Week 12: Divorce and Seperation

the picture above is a very accurate depiction of the skewed perception of divorce in our society. Sit-com such as "Happily divorced" and "Parenthood" and "Family Matters" all give a warped view of the trials and hardships that come with divorce and step parenting.

Factors that play into Divorce/Predictors
-Limited education
-Underage (18 years and younger)
-Religious beliefs
-Family support
-Social Standing
-Your view of gender roles/family/marriage roles

Process of Family Reformation
-symbolic interaction of relationships
-roles changing with legality
-families have to choose there activeness in certain relationships

Protection
-Have conversation/ Anticipate and recognize
-Cleave unto your spouse and leave your parents under-wing
-Affection and connection
-Constant Dating ( the most important 5 hours of your week)
-Don't share marital issues with other, work them out with each other

I thought that it was interesting when discussing with Bro. and Sis. Williams that they had some issues that we had never mentioned when brainstorming possible hardships on a mixed family. For example, losing the faith of a best friend like bro. Williams did. Or lose respect from a mother because your moving away from family with grand babies like sis. williams. I think what I learned more than anythign is that the family is a delicate thin g that has to be regarded as fragile and breakable. I think the Williams handle their obtsicles with great care and poise. And if they had taken a decision that affected others too lightly it could have proven to be detrimental to thier families happiness and development.

Week 11: Parenting and Discipline

I decided just to post a few of my favorite most influential notes from this week! Enjoy!

Three Situations in which parents need to be involved in the discipline process

1Too Dangerous to let the consequences do the teaching
2Consequences are too far in the future to understand and learn from
3The consequence affects others

Start off with polite request/ teaching respect

Then, an I message

WHEN YOU... leave your socks on the floor
I FEEL... like your taking advantage of me
BECAUSE... I either have to pick them up or have a dirty house because of you
I WOULD LIKE... for you to try to remember to pick them up for me

I think its important to remember that even if you use these steps, you may not be teaching them respect if the last part is approached incorrectly. For example, if you say ( in the above situation) I WOULD LIKE you to never do that again or id like you to stop being selfish and think of me and my feeling first. This could just cause the person to cut themselves off and not learning anything, as well as being more disrespectful.
LOVE AND LOGIC, now my mom and my aunt are doing this and its really interesting. I believe that it has some really great ideas. HOWEVER i think at times it can become very manipulative. I think its important to involve the kids in their consequences. They will learn what logical consequences are and they will be more accepting of it when they deserve those consequences, good or bad.

Discipline is teaching! Punishment is not teaching, its and inaccurate way to teach realistic consequences.

The way that children view their parents is very similar to the way that they see God.


Segment #3 where often is heard a discouraging word

"i dont see why id waste money on guitar lessons if you wont practice anyways"
Assuming that they would get in trouble

Instead use positive re-enforcement and show trust in your child so you can expect trust from their part
"what are your plans" "you have good judgement" " You know the rules"

Week 10: Fathers and Finances

WEEK 10: Fathers and Finances

Since we had a short week, i thought I would just share some of the points I made in my father involvement paper. I found it very beneficial to write this paper with my family over thanksgiving break, i was able to kind of think of my dad and watch his interaction with me family again with this paper in mind!

1. Religious tendencies in father involvement: I thought that this was such an important point to express. Religion is such an important factor in a father’s developmental interaction with his children. This is mainly true because religion often involves ones moral values, including their family ideology. Even just taking into consideration whether a person is religious at all will tell you something about his tendencies to be involved in the lives of his children, both spiritually and culturally.

2. Ones understanding of the family system and family roles. As a husband becomes a father, he develops a new role in his life and his perception of the responsibilities that go along with that role determine his involvement in the lives and growth of his children.

3. Husband and wife/ mother and fathers relationship. Interaction with the children is often mistaken to be the sole responsibility of the mother because of her innate role of primary nurturer. However, depending upon the relationship of the father with the mother and their ability to divide responsibilities of teaching, according the child’s needs, the father can and should play just as significant of a role in the development of the child, as the mother does.

4. Time management and parental priorities. In the typical family system, the father or male in the mother father relationship is responsible for earning the money to support the family. I believe that the ability that the father has to manage his work and home schedule will determine the effectiveness of the time spent in the home.

