Blending Into One

It takes someone really amazing, for them to choose to be a parent to a child when they didn’t have to be. My dad is one of those amazing people who had the courage to do that. He knew and understood that when he married my mom that there would be difficulties and challenges that would come because she had a four and half year old. But, he chose to be what I have always called “an instant dad” and wanted me to be his daughter. We have never considered the term “step” in our relationship because I wanted him to be my dad as much as he did. He has never loved me any differently than my sister or brother and I love him even more for that. Technically we have a blended family if you look at it through the eyes of society. However, I don’t feel like it is a blended family because choices were made that made us one complete family unit. I know that this is uncommon and is not all blended families have a happy ending. My mom and I got lucky because we found her prince charming and me a father who loves me as his own.       

Parents Take Their Child's Hand and Lead Them Through Life

Parents are responsible for so many things in their child's life. Parents are suppose to build a home where the child feels safe from the world; a place where they can escape everything that is bad in this life. Children learn from their parents and parents learn from their children. Children and parents work together to survive in the family. They need each other because to other helps them grow into a better person. Parents need to teach their children in a way that helps the child grow stronger and that one day they will be able to survive on thier own. Parents create a foundation for the child and that foundation can either be solid and hard like a rock or moveable and wavering like sand. If a child does not have a secure foundation they can fall later in life when the child is on their own. My mother at a young age took my hand and lead me through life but she let me trip, fall, and learn my own lessons; however, she was always there for me when I needed her. She never let me fall and still won't let me fall in my life. My parents taught me how to stand on my own; but, to rely on people when I needed help. The relationships with my parents are two pf the most important relationships in my life. They started the foundation for my life and gave me the tools and supplies to finish creating a unbreakable foundation in my life.    

Do The Benefits Override The Costs?

The dream ideal of a family in this society is having the dad solely provide for the family, while the mom stays at home nurturing the children and taking care of the domestic needs of the family. Well the majority of families are not like that, most households in America are dual-income families. I support both of these families because every family is different and have different needs that have to be met. However, there comes a point when you have to ask yourself do the benefits of two incomes more than the cost of both parents working outside of the home? Also, if your household has both parents working outside of the home, it does not always effect the children in a negative way. Children sort of bond together and rely on each other and they do not just rely on their parents to help and support them. Children also have the ability to become more indepent because they are left to figure things out on their own and not always go to their parents to fix their problems. Family unity is all that really matters and unity can happen in different ways, not just spending time together,

Communication: A Key Part Of A Family

On of the biggest problems in a marriage and the family is the lack of communication. Miscommunication can be deconstructive to a family because it can either fracture the family or super glue it together. In my interpersonal communication class we learned that 93% of a message is nonverbal and only 7% of the message is the actual words in the message. Nonverbal communication can be misinterpreted because no one encodes and decodes messages differently. That is why counseling is needed a lot of the time because they can help unscramble the messages trying to be sent.

Rising From A Crisis

Every family reach and have to go through crisis points during their lifetime. Families also have different stressors that occur within the family unit. The stressor may effect the family as a whole, it also effects the individual members differently. No two people react to the same crisis or stressor the same. We also have different coping mechanisms we use to deal and help us to overcome the stressor that is happening. If it is a serious stressor that is breaking the family unit in individual pieces helping only the individuals members will not help repair the fractures in the family. You have to work with the breaking family as a whole in order to seal and repair the different fault lines that is running through the family. Together, not apart, will rise a family and a person from a crisis.

A Different Way of Viewing Things

Today's view on the concept of marriage as has a significant decrease in the last decade or so. Marriage is a matter that should be approached in a serious matter because it is supposed to be the most important decision in your life. You are choosing who you want to be with for the rest of eternity. However, the media today has begun to disregard the entire purpose of marriage with all the messages about having sexual relations outside of the bonds of matrimony. When sexual relations are scared matter and should only be with the person you are married to. My generation has left that idea behind and is now shaping a different image to the generations that follow. An image were marriage and relations inside of that bond are no longer valued and life should be approached with the mentality that I only have one life to live so I am going to do anything and everything.

