Divorce and Remarriage

This week in class we talked about divorce and blended families. Some of the predictors for divorce are because people haven’t seen a healthy marriage and they recreate patterns they saw, and cohabitation. Dating is one big protector for successful marriages. The divorce rate is going up every year. After people get remarried, especially when there are children involved, there are many struggles. 70% of people, two years after getting remarried feel like it was a mistake. After people are divorced, 70% of men are remarried within two years. Women are less likely to marry as quickly after a divorce. One study showed that when children are 12 at the time of divorce the father lives an average of 400 miles away. It also showed that by that age children don’t want to be around their father as much.

 Blended families can be hard work. After a remarriage it takes around two years for the family to get used to the changes. One reason for this is because after two years of different traditions within a family they are starting to get used to them. 

I have seen this in my life. My parents are divorced and both parents are remarried. I lived with my mom and stepdad at home. I love my stepdad but the first few years of them being married were difficult to get used to. Once we learned how to work together and become one family, things got much better. Of course there are still problems occasionally, but that is so with any family blended or not. 

This is me with my little brother, mom, and stepdad! 

Parenting!

Okay so along the lines of my last blog post, I wanna say something about missionaries again. Except this time, I’m going to talk about my missionary! I love this boy! So we send recorders back and forth, and I got his this week. He is such a sweetie. He records on it every day and tells me about his day and the people he is teaching and just what they are up to. Well this time he ended the recordings by saying something that he loves about me. So stinkin cute! And he also sent me some pictures from the package I sent to him for St. Patricks Day. And he would prolly be mad if he knew I put them up here, but he won’t read this for a long time haha so I’ll put a picture up J

So this week in class we’ve been talking about parenting. Some of the purposes of parenting are:

Transmit values and traditions

Teach about God

Practice and develop Godly qualities

Become refined

Provide protection

Learning

Protect and prepare our children to survive and thrive in the world they are going to live in

Contribute in the world they live in

It’s a commandment- “rear their children in righteousness…” – a sacred duty

When there is a problem, there are logical and natural consequences. Logical consequences are when a parent disciplines the child. For example, if a child takes the car out and is driving crazy, a parent could take the car away from them for a given amount of time. Natural consequences are when a child does something and it’s the consequence that just happens. For example, if you are told not to put your hands on the stove because it’s hot, and you do, your hands will burn. Natural consequences are good to use for teaching unless: it is too dangerous, it effects their future (the parent needs to be the teacher), or when it affects others.

Parenting is the most wonderful job two people can have. They get the opportunity to bring one of God’s children into the world and rear them in the right way.  And I can’t wait to have this as my main job!!

Okay have a great weekend!!! :) 

  

Money Money Money!!!

            So first off, I just want to say how much I love missionaries. I am so grateful for those young men and women that put off two years of their lives to serve the Lord. So many of my friends are all leaving or out already. Of course my boyfriend, Ian, who I have mentioned before, and my friend Tyler Barnes and Mitchell Rust are out. My friends Jacob Potts, Kyle Gardiner, and Blake Douglas are leaving this week. Mckay Allman and Hayden Petitta got their calls this week. Kirsten Shell, Jami Austin, and Lexi Wilcox are leaving soon. And one of my very best friends Will is getting his call next weekend. Tyler Ely, Connor Weeks, and Jared Varney are all working on their papers and about to put them in. I just wanted to give a shout out to all of them. I am so proud of them and the work they are doing. And I’m especially grateful for missionary work because I have personally seen the impact it can have on people’s lives. Ian was baptized two and half years ago and I was able to watch and be a part of that in his life. I am so grateful for the missionaries that helped him in that journey. Basically, I just love missionaries.

                Okay so now for this past week’s lesson. I know I already posted for this week, but that was before Friday’s lesson. Which was awesome. We read the pamphlet “One For The Money” and then talked about that in class. And if you haven’t read the pamphlet, you should. But until then, I’ll just write my notes from it. So it talks about ways to manage your money and what we need to do with our money in order to receive the blessings the Lord has for us. So these are the main points that were in there.