5. Gender roles and sexual orientation within the family. As a child is growing and following the example of their parents, the presence of a male figure is essential for both a male child and a female child to understand the difference between themselves and the opposite sex in a respectful safe environment. If a child is unable to identify a difference between the man and a women, the child is more likely to have confusion and sexual frustration because of the lack of clarity and knowledge learn though observation.

Week 9: Dual Income families!

So glad I get to blog about this this week. I have a very intersting case that deals with a mother in the work place and another concerning dual workplace.
1st of all, My Mother-in-law, she is amazing! I absolutly love her and the way she leads our family. My father-in-law lives in Canada with his new wife and rarely comes to AZ. (fleeing fathers ring a bell) He left the family when my husband was 21, his younger brother were 17 and 14 and his youngest sister was 10...needless to say this had an impact in and of itself. However, through our discussions in class I was able to make alot of economical connection. My fatherinlaw was required to pay a certain amount in child support every month which he has failed to do until just this year (its been 5 years since he left) and so my mother-in-law was forced to leave the home and get a job to support the last three children still in the home. A mother who has been at home at least for the past 21 to 25 years, being called into the workforce with no preparation and less than no money to spare is a scary thing. She immeadiatly made time restraints on her work, making sure that she was home from work intime to spend time with her kids, he reached out to the church for support that was given with love and willingness. With constant meeting with her bishop and the understanding of her children, the situation was functionable, not ideal, but functionable. After our discussion in class i realized just how unideal that situation that my mother-in-law was in.

her being away from home changed the roles and functionings of each family member. older siblings became dual providers, a father figure was formed from the eldest son and the youngest was forced to rely on other significat relationshipd for support when her mother was absent when providing for her. This the way that the family is just amazing! The way bthat people adapt! however this can cause complication, I think it goes back to what we learned last week about crisis and how we persive it. Thats the most important part. my in-laws were able to alk about the divorce an extreme life changes that were happening to them and they were able to find a common ground, or an understanding of eachothers pains that helped to re-establish new norms and roles. I think this is very important and while this is never trhe ideal situation, they made a horrible situation into an opportunity to get closer and help one another through pain and anger.

As for Dual family income I often thing of my family. My mom is a great home maker. She stays home and has stayed home since before I was born, and i know that having her home helkp me value and understand my role within my family. More recently she stated working in the summer out of the house. Yes, she doesnt even leave home for this job, and it still has an impact on our family. Grated, its seasonal and her kids can come to her at anytime and she is almost just as available when working as she is when she isnt working, however it was still a strain, we had to replace meals with fast food, time and talking with friends and facebook and the money that was earned from my mothers income went to family vacations so we actually ended up being more tight with our money so that we wouldnt have to take anything out of the bank for our vacations.

I think after this class, the biggest conclusion that I came to ( and the simplist) is that the the family structure has purpose, its a functioning system and just like any other functioning system, it needs to have each role filled. I walked away from class with the knowledge and understanding that when I am a mom, thats all i wanna be and thats all i wanna focus on. This was actually a pretty big realization for me, i had alwasy that that I would work for just a little while my husbands career was developing but i think i can be better used in the home, establishing my family values and structure.

Week 8: Crisis... Danger Combined with Opportunity



The ABC Model: This ia a great model for an individuals crisis.



A. The actual event causing the crisis

B. How the family manages/ Behavioural Response

C. Cognition/ What the Family thinks about it.

I think C is the most important part of this model. As there are always different factors that go inot a crisis and each individuals perseption needs to be taken into account. thats what C is for, to help us understand what each individuals perception is of the issue and why.
What i dont like about this model is that it neglects to identify the importance of outside factors

I thought that this was an interesting excersize that we did in class. Bro williams gave us the opportunity to come up with 10 family crisis events that are more common or relatable to us, then he gave us 5 options or categories to place each crisis in. The categories were 1. That stunck 2. its ok now 3. we managed 4. We're better and 5. Thank you. I found that I would naturally put most of the crisis that i had been through in 'Thank you". I have an overall very optiistic veiw of teh world and the trials that i face. I feel like i have an understanding of the Lords design and why we go through trials so its easier for me to accept them, however the more i went into discussing the different categories, the more that I viewed them as stages. I felt like, with many of the crisis that I have been through, I started by thinking "this sucks" then transitioned to, "its going to be ok, then to "look, i managed", after which i am able to see how " I am better from it" then I have "gratitude" to my Heavenly Father for allowing me to go through that trial and make choices that lead to me learning and growing from it. I think that all those categories can apply at differetnstages of "recovery" if you will. Here were some examples from my list and what we did in class.

