Posts

Fathers

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with friends, family, and delicious food. I was so excited to be back home, and I can’t wait to back with my family for Christmas. This week in Family Relations we discussed fathers. It was another discussion that partly covered the differences between men and women, or the differences between fathering and mothering. One interesting thing I learned was that mothers tend to gather children in, while fathers tend to prepare their children for the world and will turn them outward. The Family Proclamation teaches: “ By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families.” The Proclamation also teaches that while husbands and wives have different responsibilities and attributes pertaining to their roles in the family, they are expected to work closely together to see that these roles are fulfilled. “ In...
Post a Comment
Read more

I’m Back!

Hello, friends! Sorry about the last two weeks. College life is hectic! I need to blog more 😅 I’ve been trying to write more in general, because it’s fun and clears my head. The last few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about why I chose this major. I’ve been assessing how I feel my classes are going so far and if I feel confident going forward on this path. In my Marriage class a few weeks ago my professor talked about how doing couple’s therapy is different than individual therapy, that you need to be trained to know how to handle two people in your office at a time, and that it isn’t easy. I got a bit nervous, and I started wondering if I would be any good as a therapist. I know that I love teaching what I’ve learned (seriously, ask any of my friends or roommates and they’ll tell you about the tangents I launch into 😁) but I didn’t know if I would be good at counseling. So I’m starting to pray about it, and I know that just as Heavenly Father led me to this major in the first plac...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dating

Hello everyone! Hope you had a fantastic week! Mine was busy, but I made it through :) This week we discussed dating, falling in love, and preparing for marriage. One of my favorite topics, because I find it so fascinating! One of the topics we talked about the most was the dating culture we are a part of, what things don’t really seem to work, and how we can change them. The first thing my professor brought up was that we often don’t move from one step in the dating process to another with very much deliberation. We tend to “slide” from one thing to another, which means that couples may not discuss their expectations or get to know each other intentionally. This is important because we tend to fill in the blanks about the people we think we know based on what they tell us about themselves in self disclosure, but there are always characteristics or tendencies that aren’t immediately told or observed. Deliberate dating is so important! By dating with the intention of getting to know...
Post a Comment
Read more

Men and Women: Roles in the Family

It’s been another busy week! October has certainly flown by. This week we discussed the differences between men and women, and how those differences benefit the family. This is a topic I’ve been interested in for a while, and as we talked about it I was reminded of a talk by Sheri Dew titled, “It Is Not Good for Man or Woman to Be Alone,” which I will also be using for this post. First, we highlighted the strengths of each gender. Women are able to see things more relationally, and can be aware of more things at the same time than men. We tend to have more white matter in our brains, which means we are better wired to be aware of connections to things. Women tend to be more emotionally expressive and communicative. We talked about how women have more of a connection between the verbal and emotional centers of the brain. This helps women to nurture their families by being aware of the emotions of their family members and the relationships between them. Men have more gray matter in t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Family Culture

Hello all! It’s been another busy week! I hope you’re all doing well. This week in Family Relations we discussed family culture. Oftentimes we don’t realize our family has a culture until we see a family with a culture very different from ours (this goes back to unspoken rules). My professor Brother Williams said, “When people talk about culture, they think of skin tone and language, but there’s more to it than that.” There can be many cultures within a culture as well. One thing that heavily influences culture is the amount of resources a family has. We discussed how some families with a lot of resources may have to work just as hard to have a healthy family dynamic as people with very little resources. It’s easy to drift apart because of work or a lack of time, whether you have lots of money or you’re just scraping by. Another topic we discussed was how family cultures are perpetuated. Traditions can have a huge impact on a family and the culture. These are often passed down fr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Theories and Unspoken Rules

Hello everyone! Happy Conference Weekend! The first session has already brought some new changes and powerful messages from the leaders of our church. I’m so grateful to live in a time where we have such great access to the words of the people the Lord calls. I was also happy to hear about the focus on the home and how these changes will strengthen our families! This week we discussed several different things in class. First, we talked about theories that relate to the family. In exchange theory, most people will weigh their costs versus their rewards. In other words, they will only stay in a relationship as long as their costs are lower than their rewards. This was interesting to me. I thought about how this theory looks different in an emerging relationship and a well established marriage relationship. Usually, when there’s a greater commitment, there’s a greater responsibility and therefore a greater chance of accepted costs. This theory doesn’t explain all family behaviors. In th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Trends of the Family

Hello everyone! The second week of classes is over, and I am so pumped! I love what I’m learning and I’m excited to share it with anyone who will listen (more on that later). Something we focused on this week in my Family Relations class was the current trends of the family. This is important because in order to properly advocate for the family and promote important change, we have to know where the world is going. We discussed several trends, including divorce rates, cohabitation, and premarital sex. We also discussed several myths about marriage and family, which were fascinating. The main topic I wanted to talked about today is cohabitation, which is something that has interested me since last semester. We see cohabitating couples every day in TV shows and movies. It seems like a natural precursor to marriage. People assume that they can test their relationship compatibility before they make the commitments required in marriage, and they have the option to back out if it doesn’t...
Post a Comment
Read more