Divorce

Divorce is so much more prominent in todays world than it was back in the day. It just makes me so sad, I know that there are circumstances that people need to get out of something that is harmful and for their physical and spiritual safety they need to get out.  However today I think people are just giving up.  They just aren't "happy" anymore, but are they? Or is it they are just not trying anymore.  I have no idea I am not a therapist or doctor these are just the thoughts of my head.  I think that divorce comes in stages, first people argue, then they argue more.  After they stop arguing is when they realize that they are done, they have given up.  I am so glad that I married someone that even though I am far from perfect he puts up with me everyday and I know that he will never give up on me.

Parenting

Parenting is huge.  Its like the number one most stressful job in the world. There are so many different styles of parenting and there are millions of children in the world and every child is different.  I have been reading alot about the styles of parenting and the studies of Steinberg and Kohn.  A few of the principles that I love about parenting that are in these books are, that the child is the child.  Children are still children and I think that some parents struggle with that.  They want there children to remember what they want constantly and when they have a little tantrum its not okay.  However, children have tantrums! They are children.  Obviously we need to have some control and tell them that is not okay. Another thing that we need to remember is that the relationship with our children is more important than anything else in the world.  When there are battles happening and we want to stop them just remember that they are children and that we love them.

Fathers

Fathers are so important.  Hands down.  We have been studying whether or not fathers are important in the development of the children.  I was raised in a family where both my mom and dad were heavily present in my life and lead to be the person I am today.  My dad was a rockstar at being a dad, like he was there for everything.  He knew when to back off and give me space and he knew when to break into me and just let me know his thoughts.  I know that my dad was MY dad for a reason and that I was sent to the family I was.  There is hard research now that shows that families with out a father present they are more likely to live in poverty, get into drugs, and not do as well in education.  People need a father or father like figure in their lives.  The mom and dad both have different qualities to add to the development of the child and we need both sides of that.

Communication

Before my husband and I got married we talked about everything possible that we thought could come up in our future marriage.  Obviously we could not have been able to tell every issue that was going to come up in our lives.  However I do remember there was night that I said "communication is the biggest thing that we can do to make our marriage the best."  Now whenever I just shut down and dont want to talk my husband comes to me and says remember we are supposed to be communicating in a semi jokingly manner and then I just laugh and we talk about whatever we need to talk about. When two people are not communicating in a marriage just for instance, it is going to break down.  I can honestly tell you that deep communication with your spouse is huge.  My husband and I talk all the time, sometimes its too much, we tell each other everything.  I know that if we didnt do this than I wouldnt feel as important and then things would come up after they happened and then we would probably end up in an argument.    Its kind of funny because whenever we do have an argument its probably because we had a miscommunication.

The Family Under Stress

We talked this week about how in the family there are stressors and crises that will occur that impact the family.  Different stressors and crises are going to influence the family less and more every time.  Some of the examples we talked about were divorce, death in the family, poverty and many others.  I know that in my family we have luckily not had any deaths in my immediate family but we have had sicknesses.  I have four brothers in my family and there is one that is 14 months younger than me, he was diagnosed with cancer when he was in the 7th grade.  My dad was deployed Afghanistan or Iraq, (I cant really keep up with where or how many times now a days) so my mom was dealing with this news all on her own along with keeping up with the other 5 children she has.  The amount of stress that this added to our family was huge.  No one really knew what was going on and there were so many things that were unknown and that was a stressor on its own.  My dad came home early from his deployment and that helped obviously, then my brother had a port put into his heart that would take his chemotherapy straight through his body.  This was a time in our lives when the Savior became a main figure in our lives.  Now we already were very religious but as you can imagine why that was something that soared in our house.  I just know that because of our faith and the Saviors willingness in our family, is what led to my brother becoming cancer free and being able to live a great life now.  I know that stressors are common in life and that we just have to deal with them.

Intimacy in Marriage.