10 Events of Crisis in the Family

Divorce We managed

Miscarriage We're better

Death Thank You

Falling away from the church That Stunk

Finacial crisis Its ok Now

Illness Thank You

Sin Thank You

School struggles We are better

Comparing in a family of girls We are better

Crisis can sometimes change your subsets in an effective way. Our perception of crisis is so important when it comes to our interaction with others and how we choose to respond together!

Here are some other random notes that I thought were insightful and needed to be mentioned!

Compassion= passion for another persons experiences

Fade away fathers, how far away does dad live on average=400miles at least.

The atonement heals all wound, not just time. 99.95% of the worlds population are lds. Forgivness and acceptance are lds principles but world wide principles as well.

SOO... perspective heals all wounds.

Week 7: Fidelity, In Marriage AND Family!


I loved our discussions this week! Im kinda bummed that we have to post by Friday, the Porn Education Conference is this Saturday and Im sure it would have provided more insight about fidelity and those influences that drive us away from a faithful happy marriage.



I really felt as though fidelity was a hard subject to grasp. Its something that I try not to think about but i think thats why it was so important for me to be an active part of the class discussions to get all my questions and "gray areas" covered.

Facebook is a growing trend that surprisingly is tearing more people part than connecting people. I know that a number of my friends married and not married have deleted thier accounts in the past year for a number of different reasons.

1) Reality was being skewed. Poeple wereonly posting the happy things in thier lives, only post picture of all theparties that they went to and the people that they know, "friending" everyone they could to get a higher number of acquaintances. Some cant handle the perception of life that are twisted to compete with others everyday life situation.

2) HUGE time waster, it becomes an addition, not one that you cant live without but more of a habit that can be very misunderstood. The habit of having facebook be the first and last thing you see everyday, seeing disconnected from family if you miss it for a few days and feeling like the only way to connect with others is by "poking" them on facebook or commenting on their status and pictures.

3)lastly, fidelity. Facebook can be an escape from you world, you friends, your spouse, its a way too show interest in others and focus on yourself and your needs. Since virtually everyone has or has had a facebook page, it easy to look up old friends, distant family and old boyfriends or girlfriends. This can be potentially hazardous. Rekindling old flames over the internet is secretive and dis honest and rarely recognizable. "I was just saying hi, i haven't seen her in ages" or "We were just exchanging stories about our new families" even these things can seem harmless but the slightest marriage issue can be weakened further and made large by turning to a past significant other for comfort or conversation.

The last is by far the most detremental to the health of your family.

Fidelity is os important in marriage, physically, emotionally and spiritually. I was able to attend the Pornography conference with my husband on Saturday. We didnt go for any particular reason, besides the fact that we had nothing else to go but as we sat and listened to the speakers, we realized that we were both there for a very real reason, we knew in our hearts just how scary infidelity is and how real porn is as an issue in marriage.

We learned alot and it was very education, we walked out of there very releaved, realizing vthat we were making good, healthy decisions keeping us for away from poor choices in fidelity but the knowledge and awarness of it, is sometimes more important than anything.

Week 6: Weddings and Marriage.... Whats the difference?

I LOVE talking about weddings, marriage, love, family, its all so happy! Here is a picture from my wedding, me and my husband with my beautiful family! I love this picture because we were all so sincerely happy.

In our class discussion, we partnered up and talked about what we thought was really important in a wedding and I was paired with a girl that was also married so we got the chance to talk about what made our weddings special. here are some of the things we talked about

-Timing
-Spouse
-Temple
-Sealer
-Family
-Preparation
-Understanding of the Marriage contract
-Respect for the partner
-Formal and special

SOooo I'll just explain a few of our points here. Something that really made my wedding special was that there were no surprises! I knew what I was getting into! Don't get me wrong, i don't have it all figured out but I was spiritually and mentally prepared with my husband. Something else that I realized is that I could have been better about preparing my family. What i mean by this is, when we get married our entire family structure changes. I am no longer just a sister and a daughter, i am now those plus a wife and a future mother and a sister-in-law and I think my family wasn't aware of the amount of change that would occur in our relationship. I shared the example in class of my little sister, she honestly thought that chad and I were just on vacation in Rexburg for 3 months and when we came back she was so excited to see us, a week later when we had to leave again, she was so confused and i had to sit down with my husband and her and we explained that I don't live at the house any more, and that I was still her sister and her mom was still my mom but we lived together in another state. I wish i would have prepared her more for that change in roles.

