I have really found what we have been learning this week very interesting.  I really think that it is interesting why people date the way that they do and what the difference between real love and false love is.  One of the things that I really found interesting was actually in another class of mine.  We are going over basically the same stuff.  One of the principles that I have found to be interesting is the idea of fragmentation.  I know that we didn’t go over this in family relations class, but I really just think that this principle is very interesting.  What fragmentation is, is when someone, for lack of a better way to say it, falls in love with the idea of falling in love.  This can happen in many different ways. For example if someone falls in love with someone because they just like the idea of being in love with somebody, that is fragmentation.  This isn’t real love and it is never going to last.  You need to make sure that you are focusing on more than just one aspect of the person.  When you do this you are going to have better success with your relationship and you are more going to have a longer relationship as well.  I just thought that this idea was so interesting because I have seen so many people fall in love with someone just because of their looks, or because they have a lot of money.  You need to focus more on the person as a whole and not just the individual attributes about them.

Man and Woman need to work together for the betterment of the family and for the community.  Both genders have different roles, but this does not mean that one is more important than the other.  They need to work together in their different roles.  Studies show that men tend to be more aggressive while on the other hand, women tend to be more sensitive and more based on the relationships that they have with people.  It is very important that these two very different roles come together for the sake of the family.  The father is there to preside on the home, but that does not mean that he is supposed to rule the house with an iron first.  He needs to consult the wife and they need to make sure that they are making the decisions together.  When they get married, they are not just two separate people living together.  They need to change themselves and become one in purpose.  Only when they are one in purpose are they going to be able to raise their children in righteousness and help to fulfill the plan of the Creator.  Everything that we do should be for the betterment of the children and the family, and to make sure that we are doing everything that is within our power to make it back to live with our heavenly father once again, and to live in everlasting glory with him and with our families.

There is nothing that can take the place of a good family.  Unfortunate there are not a lot of people now a days that can say that they came from a good nuclear family.  There are so many groups of people that have been divorced or just do not have spouses in some way.  These families have many hardships and that makes it hard on the children as well.  One of the things that really stuck out to me was that some families are really having trouble with keeping themselves together as a coherent group in this day in age.  One of the videos that we watched for classes addressed this.  I what happened was that there was a lower income family and there was a lady and her kids, and that was it.  She wasn’t married.  The son thought that in order to be cool and fit in at school, that he needed some nice new clothes.  He didn’t want to go around without a shirt on either because that was considered lower class to him.  He also didn’t want to bring anybody over to his house because he was embarrassed about living in the house that they did.  All the meanwhile the mom was working hard to provide support for her family.  This really made me think because even though we may not have the same income as some other family.  Money is no the root of happiness.  I would have to say that the family is.  As long as you have your family everything is going to be ok, and I find that to be really comforting.

 

One of the things that I have learned this week as I studied about the family was just how important it is to look at the family through family systems theory.  Families operate according to the different roles that they fall into within the family system.  They do not necessarily get to choose what role they are going to fulfill, they just fill what is needed.  We can see this with the example of the good kid and the bad kid.  When the bad kid leaves the system and moves out, then his role is free and needs to be filled.  This is where the good kids comes into play.  Because there is a role that is not being filled, the good kid fills the void that has become.  The good kid starts to act out and to make trouble and this helps to fill the hole that has been created in the family.  We are able to learn so much about our families and other families when we look at different family systems.  There are tons of possibilities that can happen within a family and if we look for the different subsystems we can learn a lot about families.

One of the other things that I found to be very interesting was circular casualty.  This just basically means that we play different roles in different systems.  We play a different role when we are at home as opposed to when we are at work or with our friends.  I just thought that this was extremely interesting because it’s true.  When I look at my life I act differently in different situations, but I think that this is the case with lots of different people as well.  Everyone fulfills different roles according to what the system needs at that moment.

There are so many things that I have found to be so shocking about the family.  One of the things that I thought was just crazy was the fact that so many people think that the family is so old school.  They thing that marriage is a failing tradition and they are trying to change the definition of it altogether.  Marriage should be between a man and women, but recent trends are pushing the envelope on this.  They are saying “Hey!!  Marriage can be between a man and a woman, a man and a man, a woman and a woman, or even, one of the latest things that I have read, a woman and the Eiffel Tower.  Marriage has just changed so much that it has almost become a mockery to many different people.  It is taking one of the most basic institutions that there is, and one of the most essential ones, and changing to so that it can be just whatever.  I don’t think that this is right, and I believe that many people need to think about what they are doing. 

One of the other things that I found to be shocking was just how many people don’t think that what they are dong has any effect on anyone but themselves.  Marriage isn’t just something that affects the two people, or objects involved, it affects everyone.  It affects extended family members, neighborhoods, the community, but most importantly, the children.  Children are affected in many different ways. They may act out, they may do other things.  I am not a child professional, but what I do know is that children are out futures.  We need to make sure that they have the best set up for growing up and being successful in life.  They are our future and we need to make sure that they have it better than we did.  There is no need for them to be confused about the moral dilemmas that are going on in our world.  Just think of the children.