·         Pay an honest tithe

·         Learn to manage money before it manages you

·         Learn self-discipline and self-restraint in money matters

·         Use a budget

·         Teach family members early the importance of working and earning

·         Teach children to make money decisions in keeping with their capacities to comprehend

·         Teach each family member to contribute to the total family welfare

·         Make education a continuing process

·         Work toward home ownership

·         Appropriately involve yourself in an insurance program

·         Understand the influence of external forces on family finances and investments

·         Appropriately involve yourself in a food storage and emergency preparedness program

And I just think this is a brilliant list and it basically says it all. But I will do one comment. I think one of the most important thing is to teach family members early the importance of working and earning. My parents were great about this, they taught us early that we had to earn our things. Whenever we wanted something, even if it was something as simple as a candy bar, we had to work for it. We could do an extra chore or something and then we could get it. I am very grateful for them teaching me this because it has prepared me for living on my own. I have had a job most of my life and made my own money in order to be able to pay my own way through college. I know the importance of working and earning what I want. It also makes me value things more because I know what it took to get it.

And these are all the missionaries!! Love em! :)

Okay well that’s about it! Have a great week!! :) 

Working Mothers

               We talked about a few things this week, the thing I want to focus on now is working mothers. We talked about it in this class and we've also been talking about it in my other family class. What is being said is that it is not the role of mothers to work outside the home. I do not necessarily agree with everything that was said in the classes; but I will write what we have been told and talked about, as well as my opinion about it all.

                One of the things brought up in discussion was about the roles. Mother’s role is supposed to be in the home being a homemaker. It was said that in many cases it is better to barely be scraping by on the father’s salary than for both parents to go to work and have a better income. There is also a negative effect on children, they are either left at a friend’s, daycare or home alone or with siblings. When this happens, they often become more violent and learn from others rather than their parents.

                Those were just a few of the things that were talked about, and now my opinion… I do not agree with this look on things entirely. I do believe that it is most important for a mom to be a mother and take care of her children, to teach and nurture them. However, if the job is not getting in the way of being a mom, then I do not think that it is a bad thing. I think that while it is the father’s “job” to provide for the family, it is the mother’s role to help when needed. It is a partnership and both parents are responsible to take care of their family. My parents were divorced when I was in fifth grade and my mom started working. She had been a substitute teacher for a few years but then she took on another job so she could support our family. She worked with her manager to get hours where she would be away from us the least. I do not feel that it was terrible for me while growing up. I do believe that a mother should be there to care for her children; but if it is needed for her to work to help provide for the family, she should do so. When possible, get a job that would not get in the way of spending time with your children-work while they are at school, work from home, etc.

                And that’s my opinion about working mothers!

P.S this is my wonderful mom (and my sisters :) ) 

Have a great week!! J

Conflict, Crisis, and Communication

           Soo this week we have been talking about conflicts or crisis happening in a family.  Crisis is a trauma, when someone is unsatisfied with their current situation, something that puts the family at risk, or instability. Crisis is danger plus an opportunity. There will always be conflict and crisis in a family, you just have to learn how to deal with it. I think that is one of the most important things to learn before and when you are married. You need to go in with the mindset that there will be problems and learn how to handle them. if you go in to a relationship thinking that there will not be conflict then it will be harder to deal with them. But, if you learn how to handle them with each other, then your marriage will be more successful. Everyone deals with conflict differently and you and your spouse should be on the same page with dealing with them.

                We also talked about communication. The communication model that Brother Williams showed us is: Your thoughts and feelings, you encode them in how you tell the other person, the media, the other person decodes what you said, and finally their thoughts and feelings about what you said. You can never NOT communicate. Whether it is verbally or non-verbally, you are communicating some sort of message.

                And finally, most people do not like conflict and we deal with it in maybe not the best way. When people argue, they try to find a compromise. However this is ineffective because when you compromise both people end up feeling shafted and like they did not get what they want. When you argue you should find some solution in which you both can win.

                And that was our week about conflict!! Y’all have a great weekend! J

First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, Then Comes...