I also thought that the understanding that marriage is a contract was what made my wedding ceremony so peaceful and spiritual for my husband and I. when he proposed to me, he told me that we would have trials and that he would make me mad, he would get mad at me and we wouldn't gain perfection together, but he promised me that he would always try to be better and love me unconditionally, he understood the depth of marriage and its importance. I loved that when he proposed to me, he actually Proposed marriage. It wasn't just a formality, it was an actual question and request. I showed me respect by knowing that it was an equal choice to be apart of this marriage. he also showed me humility when he acknowledged the fact that we would struggle. Those desirable traits (along with a million others he showed me when we were dating) carried over into our marriage.

It was a great experience to review my proposal. It was nothing extravagant, i think my husband was just a surprised as I was that he was down on one knee but what he said and committed to that day was a great foundation for our marriage.

Week 5: Cohabiting and Marriage Perspectives

I couldn't help myself, this photos is straight-up AWESOME! haha!
So on the topic of cohabiting, i feel like I was really fortunate to be apart of the conversations and discussions in class this week, i have never had any friends or family with this situation and so i had a lot to learn about it.

I found it interesting that the statistics speak for themselves for the most part in this category of sociology. For example, higher divorce rate among those who cohabit first, and higher domestic violence rates in cohabiting situations.

I also think its important to recognize why its so easy to see cohabiting as a reasonable option.

1) Precursor to Marriage

This one meaning that the couple hasn't committed to marriage but if they can live together, they'll start talking about it and see if its an option after they live together for a while

2)Co-Residential Daters

These are the couples who are still in the dating stage , marriage isn't in the picture but they will most likely not make any further commitment.

3) Trial Marriage

This is comparable to the precursor however, it this point the couple is considering marriage and this is considered to be the test trial, if this co-habiting works our, that's proof to them that they are compatible for marriage.

4) Alternate to Marriage

These couples do not have a need in their lives for marriage we and believe that the commitment in co-habiting is a strong or strong enough for them to maintain a healthy, long-term relationship.

I think that understanding these different points of view were very beneficial to me. Co-habiting is encouraged in our society and its important to know be closed-minded about it, people aren't bad or stupid for cohabiting, for most it is seen as a very wise way to prepare yourself for marriage and you have to respect their good intentions and reasoning. I am just glad that i have a clear knowledge of the effects and the facts behind these actions that form my opinion about it.

WEEK 4: Homosexuality... yeah, we're goin there.

Today we had an interesting conversation in class about homosexuality and how parenthood, marriage and family plays into that.

I think its important for us to think of what God has in mind for us as men and women. How can we encourage heterosexuality. Here are a few ways that we discussed in class and that really stuck with me.

-help them to understand thier roles and the uniqueness of it.

-be accepting of any interest and characteristics that they have, so that if they are interested in something outside of thier sexuality, they arent being to that that interest "is gay".

I thought of this on a very personal level, becasue i know where i stand on homosexuality, i do not belive in a third gender, i belive in influences and tendancies. My husband and i always joke about how all he wants is for his boys to play baseball and football and put them through college on scholarships and how all his memories with his dad were with sports and there is nothing wrong with that but i became very aware, through the reading and the clips, that as parents something that i really want to practice and be aware of is being sensative our our childs desires. when they are interested in something, we need to be supportive of it and SUPPORT them regardless of that hobbies "sexual orientation".

Ways to raise and support a childs develpoment in a world of tendancies:

-Encourage and recognize the priesthood in thier lives
-Encourage father son bonding time, healthy relations there.
-Let them know that men and women can enjoy similar interest, there is nothing wrong with that.
-not classify manly things so that if they enjoy thing not in that realm they will be confident with their gender.
-Encourage friendship/scouts and young womens
-prevent sexual abuse/ it creates problems with identity 1 of 3 women abused before age 18
-teaching about self-stimulating and how to prevent it
-no labels /label themselves

Homosexuality is based on misunderstanding, , you sexuality is based on your connection to others and intimacy your body will respond to intimacy, that isn't proof, of that your gay, its natural.

