about it.

Fathers and Finances

Before the Industrial Revolution men and women spent most of their time together. After WWII women went to work and since then they have continued to work. This has created a rift in the family dynamics. They are not as close as they used to be. This has also created rifts in many other aspects in families such as marriage, husband and wife relationships, and children and parent relationships. Father's have felt most of the brunt of the burden on themselves to provide for the family if the the mother does not work, and other financial issues. If the family went from a two income family to a one or visa versa then that becomes difficult. If the family went to a two income family they might think they can spend more and end up running out because they weren't thinking and weren't planning ahead. If a family went from two incomes down to one then they need to refine what is most important to buy, what is really necessary and to get by until the next paycheck comes. This will change the structure of the family. Some of the kids might have to pick up the slack when the parents goes to work. If mom has been the primary care taker and then goes off to work then she will need some help and assistance with the care of the kids, home and family. But if the kids work out something to help mom, it might not be as bad, and may even draw them closer together instead of futher apart.

The Lord knows us better than we do

The Lord blesses each and everyone of us in different ways. The Lord knows where we are suppose to be each time and places us in different situations for a specific reason that we may never know. Thinking back when we moved each time I think we were sent to a specific place at a specific reason and we were meant to meet certain people at that time and experience certain things that we would not have experienced anywhere else. I was not ready to go to college right after high school. I was suppose to wait, because otherwise I would not have the friends I have now. I would not have been ready to be in the Interior Design program 5 years ago, Emotionally, Physically, and Mentally. At the time I graduated from high school it didn't feel right, so I kept putting it off. I finally had the nerve to turn in my application for the interior design program and I got in. I had prayed a little about this decision and decided if I got in then I would go, but if I didn't then I would figure out something else. But the Lord knew that I needed to be here at this time for a specifice reason. I had no idea what it would be and why at the time. I'm glad the Lord knows us and we can put our trust in him and he will lead us where we need to go. Otherwise I would have never met the friends I have and I am grateful for him. In class today I felt a confirmation that this is where I am suppose to be at this time and it such a welcome relief. Not that I had questioned my major, but this major is hard and didn't know if I should turn around and do something else. But I'm grateful for this confirmation. I wouldn't have been ready 5 years ago but now I am ready for whatever comes my way. Thank you Lord.

Crisis in Families

A family crisis will happen. When they do happen we need to know how to deal with it. Hill talks about the ABCX model

           A- Actual Event
           B-Both Resources and Responses

           C-cognitions (Thoughts)

Total EXperience

In each crisis situation you can go to this model. To give a personal example of this my father has lost his jobs multiple times and this is the actual event. The resources my father and my family used at these different times was searching for a job every waking moment of the day. Pray to know where exactly would be the best place for the family. As far as the responses within the family we had to be a little tighter on the money situation. We had to lean on each other to survive the crisis and hope we make it out alive. Cognitions our thoughts on the crisis - it sucks real bad. We just had to have hope and have trust in the Lord that he would lead us where we needed to be and hope that the right people would hire my dad. We had to start fresh each time we moved so new friends, environment, living situation, etc. Total experience I feel like it brought the family closer. We lean on each other in times of crisis. My best friends are my sibilings.

When crisis/stressful things happens we can't dwell on the negative. Be positive. Recognize the untrue thoughts and get rid of them. It is our spirit that tells us what to do. If we think negative thoughts in such severe crisis it will lead individuals to be depressed. One thing to really help someone pull out of depression is to change their thoughts. Find something for that individual to live for and strive for to do better and LOVE life again. Change your thoughts.

Intimacy

Intimacy between husband and wife is very sacred and should not be ashamed. Why we do it is to express our love to our spouse, bond souls, and on a more spiritual level it facilitates a more closeness with god, and renew our covenant.

Sometime you might feel like you are not confident in this area, but you need to have patience. Express your concerns to each other how to make this experience better for the both of you. Talk through your problems, issues and let the other person in the relationship know how you are feeling and where you are coming from. Maybe the person was molested or abused as a child or have other issues. Try to work them out between the two of you. If it still isn't fixed, you might need to seek professional help.
This is serious and we shouldn't treat intimacy as all fun and games. It should strictly be between husband and wife and no other people.