This topic is kind of funny, because I am married and pregnant so you could say I kind of have that down.  However I know that people who are not married might now know all of the details, Im not just talking about the physical part of intimacy.  There is a lot of factors that go into marital intimacy, it is such an emotional experience and both people have to feel safe and loved by the other person.  There are differences in women and men physically that happen when becoming intimate and those things sometimes create difficulty in marriage.  There are times that people don't feel safe and then they avoid marital intimacy as a whole.  When people avoid this the relationship becomes strained and people will not stop communicating and then other problems will occur.  Marital intimacy is huge to keeping the relationship happy and being the best partner that you can be.

Halloween week post!

We talked about weddings and marriage this week, I thought this was a very interesting topic because some people think that the wedding will be influential on their marriage. I, on the other hand know that these things have nothing to do with each other.  I know that I had absolutely amazing wedding weekend and that all of my family was there to celebrate with me and I know that it was just everything I wanted.  Heres the best part, about getting married, you get to marry your best friend that you fell in love with.  I was sealed in the temple and I know I have an eternal family and marriage as long as I do my part!  Marriage can be really hard sometimes and at the beginning if we are just stressing and stressing about the wedding then we aren't really having the best start to our marriage.  The thing is that we need to know that there are differences in a good wedding, and a good marriage.  I have only been married for a short amount of time but I have come to realize that communication is the number one thing in a good marriage. I love my husband and I love that I have the counsel that I have from the gospel.

Preparing for Marriage

Everyone wants to have this fairytale life with the person that we love and want to spend the rest of their lives with that person.  Thats just a great thing, but sometimes we forget about the process leading up to this. Dating can just be the worst sometimes.  It is probably one of the most confusing and frustrating processes on this earth.  However, we can make it the best!  I have had many dating experiences in my life some great that lead to marrying my best friend, and some so negative that I just cried.  The thing that we have to realize is that people have these unwritten rules for dating that are just sometimes ridiculous.  When I was dating my now husband I thought that the boy needed to make the first move and plan the first couple of dates and then once I knew he liked me thats when I would decide to plan a date and take him out!  Everybody's situation is going to be different, and boys will be boys and girls will be girls.  What everyone really wants it to just be shown that they are loved and cared for by that person.  That doesn't mean that we leave it all up to our partner because they need to be shown love just the same as we do.

Week of October 14-18 Post

This week we talked a lot about many different subjects that all kind of came together in the end.  One of my favorite discussions that we had was about how we are each separate genders and that we all have roles in these genders.   In each of our families each of us could have a different role and they are decided by ourselves or other people in our family.  For instance, in my family, I was just made into be the peacemaker of the family.  My mom would ask to solve the problems with the little kids and then it just became my duty sort of, whenever there was a problem I just always couldn't handle it and I would have to put a stop to it. We all have something different about is and we all differ from each other even in our families. We then talked about how our lives would have been different if we were born the other gender.  We talked about how the roles we would have had would have been different and then we would have been punished differently.  Everything about how we were raised would have been backwards.

Social Class and Culture Diversity

During class this week we talked about different social classes and whether or not you can move up or down through out class levels.  We watched at least 3 different videos about real people and their experiences in life and where they thought they stood on the social class level.  It was really hard to watch one of the videos that I did because it was all about a family that was at the very bottom of the lowest social class.  Her oldest son was really defiant to the fact that they were in that class.  He would tell his younger brother and mom that he didnt want to be seen with them because they dont dress nice, only because they cant afford too.  In my opinion I think that you can change social class levels I just think that it would be difficult to be accepted in the different levels.  I watched another video about a woman whose job was to train low class people on how to act to be a high class lady and to change everything they did. I think that all of this is very interesting yet I am not sure how effective and life altering it is.

Family Dynamics

I love taking this Family Relations class, I seriously learn so much just about how people in general work and how I can understand them and be a better person.  I have also realized that there are things in my marriage and family life that I can change to be so much better.  I was thinking about how lucky I am to have the family that I do and so I thought I would share some pictures of my family with everyone. This is my parents, 4 brothers , and 2 sisters (one being sister in law, but i love her just the same.) and my amazing husband.  I love him so much, i'm kind of obsessed with him ;)

 

I have learned this week about the roles in families and how each person is there own self however we all have a separate individualistic role to keep our families together.  For instance I know that I was the "older sister" and I played that role and then I gained a new role and I played the peacekeeper.  I felt like when my brothers were fighting that I had to step in or they would just fight until the death. I also know that all of my other siblings had roles that they played and it definitely kept the family dynamic there.  