I was talking with Bro. Williams after class and we talked about the proof of heterosexuality, what proves that there is no third orientation. I think that truth truely is happiness and its so important to share that truth.

I thinki one of the biggest questions of the LDS people in regards to homosexuality is how to respond to people being offended by us not supporting gay/lesbian marriage. wIn the words of a prophet "are not anti-gay, we are pro-family", we don't believe that the family needs to be redefine. Our Father in heaven has given us roles to fill to return as a family to him and we know that heavenly Father would never create someone to fail them in this perspective.

-fathers/love your son, love your daughters
-people are ready for different things at different times

Process to overcome
1) helping people understand what changed their thinking or influenced them to be homosexual, introduce truth. it provides hope, direction, understanding. NO third gender
2) Establish healthy same gender relationships (preisthood activities, relief society)

We want people to know who they are, beloved sons and daughters with an innate purpose.

WEEK 3: Culture Shifts:

I am so happy to know that the owrk that i am going into is making a difference in marriage, the video that we watched online this week for homework is proof of that.

The video clip "Class and family Structure in the United States" was so interesting to me and gave me a better understanding of what NEEDs to happen to improve the divorce rate of the lower class. This is not to say that the upperclass never get divorced any more but they are improving slowley. I tried to organzie my notes as a way to remember what was said in the clip. Sometimes i learn better through my notes becasue i right according to my impressions and feelings, not so much, exactly what i hear, so hopefully as my classmates read this with will help them to see what I got from the clip and how it helped me to understand the culture shift and what actions WE can take as future sociologists.

-->Divorce rate in the middle and upper middle class has gone down over the past 15 years, and they are not having children before marriage.

~Acedemics have contributed. What does that me to me?

~We no longer associate marriage with parenthood, there has been a seperation and acceptance OF that seperation of marraige and parenthood. Parenthood is coming before marriage in lower classes.

And "whats wrong with that"

***Parents are having children in unstable relationship***--Social influences

It is possible that they just do not want that, not sure of a long term future with the person. This could be becasue thay have never seen a happy marriage or becaseu they have negative experiences with marriage. This theory creates INCREDABLY complex families " his kids with her kids "

-Family Formation Project, low income urban couples ( fragil families) study them to see the predictors, risk factors and working with them to learn about those situation, many of them do not know a single successful long term relationship couple. "Marriage is an ideal for them but they have never really seen in in thier lives." Add in factors of child support, baby moms and dad, its a miracle that any of them make it.

Dameons Story: Now living with the 4th mother of his children, not proud of this, has apologized. One day he and his partner were having a big fight and she said, "why dont you just leave' and in the past thats what he would have done, he stayed and worked it out.

A CULTURE SHIFT for people to learn what it takes to create a lasting union.

SO... what can we do to help with this culture shift? EDUCATION. the more we educate ourselves on marriage and social factors that go into marital problems and parenting problems, then more people will be able to see the positive influence that a healthy marriage has on a family.

WEEK 2: Family Mapping Systems

So mapping systems...not something I would connect with familys on an ordinary day but today was no ordinary day! We discussed in class about how the family is a system that is made up of subsystems, those subsystems are create to fill a need or purpose and each "creation" if you will has a role or "norm" that it does in order to work in harmony with the other subsystems to contribute to the family, the MAIN system! I have it in this awesome diagram but i have yet to figure out how to get that drawing on my blog.

ANYWHO, I love what we discussed in regards to the reading that we did. Salvador Minuchin is BRILLIANT i just LOVE that he created a way to chart the study of family behavior and in such a way that we can relate it to something personal through genograms.

I think that of all of the genograms that I found, this was my favorite, I'm not sure if you can see the key very well with this photo but there are so many subsystems that would prove to be beneficial in the study of family interactions and influences, both internal and external.