        Okay so I missed class Friday so I missed out on the discussion, but it was on having babies… And I missed class to go and see my brand new niece! Little Rylie Renee Lovelace was born Wednesday February 20^th. And she is just a doll! So I talked to my sister  and my mom (because she is out here from Georgia to see Rylie) about some of the things that were in our readings about having a child and that is kind of what I am going to put into here today. But I want to start with the topics from earlier this week.. We’ve been talking about the adjustments you make after you get married. We first brought back some of the trends on how less people are getting married especially due to cohabitation, but I’ve kind of already talked about that so I’m not going to really focus on that today. So of course, if you are not cohabitating, when you do move in together there are going to be some challenges. Most of the things we talked about in class can be alleviated through dating, but there are still always going to be some. A few of the things that were brought up in the class discussion were; how you do the finances, like having separate accounts or a joint account, who is going to handle the money, and there are a lot more bills that you don’t realize and that can cause stress on you both.  How much time you are going to spend with the extended family on each side, and even the time spent with each other- you might be used to spending a ton of time together through dating but when you are married it is going to be a whole lot more time. And are you going to take vacations away from each other, or do you want to spend every moment that you can with each other? One big one, that in my opinion can start to be figured out through dating, but not completely taken away is resolving conflict. You have to learn how to compromise and learn to disagree. There are going to be disagreements and you have to learn how to handle them, do you like to sit and talk about it or do you like to go walk to off and then when you’re cooled off come back and talk, or calm down and then not need to talk? If one of you is a talker and one of you has to walk it off, are you both okay with that? Do you never go to bed angry, or sleep it off til you have a clear mind? Like I said, if you really know the person you’re marrying you should have a pretty good idea about how they handle differences but there will be some differences and you are still learning. And then the last one I’m going to mention is just the little quirks of living with someone, like if they leave their towel on the bed and you hang it up right away, or do they squeeze the toothpaste and you roll it? I mean I dunno cause I’m not married… But I think yea there are some things that you have to get used to, but that’s part of life and if you love them, so what? You can get used to those things for them and work through them for each other. J

                Okay and then comes the BABY!!! And I did not really agree with the powerpoint that we read on having babies… But then-again, I’ve never been married and had a baby.. But I talked to my mom and my sister and got their opinion and I think that some people might have this opinion on having babies, but I don’t think that it is the opinion that everyone has. So what the powerpoint was saying was that some of the challenges of having babies were was that your marital happiness was at its peak when you got married and with every kid it goes down. It said that sometimes the intimacy levels in the marriage will go down, husbands will feel like left out and wives will feel like the husbands don’t care. I feel like, yes kids are hard work but they can also be one of the happiest things that happen in your lives.  They can bring so much joy to your life together.  Talking to my mom especially, she said that we were the greatest thing that ever happened to her.  And seeing my sister and brother-in-law and how much joy little Rylie has brought them so far, I think you just have to make the choice to be happy like with anything else.  Plus, look how stinkin ADORABLE she is!!! J  

Gotta love LOVE :)

We’ve been talking about love! Perfect timing too with Valentine’s Day this week. And I had the best Valentines J Well actually I had two… And they are both far away from me, but both two of my favorite boys, Elder Ian Smith and my favorite brother Bradley. Hehe And those handsome boys in the pictures are them. :)

        Okay so talking about love.. there are four types of love; eros, agape, storge, and philia. Eros is the passionate, sexual love that is driven by emotions. Agape is love that is independent of one’s feelings for another. Storge is the love between a parent and a child. And lastly, the love between friends is philia. All throughout your life you will experience each of these types of love with different people. When you get in a serious relationship with the person you are going to marry, you should experience all four types of love. Of course there should be the passionate love, but there needs to be more than that. Before you are ready to be in a relationship with someone and ready to grow with someone you must be independent. You must be able to love yourself and be confident in yourself. Then and only then can you fully love someone else. The love you have for your spouse is not going to be the same as the love you have for your parents, but there needs to be the caring nature. If your spouse is really sick and the only love you have for them is passionate, you are not going to want to spend the night with them while they are throwing up in the bathroom. That is where storge love comes in. And you always hear people say, “I want to marry my best friend”. And that is so true. It is so important! You really do need to marry your best friend; you need to have that best friend love for your spouse.  

                Yupp that’s all I got for now. And now I’m gonna go cause I’m heading down to Utah for my cousin’s wedding.. Speaking of love! Haha J

Happy late Valentine’s Day! Hope it was great! 

