Work in Family Life

                Families that work together are stronger connected in relationships and have higher family satisfaction.  The definition of work has changed.  Back then families would work together on the farm all day and they would have to learn how to work together and get along.  Husbands and wives would work together and they would divide up chores according to their abilities.  Typically the women would do the house hold chores and the man would do the manual labor.  Ever since the Industrial revolution in 1800-1900 the family life of work changed.  Men were beginning to have work outside of the home for hours a day while the women would stay home and work in the home.  The role of family members work load changed the family because there was more stress on mom to do all of the chores at home, dad had to work for periods of time without feeling connected to the family, and the children would go to school and help with whatever work was needed. 

Now day’s family roles are different for work.  I have found that many family units have the dad work outside of the home and more women want to have a career.  Many people now have the idea that you can make a difference in the world if you have a job and you are successful if you make money.  This makes the idea of a stay at home mother useless and pointless.  I disagree with the way society has begun looking at homemakers.  Women who have the opportunity to stay at home have the opportunity to raise good kids and teach them correct principles.  Homemakers are very important in family life and it is very important work.  It is important for the parents to agree on roles and responsibilities so it feels like there is equality in the home.  Father and mothers each play a critical role in family life and they need to work together as equal partners to have a happy and successful family and work life.

With the change in how our society handles the labor of work it is important to teach children to work.  Instead of having only the parents working, teaching children how to work will benefit them in all aspects of their life.  You can have fun and enjoy work because work makes you feel good after you have been productive and accomplished something.  Little children love to help out and work because they love helping.  It is important to teach work ethic so that they don’t become lazy and think that somebody else will do the work for them.  Working together in a family creates stronger families because you learn skills from parents, learn how to communicate with others, and you also learn how to get along with others.  We should be more kind and do work out of the goodness of our hearts, and not always to get something in return like money.  It is important to teaching kids that they do work not for money but to be helpful and a good person- to build character.  Working together as a family will increase the unity of family.

Communication in Family

Good Communication is key to a successful marriage or relationship.  We communicate daily either non-verbally or verbally.  The way we interpret meanings is based on 14% words, 51% non-verbal, and 35% on tone.  This means that your actions speak louder than your words so it is important to be aware of how you act.  Sarcasm is a corrupt way to communicate and it can have a negative effect on your relationships.  Sarcasm is lying and hoping that another person understands your “joke.”  The painful part of sarcasm is that is has part truth in it so it can be really destructive.  There are other bad ways to communicate like blaming, criticism, or using the silent treatment.  By being open to communication and caring about how the other person feels you can increase your relationship with good communication.

                Couples need to establish the role of power by communicating with each other how they will divide up the power.  Every person needs to feel like they have some power because it is part of our mental and social well being.  Power is the ability to influence others.  It is a fact that in marriages you will disagree and have conflict.  Conflict can strengthen a relationship by creating better options, and putting the issue into the open.  It is important to use good communication when there is conflict so that you can express pain without blaming the person, using I-statements.

                I also learned about a way to handle situation with good communication by using the council method to come to a consensus.  This method is used to express love to each person and to appreciate each other.  When using this method you ask each person their opinion on the topic.  When finding solutions to conflict it is important to attack the problem and not the person.  Using the council method will make sure that all members are on board and agree.

                Good communication definitely has a role in marriages and it can strengthen relationships.  We need to be aware of all forms of communication like nonverbal, tone, and the words we say.  Communication strengthens relationships by saying what the problem is so that the people can find a solution.  We need to always be mindful of the other person when using communication so that it can be a beneficial tool to strengthen relationships.

The Family Under Stress

Crisis's can either bring families closer or farther apart.  This week in my family relations class I learned that there are many places that families have stress from internal sources like a alcoholic in the family, and external sources like inflation rate.  There are also normative stress which is the normal life cycle like having a new born baby increases the stress of a family.  Stress can come from anywhere and there are many differed types like non normative, ambiguous, non ambiguous, volitional, non volitional, chronic, acute, cumulative,  and isolated.  With so many things in this life that can make us stress we have to decide how we are going to react to stress.  What affects the process of a crisis is the actual event, the resources we have to solve the conflict, and cognition-the way we define a crisis.

The main emphasis that I understood from learning about crisis is the problem, how are you going to handle the crisis.  If you handle a crisis in a positive way then you and your family can grow closer.  When people have a crisis and turn away from others and handle it a negative way like drinking, then it can cause a family to distance them selves.  I think that Heavenly Father sent us on this earth to become a better person and more like thee.  He wants us to return to him and life on earth is a test, it isn't always easy and we need to learn from our experiences and help each other.  I think that we can bless the lives of others by learning through our trials and crisises to help people that are going through the same thing.  I need to have faith through my trails so that I won't give up and know that Heavenly Father loves me.

Crisis in the family changes the structure of the family and we need to learn how to accomidate to the stress by pulling our family closer to us.  A family should be a safe place where we can go to each other to be strengthened.  Crisises handled in the right way can bond families.  In class I learned about how abuse in the family can be really hard and we shouldn't cope with abuse like we would for other crisises.  We need to solve abuse and end it.  A therapist can help families if they are struggling with talking about it because you need to define the problem of abuse, exchange information, tell of the hurt that it is causeing to your spirit, and for the offender to confess and apologize.

Crisis can bring a family closer or father apart, it depends on how the family reacts to the stress.  I think we need to keep perspective that some problems will pass and we need to work together as a family to solve hard crisis's.  We can't solve some of our problems on our own and we need to be willing to get help from others like family, extended family, and Heavenly Father.  It is up to us how we are going to handle a crisis.

