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.