Classmates Blogs

•                Annabel Detering	http://thoughtsonhomeandfamily.blogspot.com/
•                Bailey Baird	http://baileybaird.blogspot.com/
•                Caitlin Schofield	http://caitlinschofield.blogspot.com/
•                Candice Merrill	http://candicermerrill.blogspot.com/
•                Cristel Carlini	http://familiesareforeverandever.blogspot.com/
•                Elisse Cook	http://lovethatlasts4ever.blogspot.com/
•                Emily Hayes	http://thenutty9.blogspot.com/
•                Erica Arguello	http://familiesconnectedtoheaven.blogspot.com/
•                Hailey Patera	http://haileypaterafamily.blogspot.com/
•                Haley Lucas	http://miissblondiiefamilies.blogspot.com/
•                Heather Christensen	http://thefamilyrelationship.blogspot.com/
•                Janaya L. Johnson	http://the-family-is-ordained-of-god.blogspot.com/
•                Jenney Premont	http://thatsalongtime.blogspot.com/
•                Julie Moss	http://lovemyeternalfamily.blogspot.com/
•                Kayleena Johnston	http://throughtheeternities.blogspot.com/
•                Kaylonnie White	http://tormentorjoy.blogspot.com/
•                Kelsey Lawrence	http://familysmatteralot.blogspot.com/
•                Kelsey Murphy	http://kelseyleighannmurphy.blogspot.com/
•                Kody Daffer	http://kodydaffer.blogspot.com/
•                Krystal Palmer	http://alove4eternity.blogspot.com/
•                Laura Hudgins	http://centeredonfamily.weebly.com/index.html
•                Madeline Vance	http://madelinemarievance.blogspot.com/
•                McKayla Nicole Hess	http://smilingfamilies.blogspot.com/
•                Michael Watts	http://someviewsonlife.blogspot.com/
•                Olivia Welch	http://thestrongestalliance.blogspot.com/
•                Patrick Williams	http://patrickallenwilliams.blogspot.com/
•                Rachel Blaylock	http://4everfamiles.blogspot.com/
•                Rachel Escobar	http://raebar92.blogspot.com/
•                Sammi Scott	http://sammischaweet.blogspot.com/
•                Tamara Handa	http://familiiesareforever.blogspot.com/
•                Tina Trepanier	http://tinatrepanier.blogspot.com/
•                Tod Flory	http://familyrelationsbytod.blogspot.com/

Researching the Family

We had an assignment this past week that had us research any topic about marriage or family for two hours.  This was a very interesting assignment because there are so many views now a days what the family exactly is and what makes a family. I had no exact subject that I wanted to research and so I just went into the google search bar and typed in "Marriage and trends".  It brought up many different sites that I was able to go through but the most interesting one that I found was one that brought me to the United Nations page with a study on the trends in the world.  I was surprised that all of the topics were the ones that we had talked in the previous class.  These trends ranged from birth rate, premarital sex age, divorce, cohabitation and many more.  I was amazed at seeing the research that had been done all over the world.  It was crazy to see that now a days more and more people are just living together and they are not getting married,  the ages that people are getting married are getting older and older.  What some people do not realize about this is that this affects all of the other trends.  For example, if you are getting married a lot later chances are that you don't want to have children already, so that means that the birth rate will go down because the longer a woman waits to get pregnant the more issues she could have.  I have my own opinions and beliefs of course and so does the rest of the world, but I believe that the Lord has created us so that we could come and have families of our own and bring children into the world. I am so thankful for that opportunity and the beliefs that I have been able to gain for myself by being here on earth.

Hi my name is Caitlin Schofield and this is my Family Relations blog! Here I will be posting things that I have learned about the fundamentals about Family.