Marriage

To get married you need to date a variety of people and do a variety of activites. If you only let yourself date one person exclusively, then you are not exploring you options. Your emotions might take over. You might make some rash decisions, that you might regret later.

When we date, we need to communicate between each other and know what kind of expectations we expect out of life. Some of the things that we need to communicate would be things like how many kids we want or when to start having kids. Also an important thing to discuss would be if you are ok for both the husband and the wife to work. We can't assume that the other person in the couple knows what we are thinking or how we want life to go. We can't go half way into the marriage and realize that they had planned something else. This will probably cause a rip in the marriage and lead to a divorce. We need to know the person longer than a couple of weeks or months. The longer we get to know somebody the better.
When we finally do get married you need to spend more time planning the marriage then planning their wedding. The couple needs to spend time together and rely on each other when it comes to tough decisions and not have the in-laws involved in these decisions. You need to know that you are both in 100%. If the relationship is 50-50 or 60-40 it probably won't work. Communicate and try to understand where each other is coming from, and rely on each other and not others for the everyday decisions as well as the big decisions.

LOVE

There are a couple of different kinds of love. I had no idea there were 4 different kinds of love. The different kinds of love are storage, philia, eros, and agape. Storage love is the love between a parent and child. You might have a responsibility or a connection with them, and you have a commitment and emotional tie to them. Philia is the love between friends, brothers, sisters which is specific to one person. Eros is the love we most often think about which has to do with physical, lustful, sexual, and romantic. Eros is the love we feel like we always have and might be the only kind of love we have for someone. If you love someone for this reason you probably don't know them, and have no compassion. Agape is the genuine compassion, charity or concern for someone that you have met or not met.

If you truly love someone it might be a combination of all 4 types of love. You will have a responsbility or connection to them, you have a friendship with them before marriage, it may turn romantic, and then you have genuine compassion towards your significant other.

This statement is based off of the Relationship Attachment Model (RAM). You must know more about them than you trust them. Trust more than you rely on them. Rely on them more than you are commited. And be more commited than you touch them. It is true, it is a good thing to know way more about a person than you would ever touch them.

I hope to be able to recongnize what kind of love it is when I think I have fallen in love with Mr. Right. I hope I can really know the person and not get caught up in LOVE.

Gender and Family Life

This topic for this week classes was so broad and I felt like we just skimmed the surface of this topic. We talked from men and women and how they different to same-sex attraction.

Men and women are different and I am glad for that. Females are more detail oriented, are verbal, know landmarks, and more cooperative. Men are competitive, task oriented, protective, and spatial oriented. As far as parenting goes for each gender women are more gentle, comforting, and domestic. Men are more apt to tell their children to toughen up, are rougher, and want their children to have careers, and leadership. With all of these differences it helps compliment each other to make it work. When the woman is worried about something the man is able to calm her worries. Men are able to focus on one task and the women is able to multi task. They bring out the best in each other. Whoever is good at one specific job/task then have them do it. No matter the gender. If it isn't split up equally it is ok, do what you are good at and perfect it. Lean on each other. We were made different for a reason and strive to be the best we can be.

Another topic we covered this week was same-sex attraction. I thought it was interesting that studies have shown that some end up being gay from being molested. Another reason was if the mother is overly involved in the childs life and pulls the child closer, then the child tends to pull away into a same-sex attraction. Also another reason a child might have same-sex attraction is if you keep telling the child that they are gay all the time, after awhile the child starts to believe it. It is very sad how we judge people like that. In some cases we as the public maybe could of prevented the child from being gay by just our words. Sometimes we are too harsh on each other.
I feel that some people can be born having feelings for the same sex. I don't think that parents go out and on purpose tell their children how to love the same sex . Or I don't think they tell them that their same gender is better and they should have a life with them. Even though they are different we should try to accept them as humans. I don't believe in marriage between same-sex, but people should have the freedom to date or marry who ever they want. Also I don't care if the person is gay, but I don't want to see public displays of affection for each other. I won't display it if you won't. I know this is a little contradicting, but this is my honest opinion.

Social Class

It is sad how we judge people based on what they look like and how they dress, where they shop, or where they live. We also judge them by the activites they partipated in. I am very guility of this. We need to watch how we judge people and why we judge people. We need to remember to try to be in their shoes and figure that they are trying their hardest to survive and possibly move up in the world.