Dating

      So today I had a little surprise :) So I have a missionary, he has been faithfully serving in Long Beach, California for the past year and a half. (Which means he comes home to me in six and a half months!!) But I got my weekly letter on Saturday so I was not expecting a letter for another week, well me and my roommate Jami went to check the mail just for the heck of it today and guess who got a letter!! I'm not supposed to open it til Valentines Day, which is in three days, but he opened his Christmas present early, so I opened my Valentines letter early. Hehe :) He's such a sweetie! He wrote me scriptures that reminded him of me.  I love getting surprises like that! He's the best!!  
     Okay so that doesn't entirely relate to what we talked about today... But it made my day so I had to share :) We talked about dating. Again, I’m going to pull from my other family class. I think I will probably be doing that for the rest of the semester.. But dating! Okay, so we talked about a few different aspects of dating. Did you know that, we tend to like people that live or work near us, and I forget the statistic but like around one-third (I think) of people marry people that live within a few blocks of their house. Why is that? Well, it used to be because there wasn’t the means to meet as many people that lived further away, but also the saying “opposites attract” is actually false. We tend to go for people that are similar to ourselves. We find that we can relate to them better, of course they have to have some differences, especially things that will make our weaknesses become strengths, but if we are complete opposites then we will not have any common ground to begin to relate.

                I love BYUI because people actually date here! I think it is a lost thing in my town in Georgia, but not just there, dating is becoming a lost thing around the world. People are hanging out, not dating. In order to be a date it must pass the three P’s- planned, paid for, and paired off. (Which if you are familiar with the Proclamation to the World, you will recognize that those are similar to the three P’s of a man’s duty.. Preside, Provide, and Protect…  Fun fact..) When you are young and in high school, hanging out is totally fine! You do not have to go on these paired off dates, in fact group dates are better! But when you get to the college age you need to start getting out of the hanging out stage and get into the dating stage.  Even still, they can and should be group dates, just have some single dates to know if you can be alone with the person.

                What are the purposes of dating? We date of course to find our future eternal companion, but we should not be looking for that on our first dates. We should date lots of people and lots of different types of people to learn what kinds of people and the traits of people that we like and want to be with. We also date for recreation, companionship, status attainment, socialization, and intimacy (or as Brother Williams calls it in-ta-my-mate). But intimacy just means sharing something with someone, being with someone, it does not mean sex necessarily.

                Dating is not just about selecting a partner, it is about learning yourself, and then learning and growing together. Dating is an important and exciting step in life. And I’m really excited to be at that time in my life!! J

Okayy!! Have a great week!!

Peace and blessing. 

Gender Roles

Such a great weekend so far! Friday went on a blind double date with my best friend of 11 years and it was a blast! We ate dinner and went bowling! And then had a sleepover with my amazing roomies. And then today I went on a group date with a real cutie J we went sledding and then to Shake Out. It was super fun! I love this school and am so grateful to be here! So I’m actually taking two family classes this semester, this family relations class and then The Family. This week in both classes we have been talking about gender roles, so my post for this week I am going to talk about what I learned from this class and then pull a little from my other class. I think the topic of gender roles is really important. One of the most important things to start this topic off is by saying how our gender did not happen by chance; we are what we are by chance. There are specific characteristics and roles given to men and women that occurred before we came to this earth. I think it is important to remember this because it is not our choice and by going against our roles it is going against our divine nature. Man and woman are created equal, but that does not mean identical. Our roles are different but equal.  I think while we each have our roles, the man as the provider, protector and priesthood holders; while the woman is the nurturer and caregiver, we are here to help each other gain eternal salvation and each of our roles is equally important and necessary.

                One of the things that we talked about in class was that some research says that the reason that boys and girls act differently is due to sexist parenting. It said that parents need to treat their sons more like their daughters and nurture them more. This is just not true! We are different and supposed to be! There was a quote in one of my classes, I don’t remember which one, but it was something like “if we both thought the same, there wouldn’t be a need for both of us.” I think this can be applied to gender roles. If we were the same, there wouldn’t be a need for both males and females. But God created both, so obviously there is a need.  Plus, it’s more fun! Haha

