Small Town Girl in a Big World

To start off, I am not a parent and I don't know the true and real struggles of parenting but after this weeks lesson I have learned a lot about parenting styles and the purpose of parenting. So what are your thoughts on the purpose of parenting? In my own opinion, the purpose of parenting is to help children be ready and prepared to go out and live on their own one day and to help them learn useful skills that they will need for their future. According to Dr. Michael Hopkins, the purpose of parenting is to protect and prepare children to survive and thrive in the world they will live in. Notice that it isn't the world that WE live in. The world is constantly changing every 10 years and so our children will be living in a completely different world than what we grew up in, so as we are raising them and teaching them the skills that they will need for their future it will be important. One of the most important things to teach children growing into young adults is to be...

Dad's take on a lot of responsibility in providing for their family. With each family circumstance it is different but the majority of families have a father who works to provide for the family. Growing up that is what we were taught, the dad goes to work while the mom stays at home with the kids and cleans the house but what we are also taught is that in this world it is impossible to live off of one income and that to provide for a family, both parents need to work to help provide for their family.       At what point do you need to start having a double income to help provide for the family? In my family, my mom started working when I was in 7th grade due to my dad getting laid off from his job. Since then my family has adjusted to having both parents work and in a lot of family situations this is the case. When both parents are working it helps bring in that little bit of extra cash to pay for needs of the family. How has both parents affected your family si...

Quite often we view marriage as a happy, easy, and wonderful journey that we experience for the rest of our life. This view is very off or confused with how marriage actually is. Yes it is happy and yes it is wonderful but it isn't like that 24/7. There are hard times that come with marriage and some that are extremely difficult and put a lot of pressure on the couple. You have to make some hard decisions as a couple that could change the situation of your family, work can become over-bearing, and other situations that are out of the couples control. What do we normally do when something begins to grow out of our control? We try our very best to regain control of the situation so that it is back to the way it was before. Control is something that we all wish we had in some part of our life, but unfortunately things don't work out that way. Having control is something that some people focus completely on and if things aren't in their control then anxiety and stress take ov...

  What are kinds of things that can trigger stress in a family? Is your family under some circumstance that is putting stress into the relationship? There can be many things that influence and effect the family. With different stressors, different outcomes can come from the triggers. Some of these triggers could be Finances, Divorce, Re-marriage, Illness, Death, and it could be many others that affect families. How can we better handle these stressful times as a family? What does stress actually mean? Stress is defined by Google as a state of mental or emotional strain or tension. Stress is something that we put on ourselves by analyzing the situation that we are in. We can be going through our everyday activities and experience stress from work, school or peers. Stress can happen anywhere if we allow it too. It can occur in the same re-occurring events throughout a day or it could be a brand new experience that brings on that stress. It is important to remember that some ...

Have you ever wondered why someone would get jealous of their partner talking to someone of the opposite sex? It honestly has never bothered or concerned me until this week began. Whether that person is talking to them through face-to-face, text message, or Facebook message, it can create feelings of jealousy or betrayal. What do those feelings do to a relationship? I have noticed that once those feelings are apparent in the relationship, they are really hard to get rid of and have the relationship be where it was before. So what are appropriate boundaries that need to be set in a relationship? In this life, the different experiences that we have carry us upward like stairs. In this case, we will use dating and marriage for the stairs. So the first step up in the stairs is Dating. When you are dating, you get to know lots of people and you are talking to lots of people making friends. You have conversations with everybody because you are not tied down or committed to a single person. ...

Dating is such a fun time of life and is filled with brand new adventures! There are many different opportunities that come up through beginning a new relationship with someone. Relationships all vary on the couple, some relationships move fast and some move slow. There is no set limit to how long you should date before asking the big question. Once the question has been asked, the engagement is over and you are now married, there are a lot of new transitions that have never been experienced up to this point of life. I personally am not married so I have not experienced these transitions but for most people they can take a lot of time and adjusting. A few of the transitions that you go through after becoming married are sharing a bed, sharing your money, sharing a bathroom, sharing your living space, sharing chores and house duties, and sharing your food. For being a college or university student and living in your own apartment, you get the opportunity to experience living wi...