If you don't think that there is social class that would be a lie. There is a definite line between the high, middle and lower class. The higher class have pretty much what they want. The middle class is ok but struggle sometimes and the lower class is trying to make it by on what is left behind. Each of us perceives the different classes in different ways. Some of us move up, some move down and some stay in the same place. The higher class to me don't really move down in rank at all. Middle class move around alot in rank. They could be very successful with business but also move around alot too. The lower class could have different disadvanatges by moving up which is rare or by trying to live paycheck to paychek. We just need to put each other into each other shoes and see how they live and what situations could be shaping their life. We must not be quick to judge. Remember to soften our heart and let other into our lives and not judge without getting to know them first. Be nice and love another.

System Theory-Murray Bowen

System theory is where you analyze a whole group instead of all the little pieces. The little pieces referring to individual people and whole group refers to the family. The individuals influence each other and work together and outside influences have very little effect on the whole. An example is a child and one parent are very close while the other parent might be outside the bubble. You need to anaylze the family to understand what is really going on.  Sometimes there are other reason for the disagreements.

We as humans respond to emotional rather than cognitive. This is based on Murray Bowens Theory (1978). We had a mock example of this theory in class. We had a mother, father and child. The child had had alot of asthma attacks and had been to the doctor alot. The therapist (teacher) was asking about what happens exactly when the child starts to have an asthma attack. The mother responded by saying that she got all worked up and was very scared for the child. So that led them going to the doctor. While all this was happening usually the father was not home at all so the responsibility fell on the mother. If the father was home he usually didn't know what to do. He called his wife when the asthma attacks happened and she walked him through what he needed to do. As the therapist was getting the back story he kept asking questions, not in a forceful way and telling them what they needed to do, but having them come to the conclusion themselves. The father talked and said he didn't really feel like the mother gave him enough responsibility and didn't trust him to take care of the child by himself. The mother told the father what he needed to do when the child had an asthma attack. With this it gave the parents equal responsiblity and they felt like they could take care of the situation whenever it happened. The father was a very calm person and so when the asthma attacks happened afterwords he was able to calm the child, and mother down and they went to the doctors less often. Now instead of the father on the outside of the family he was in the middle supporting his wife and child.

I thought this was such a great way to learn this theory and see it play out. It helped to see the hands on experience and be able to understand and to really know how the Murray Bowen Theory really works.

Siblings are a blessing

Sometimes siblings can be a pain in the butt, but I never realized it or thought of it this way before. Because of the fact that I have siblings I know how to associate with others. I know how to work as a team. I know how to have relationships. Now as I think about it, they push you to a breaking point somedays. They will always (I hope so) be my friend, they will always be there for me. They are always there to talk to.

I have a relative that has only 1 child. They don't plan on having any more children. I worry about the child. I worry that he won't know how to share, won't know how to relate to other people, won't know how to have a relationship with others besides his parents. To me (and this is my opinion) they need to have another child. How much more richer that family would be in blessings, in this life and the next. I watch the reality show 19 kids and counting about the Duggar family. They always say how many children God gives them. If God blesses them with another then they are fine with that. I thought wow that is alot of kids and I thought maybe there should be a limit. She has gotten to a point that maybe this isn't good for her body to have these kids, but hey it is their choice and we should not be there to tell them otherwise. To think of the children and how much they are being blessed by having siblings, by being around a group, learning how to interact. They are doing something good for their family and also for the world. They are helping the society by keeping the birth rate from going down even further.

All in all I feel that family is important no matter the size but my personal preference is the more the better. If we are able to replenish the earth that is fantastic. I hope some day when I have children that I am able to have at least 5. Children are a gift from God and should be treated that way. I hope to be able to replenish the earth and help the birth rate go up instead of down as it is going now.

The facts about the birth rate and individualism comes from The New Economic Reality: Demographic Winter Part 1, Part 2. They had many good points about how the society is declining and what has lead to it, and what are the trends of society that lead to low birth rates, and low fertility rate. If you have some time they are very worth your time. Warning though, they are each 54 minutes long.

First Post

My name is Emily Lurker and I am an Interior Design major. I am taking this class for fun and needed more credits.