Lesson 07: Sexual Intimacy and Family Life

I learned a lot of new things this week that can be helpful in my future marriage.  On Monday my class learned about sexual intimacy.  Sexual intimacy should be about an emotional and spiritual connection that the husband and wife have to increase their respect and love for each other.  It is important to know that men are aroused quicker and shorter, and women take longer to be aroused and response is longer.  This can be frustrating for sexual intimacy but can help if partners understand.  The challenges of sexual intimacy are timing, being critical of each other, feeling hurt, and being tired. Women and men are so different and it is amazing how Heavenly Father created our bodies, and the precious gift we have of bringing children into the world.  The opportunities for sexual intimacy is to become closer to spouse, learn to work together, learn to be considerate of partner, being able to fee loved and supported, and to better understand God and feel connected.  I have always thought that it would be scary to start having a sexual relationship with my future spouse after being married because it is crammed into our heads that sex is bad before marriage and I liked how my teacher said that easing into sexual intercourse will make you more comfortable and it will increase marital satisfaction.

                I also learned about fidelity.  High fidelity is true, loyal, and pure.  Infidelity in marriage can cause vulnerability.  I learned that there are also different ways of being unfaithful besides sex with another person.  Some of the ways to be unfaithful in a marriage is to have thoughts about another person, wanting to keep up that friendship, being friends on Facebook and talking to another person on social media, not going to spouse for problems but someone else, being alone with someone of opposite gender, flirting, putting things before your spouse like hobbies, sexting, dishonesty, and pornography.  There are many ways to be unfaithful to your spouse besides sexual sins.  It is true that we need to be careful to put our spouse first.  I thought it was interesting that pornography gives us false expectations for reality and it is so harmful to a marriage.  Marriages can start deteriorating when needs aren’t meet like a person doesn’t feel loved or desirable and they will look for that assurance outside of marriage.  I found that it was interesting that marriage when sexual infidelity happens that half of them stay married and that it can make the marriage stronger.  You have to put a lot of work into marriage after something so heart wrenching and hurtful happens because the trust is gone.  It is important to stay far away from committing infidelity by watching your thoughts, actions, and words.  Couples need to discuss clear boundaries and have trust in each other to develop a strong marriage.

                It is also important to teach children about sex before they hear it from somewhere else.  There are sexual teachings that children can hear from media like cartoons, hearing it in school, and also on the street from people.  Telling your kids about sex before others will increase their understanding and will teach them the way you would want them to think about sex.  It has been engraved in some peoples mind since they were a child that sex is bad so when they get married it is hard to adjust.  I think that we should teach children that sex is to become closer to your spouse and that it good after marriage.  We should teach that dressing modestly is to respect our bodies because our bodies are precious, not because we are ashamed and want to cover them up.  We shouldn’t use fear to teach that if we are “used” that no-body will want us.  I also believe that it is important though to express the dangers of being sexual like STD, pregnancy, not keeping the standards (consequences), and that being sexual affects more people than just you.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has a manual of how to teach children about their bodies and the importance of respect to our bodies http://www.lds.org/manual/a-parents-guide?lang=eng .  I think that it is important to stress the positivity of sex after marriage and that it is a beautiful thing so that when children get older they aren’t necessarily scared of it.  There is a balance to teaching this subject and partners need to discuss how they will talk about it to their children.

Transition into Marriage

What I learned this week was that marriage has always been around from the beginning.  Man and woman marriages have been around for as long as we can trace back in time.  There are new trends in marriage like more people cohabit before marriage, longer engagements, people are getting married older, smaller families, and divorce is increasing.  I have also found when going to class and reading my text book that the people who are more likely to get married are white people, people with education, upper-class, and because of religious believes.  I learned that the way you are raised can affect your tendencies of how you are going to go about marriage.

                I also learned that being married is not always sunshine and happy days.  It can be really hard at times.  A lot of couples have found that marriage isn’t as fun as they thought it would be.  I think this can be because they have unrealistic expectations and couples need to talk about their “marriage contract” before they get married.  The contract should discuss certain issues like how many kids do you want, how will we solve problems, how are we going to communicate, what roles are we going to have… and more questions.  This can prepare couples to set realistic expectations.

                Marriage can be one of the hardest adjustments for people.  You need to coordinate your plans according to your spouse and you also have to get used to living with spouse by sharing living space.  Good marriages adjust by communicating, dividing up money (sharing money), and spending time together.  Each couple is different so they will need to plan according to each other’s needs.

                Bringing a new baby into the family can either strengthen or decrease marital satisfaction.  Having a baby adds stress because both couples have more of a work load.  Couples can go through the “baby blues” by having the woman only focus on the baby and the man feels out of the picture.  To strengthen marital satisfaction the woman should involve the husband throughout the pregnancy process and assure him that she loves him.  The man can also be a part of the process by being aware of the woman by comforting and helping her.   I would want my future husband to be with me through the process and tell me and show me that he still loves me and be that comforter for me.  An issue we discussed in class is that some women want their mothers with them instead of their husband (for example during the delivery).  This could endanger the husband and wife’s relationship because he won’t be bonding with his wife and child.  Instead the mom and daughter will get closer.  I would want my future husband and I to become closer and stronger by having a baby so that he also feels a connection with the child.  I also believe that Heavenly Father can help us with difficulties we are having with marriage and He can strengthen a marriage so much.  I want to always life worthy so that I can be sealed in the temple to my best friend and have a family focused in the gospel with God as a key part of my family.