                Last thing I wanna say.. we had a reading that I really liked and I wanted to mention it. It was about the role of siblings, specifically sisters. It talked about how important the role of siblings is in growing up. This study said that having a sister “protects them from feeling lonely, unloved, guilty, self-conscience, and fearful”.  And while major fighting between siblings is not the best thing, the little sibling squabbles is actually a good thing because it teaches us to make up and regain control of our emotions. SO that said… I just wanna say my little brother is lucky to have three AWESOME big sisters! Haha :P

Have a great week!  J

Cultures

I freaking love snow. Just saying. I went sledding today for the first time and it was SO much fun!! :)

        Okay so this past week we've been talking about different cultures and diversity. I’m not going to give all the facts about that though, because something really stuck out to me and I really just want to make that as my point this weekend. It is important to learn about other cultures and become familiar with them, but there are some things that we need to be cautious about when we do. Sometimes after learning a lot about a culture people can become narrow minded and start to not see the individuals just see the culture. We have to be careful about stereotypes. I’m sure everyone has been the victim of a stereotype at some point in their life, weather it was for their race, culture, religion, or whatever else it was for. We all know that it is not a good feeling to be seen as a group rather than an individual person. When we learn about different cultures it can help to get a basic understanding of maybe the background of a person, just do not lose sight of who they are and their individual traits.

And I’ll step off the soapbox now.. I just really liked that angle of the conversation. I think it is important and want to make sure to get it out there. :)

Happy Saturday! Have a great week!  

Theories

It's Friday!!! Yay! I'm so excited for the weekend! So something we learned about in class that I had never heard about before was theories. In this class we learn about researching families. When we look at families we use different theories to help guide the research. The concept of theory is stressed because when dealing with researching things like families, you have to be careful with stating facts because all families and situations are different. There are four theories we look at when talking about family relations. Systems theory, exchange theory, symbolic interaction theory, and conflict theory.

                The first is systems theory, which al other theories fall under the general heading, but when specifically applied to family relations this theory asserts that the intimate group must be analyzed as a whole. Basically it means that everyone in the family has a role that is for the benefit of the whole family not them individually.

                The next theory is the exchange theory. The concept of this theory is the idea of “you owe me”. It is the attempt to keep your costs, which could be time, money, emotional energy etc., lower than your rewards. If this is not happening then you would avoid the person or end the relationship.

                The next  theory is the symbolic interaction theory. This is a theory that people are defined by their interaction experiences. One of the important concepts of this idea is the definition of the situation,  when we define a situation as real it has real consequences.

                The last theory is conflict theory. This theory is the idea that all societies are characterized by inequality, conflict, and change as groups in the society struggle.

                These theories are one way people look at family relationships. Like I said before, families are so unique and have their own situations so in my opinion they are one of the hardest things to put facts on. But by using these theories, this is one way we can try to learn more about the functions and habits of families in general.  

Have a great weekend!! 

-Ashley

Family Trends

Last week in class we talked about some of the trends in families and in relationships. We talked about things that were going upwards and things that were going downwards and how they were affecting our lives. Some of the trends that are working their way up are; divorce rates, premarital sex, cohabitation, living alone, unmarried women having children, and mothers that work (especially with children under the age of six). Some of the trends that are on their way down are; people getting married, the number of children people are having, people socializing, and spending time with extended family.

                These trends start affecting our family with the social lives. If we do not socialize with people we do not learn the social skills necessary to have good communication skills which will affect our future relationships with everyone, particularly our spouses and children, if we do choose to marry and have children. The next thing that is affected is marriages. People are choosing cohabitation or living alone over getting married. These lead to several further negative things within families. The often thought idea with cohabitation is when a couple lives together before marrying, they will find out if they are truly compatible or not. In many instances it is more of an opt out of commitment. Also, with cohabitation come the trends of premarital sex and unmarried women having children. Statistics show that marriages that precede with cohabitation are more likely to end with divorce. If people get divorced and they have children, the mother is more likely to have to go to work. It because of many of these thoughts and complications, couples think of before they have kids that they decide to not have them.

                The world has become a much more complicated place than the young man courting a young lady, them falling in love, getting married, having a family and staying married happily ever after for time and all eternity. Times have changed and although it should still be like that, the world, the choices people in the world make do not allow for that anymore. We have to be aware of these trends for our current or future families.   

So first entry on my first blog ever!! :) This is for my Family Relations class with Brother Williams at Brigham Young University Idaho.