Family Relations

1What matters when it comes to work ($) and family. Your family always maters more, that being said, you do have to have enough money to provide for your children. That doesn’t mean you have to have enough money to buy them all an iphone at the age 5. Family is always more important. 

Encoding and decoding messages

1The importance of being able to encode and decode messages properly in the relationships. It doesn’t help to teach people how to communicate, it helps to teach them what they are already communicating. It helps to teach them to encode and decode messages. It is important to be able to disagree without being disagreeable. 

Relationship Attachment Model

1.The relationship attachment model. This model consists of: know, trust, rely, commit, and touch. In order to have a good marriage, or a good relationship in general we should try to be equal in all these aspects. When you have too much of one, and not enough of another, then you are going to have problems in your relationship. 

Dating

The three P's of a date are, the date should be: 1. Planned, 2. Paid for, and 3. paired off. The church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints came out with a paper called "The Family: A Proclamation to the World."They describe the duties of a husband and/or a father as 1. preside, 2. Provide, 3. Protect. When a date your husband plans a date, it is his way of presiding over the date and kind of being in charge of it. When he pays for the date, it is him providing for you on your date and showing that he can and is willing to provide for you. When you are paired off, in a way he becomes more protective of you because you are "his" date.

The Importance of Models

1The importance of models (theories and assumptions). Our actions or beliefs should be based upon theories or assumptions. Theory (attempt to explain) affects you assumptions, which affects your conclusions (actions). This is the very true when it comes to same sex attraction. We talked about the different theories of born that way, or exotic becomes erotic. 

Effect of Social Class on Family

1The effect of social class on the family. Social class definitely impacts the family. Depending on your social class, it can put strains on the family. Your desire for a certain social class also has an affect on the family. If you want a higher social class you may spend more time working rather than wit your family. 

Boundaries

A diffused boundary is a boundary that hasn't been correctly established. A rigid boundary is a boundary that hasn't been correctly established. A rigid boundary is a boundary that completely separates the two people. A picket fence boundary indicates clear boundaries, but still some spaces. The best family relationships have a picket fence boundary around a husband and wife who are close together and then a another picket fence around them and their children.

Family Relations

Some of the things we talked about in my family relations class this week were:

Symbolic Interaction Theories: There are behavioral symbols. All behavior means something.
Exchange Theory: The idea that there's something owed. Check balance.
Family Systems Theory: The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Families operate as systems. Family behavior is influence by unspoken homes.

Marital Intimacy

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also known as the mormons. I believe that sexual intimacy belongs only between a man and a woman who are lawfully bound as husband and wife. I absolutely one hundred percent believe that sex is something created by God to form life. I believe that it is so extremely sacred and should not be taken lightly. Now, that being said a big problem among the church that I have noticed is that because we are taught our whole lives to keep ourselves morally clean and chaste, when we get married, it can be really hard to adjust to sharing that with someone else. Many people, especially girls, feel unclean or dirty. I think we need to do a better job of teaching sexual realtions between a husband and a wife as something extremely sacred, but beautiful. Rather than teaching that it is bad or wrong.

Marriage

This week in my class we have been talking a lot about marriage and relationships. There are two things that I absolutely love talking about, children, and marriage. I didn't enjoy learning about marriage until after I got married, and all of a sudden my life revolves around it. I feel like I just constantly want to learn more so that I can add that and enhance my marriage. There were a few things from this weeks discussion that especially stood out to me that I really appreciate about my marriage and some things that I think are really important to marriage.

1. Appreciation. My husband expresses his appreciation of me daily. I hope I do the same, but I could probably improve. I think when you're constantly expressing appreciation, then you really do begin to appreciate your spouse more. It's sort of like a mind trick, you may thing you appreciate them, but when you tell them then it just convinces you further.

2. Dating. A husband and wife should continue to date throughout marriage. This is something that is a little bit different for me and my husband. While we regularly go on dates (at least once a week), our dates have had to be altered a little bit. We are poor college student, who are just getting poorer. Spending money to go eat dinner at a restaurant is a big deal for us. 20 bucks is a lot of money for us and we just can't drop that every week. But we try to find other things to do that are virtually cost free. This blog has some really good ideas http://decrescenzio.blogspot.com/2012/01/52-date-nights.html.

Gender

This week in my family relations class we were talking a lot about gender. My teacher asked us a question that really got me thinking, he asked, "How would our experiences differ if our gender was different?" I was talking about that with my niece, who's sixteen, because she had to write a paper on what she would be like if she was a boy. She told me that she get's A's on all the tests and homework, but she get's really bad grades on the writing assignments. She said that she thinks that it's because her teacher doesn't agree with a lot of her opinions. As members of the Church, we tend to have different opinions than a lot people. This questions is just something interesting to think about, but then also try to answer this question from a worldly point of view, how would the world answer this questions?

Trends

This week in my family relations class we talked about the different trends affecting the family. These trends consist of:

-Waiting longer to marry

-Cohabitation rates have gone up

-Birth rates decrease

-Children born out of wedlock increase

-More employed mothers

-Household sizes decrease

-Divorce rates increase

-More people living alone

-Sex rates increase

I think that each of these trends is intertwined and connected with one another. They all play a role among the others, and each of these roles leads to diminishing family value. I believe that family is the most important thing in the world. There is nothing more important to me than family. Every trend on this list plays a role in lessening family values. 

Research

In my Family Relations class we have been learning about recognizing the difference between poor research, and valuable research. There are way too many articles out there that are biased, or not properly cited, or that don't have the necessary credentials. There are also a lot or people out there where believe whatever they read. As contributors to society, we need to contribute by finding truth for ourselves.