Have you ever noticed how 'hanging out' is becoming the norm rather than taking a person on a date? Sadly, dates are becoming fewer or being over-thought and over-committal than a date should be. Millennials are shifting away from going on dates and turning towards hanging out in order to get to know people more before deciding whether or not to date them. Why is it so hard to ask someone on a date and go have an enjoyable evening together? So starting from the basics, how do you find a person whom you are interesting in taking on a date? For many people it is hard to actually find a date and we may only have certain places that allow us the opportunity to meet new people we could consider dating. Whether this be in the workplace, at a university, in a study group, etc. There can be so many different opportunities to meet new people and take someone on a date. With social media, television, and other sources, we are being led to believe that going on a date is a huge commitmen...

Society is changing the definitions of male and female and making certain things okay for female but not okay for male. We constantly are doing this even though we may not realize it. What do you do if you see a little boy playing with a doll? What do you do if a little girl is playing with a toy truck?  Normally, we would push for the little boy to play with something other than a doll because that makes him girly but when we see a little girl playing with a toy truck we encourage her to keep playing. Yes, we should want each to play with certain toys that way it fits best with their gender but we should never criticize or label children by what toy they play with.   Gender is a huge controversial topic in the world right now and as I write this post I truly hope that what I say doesn't offend anyone because it is not meant to offend. Gender in today's world has changed drastically from just a few years ago. Gender is now something that can be changed or modified depen...

So many families have these great traditions and rituals each at different times of the year and different seasons. Each of these traditions are unique to each family unit which helps create our own family culture. Have you ever thought about what your family culture is? What makes your family so unique? I know I have never thought about it or considered the little things that made my family the way we were. Each family is unique in doing things a certain way or creating traditions that are special to that family. The traditions that each family does influence how that family operates. The traditions at Christmas time, the ones for Easter, what we do over the weekend, how we celebrate birthdays, etc. But what makes our families culture? It doesn't necessarily have anything with how we celebrate different times of the year but one thing that does have an impact on our families culture can be our socioeconomic status and class. Our socioeconomic status is influenced on appearance,...

In each and every one of our family, there are such different theories that can create different situations. These can happen even if we are single, married, with our parents still or whatever your situation may be. There are four different theories that can influence the way that our situations run and operate. These theories are conflict theory, symbolic theory, exchange theory, and systems theory. These theories offer stability and structure to the family. In my own family, we have certain ways that we operate and function as a family. This is just how we have been and how we always will be most likely. Here are two of the theories; The first theory is Conflict Theory which can be seen in any family situation. This theory can easily be explained as someone searching for power over another in a family. For example, a sibling trying to over-power a parent can result in some conflict. This can be triggered by wanting to be in control of a certain situation that they just aren't ...

In the world today there are many trends that are occurring in the family. These trends are causing many traditions to disappear which is changing the way the whole world views family. These trends have begun to tear apart families or even cause families not to form in the traditional way they used to. These trends seem to be things that have always been around throughout the years but as of lately they are making a huge appearance. Each of the trends are very important to know because they could be happening to you but you don't even realize it so here they are.  1) Pre-marital Sex 2) Birth's to unmarried women 3) Living alone 4) Cohabitation  5) Delayed Marriage 6) Extended families not living together 7) Fewer children 8) Household sizes 9) Divorce 10) Employed mothers of children younger than 6 Now, in my own opinion, each of these trends are different in their own way. Lets say someone has pre-marital sex but is living alone, this can lead to co...

I have begun a new semester at BYU-Idaho this last week and I am so excited to learn so many new things! I am a part of a family relations class and my professor has asked us to create an online journal/blog so here I am creating a new blog :) The last time I had a blog was to keep my mission emails on so creating this one has been bringing back old memories. The semester is in session until December 15, 2017 and although I love being in school, I am not excited for winter to come back. Don't get me wrong I love the snow but walking to class in the snow is not my favorite. It also means that another year is getting close to finishing! It is crazy how fast time really goes. This semester I am taking 5 credits which isn't a lot but I am a poor college student and at the moment that is all I can afford :( but the two classes that I am taking this semester are Preparation for Marriage and Family Relations. I love both my classes so far and am excited to keep learning new things t...