I would like to make this same type of chart for my family and my husbands family, every family has issues and i think that some of those issues can be worked through or at least understood if you take into consideration what influences are impacting the family. I tested it out on my own family, Here is a little example those influences that effect my family and our functioning system family unit.

my parents are wonderful parents, in my extremely biased opinion, they are the BEST! I started thinking about the way that they raised my in comparison to how they raised my sister. With my older sister, all of her friends were within a ten mile radius, she had great grades, she also had a group of friends that was all LDS and parents that where friends with my parents.Because of those influences on the family, My older sister was allowed to walk to her friends house and was not given a car, she purchased one later on in her life, she was also allowed to stay out late because she was close to the house, my parents were very aware of the people around her and could contact her easily. She didn't have a cell phone because with her surroundings, it wasn't necessary. now me on the other hand, i had mainly non-LDS friends and they lived about 30 minutes away, i was givin a car because in order to see them and go to work, i needed one, in effect from my distance from home a majority of the time, i was also given a cell phone to contact my parents, because i had a car, that could become a car problem and i worked with a distance. However, because of those external influences, i had a curfew of 11pm until i moved out, their decisions were influenced by the way we connect with our society.

It so important to know that in all issues, there are influences, both within the family unit and outside, the more we identify those influences and time lines those influences, we will be able to better understand the tendencies of our family roles.

WEEK 1: Research and Societal Trends

I think we focus on this a lot as Sociologist. In all my classes we are touching on this, even in religion classes in regards to faith. Every theory requires faith. If its a theory its something that can be proven wrong and faith is something that is required when there i not factually sound answer. When it comes to the family, there are so many factors that aren't able to be applied to the study statistical. Here are some of those factors that we talked about.

Research Bias:
Not all research involves the important outside factors.Most of the time this isn't even intentional. Research bias can be brought into a study through different stems of the research. You could bias a research as easily as not understanding the response to a question or selecting a bad sample of people or a group of people to study that are too similar in lifestyle or background. Also Assumptions being made through research can create a problem outof a coicidence. One of the examples in the reading that stood out to me was the research on heart attacks. This research made the assumption that becasue one country drank more wine, it was the cause of there heart attacks. When in reality, that was only a factor and their might be a bigger cause the triggered that statistic.
Intentionally skewing
Alternate Agenda
Sampling: If your studying the education system and only select students to sample from one school or a public school in a high end neighborhood and not from any others, your only getting research from one class of people and one geological group so your statistics will be very narrow and ineffective.
Representation of Data: A perfect example of this is Al Gore in his "An Inconvenient Truth". The graph below depicts the one of the many errors with the representation of his data. In this graph there is a lack of discernment as to where the current data starts and stops with the whole of the graph.
Definitional Problems: Its important when researching to take into consideration that factual questions can produce factual answers and opinionated questions can produce opinions so when creating statistics those opinionated Q's and A's you'll need to create a definition so that people will not hear a question and perceive it in a way that is contrary to what best benifits the study.

I think its important to recognize that the gathering of information is something that needs to be done accurately because if the amount of false facts out there at would be biased. The way that I think of it is that we collect information so that we can solve problems. That's the reason we do research, we want answers and in order to get those answers we have to be effecting in our researching process. when we sample we need to look for ways that it might be biased or too broad so that it can be fixed before the information is recorded and collected.

I worked for a research company for about 6 months and while it was probably my least favorite job, I gained a great amount of respect for the field of research. We were responsible for conducting surveys over the phone to a random population depending upon what the client was collecting that information for. We were trained to read off the script word for word, the scripts were editted and re-edited to be perfectly explained to the respondent so that as they answered the questions, the likely-hood of them perceiving those answers in the way that was intended is great. We were also trained torespind to thier questions in a way that would not allow bias to enter the question. For example, if a respondent had a question on a scale or question, i would respond by re-reading the question and saying, "I am advised to tell you to answer this questionto the best of your understanding" must of the time they would ask me again, thinking that i would explain the question if they asked again, but that call was being monitored by my supervisor so i would repeat my previous response. I was also repremended by my supervisor if i interjected words like and, um, ok, perfect, thank you, or so. These words were seen to have biased the respondents answers, so in order to perfect the collection of data we would have to stick to the script and know how to advise the respondents how to answer if they have confusion. My point here is we need to be good researcher because the last thing that the sample is thinking of is how to answer the questions most accurately.

To be honest, research, the word, just bugs me, I hate thinking of research because I always have associated research with long reports and Google searches, but I really do understand the importance of it. Now that ive done it, I have agreat appreciation for the effort that goes into creating accurate data.