Life Changes

When two people get married, things change between them because they are no longer living two completely separate lives on different paths; but, two lives on the on the same path towards a common goal. They have to learn to make mutual decisions together, learn to live together in harmony, and learn to communicate even better than they did before. You have to merge two lives together to have a strong marriage. The first year of marriage is the hardest because you have to learn to live together and you discover a lot of things about the person you didn't know before. There is also a big change after children enter into the family. Things become refocused and priorities are changed and you have to change and adapt to having a child and keep the marriage strong. Life with a family is constantly changing and you have to change with it or create fractures in the family.

True Love Isn't The Love We Read About In Books

Every girl dreams about finding the love they hear about in songs, read about in books, and watchs in chick flicks. But that kind of love that lasts forever. To truely love someone they have to love that person in other ways too. To have a love that lasts you have to love that person unconditionaly and at times you have to choose to love them. You have to love that person like they were your beast friend. People do not fall into a love that lasts forever because it does not last forever. Love is so much more than what we read about, listen to, or watch because true love requires work at times. I love the quote someone said in class "he was my sweetheart, lover, and best friend. " That is the type of love that is required for love to endure through eternity.

Two Pieces Coming Together

Like two halves of a whole a man and a woman are supposed to come together to create one. They complete each other. Men and women cannot be equal in the worldly sense because each gender has unique characteristics that the other can never truly inhabit. In today's society we do see men who are more sensitive and women who are more aggressive; but, those two characteristics are not as well developed or innate as if you found them in the opposite gender. Men and women are supposed to come together to create one and that is why the two genders have different traits, roles, and characteristics. It is these two pieces coming together that a family is built upon.

Other Things Effect Families...Not Just Social Class

There are two ways people tend to look at social classes and the families in those classes. The first tendency that people seem to gather is those in the lower class who can provide only the physical needs for their family and nothing else, are a happy, have strong values, closer, and more functional as a family unit. The second tendency that people have is that higher class families may have excess money to spend but do not have happy, close, or functioning families.

My question is where do the middle class fall in society’s eyes and their tendencies when it comes to the family?

Yes some higher class families are dysfunctional; but, guess what some lower class families are dysfunctional too. The same appears when it comes to close happy families. When you look at social class determined by economic income that is only one factor that effects families, other factors are families values, beliefs, roles, rules, ability to communicate, work ethic, and anything else that can affect a family unit. 

Family Rules

Every family has rules. Some families have tons of rules to follow and some families barely have one rule that is enforced. There are a lot of rules that different families share. Like "Be Home By Curfew" or "No Fighting" or "Work First Then Play". But there are some rules that are unique to your family. For example there is "Do NOT Lie to Mom" and my personal favorite "Answer Your Phone Before You Don't Have One". Rules should be flexible because a blanket set of rules is not always helpful to the children in the family. No child is the same and each one may need different rules. Children are all different and some rules may not apply to them and parents need to adapt to each child.

Opposites Attack...Not Attract

There are so many myths about family that are destroying families before they are even being created. One of my favorite myths about marriage is that Opposites Attract. First of all no one wants to marry someone exactly like them and second no one wants to marry someone who is completely different from them. There needs to be common ground between two people for them to have a happy, strong, and even functional relationship, common ground like the same religion, values, beliefs, culture, social status, and even background. No, two people do not need to have all of these things for two people to be compatible. People do not only need all of these things to have a successful marriage. Both people in the relationship can learn to like things they don't like but the other loves. It is those differences that strengthen a relationship because it brings the couple together. Think about it do you even approach people who are the complete opposite of you? No, you avoid them like a plague. Plus those opposite characteristics that drew you to your opposite in the beginning of your relationship can be those things that drive you insane down the road. Another thing to think about is, will you be okay with your counterpart if they try to pass down those negative traits you can't stand or don’t agree with to your children? There needs to be a balance of similarities and differences in a relationship in order for a marriage to last.

What are some of your favorite myths about marriages and families?

04/19/2012

A family is like a puzzle; all the pieces are different but they fit together perfectly.