Audrey Kaydrey Blogs

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...

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...

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...

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...