Divorce

This week we talked a lot about divorce. America has the highest divorce rate in the world. This would seem shocking to people and some people might think that this could be because couples might not have proper marriage skills here in the US.  That's what I thought. But, Brother Williams, my teacher in class, said that "the reason we have the most divorces is because we also have the most marriages." that made sense to me.
People should do their best to not get divorced. If a couple have children involved and want to get a divorce they should seek help from counselors and do everything they can to stay a family. But if being divorced actually helps the children, then they should get divorced. I was reading that nowadays many reasons for divorce consist of "we don't get along anymore, he has changed, I'm bored, etc" Those are very soft reasons to get a divorce and can be helped very easily. Hard reasons to get divorced would be anything that consists of the 3 A's. Adultery, Addiction, and Abuse. If any of those 3 A's is involved in a marriage, the divorce is justified.
After a marriage has been through many years together, it is easier to gain more loyalty to each other within the marriage. The most vulnerable time within a marriage is within the first 2 years of being married. There is a lot of adjustment within that time and any conflicts or pressure can cause a lot of stress for a newly wed couple. People have to understand that when they get married that things take time to get used to. Believe that if challenges come up within a marriage to not think about getting a divorce but to work through the problems together.

Fathers and Finances

It is common to think that the father provides for the family financially and the mother takes care of the children. In the discussion that I had in class this week and the readings, I learned that it is very important to have these roles be played in the family. From the readings, it showed that a mother who forgoes education to stay home with the kids is just as important than a woman who goes on to get an education. Because the kids that she raise are the future generation and can help generations to come.  I know that in my family, my mother stayed home with us for most of our lives. We were brought up very well. But I think we could have been raised better if my mom had continued to stay home with the family rather then go out and get an education. I think it was a sacrifice, my mom has a great education and job that really helps the family now. She now is a counselor/therapist and really is able to help with any personal problems that I may have. My father has always been such a hard worker and has provided much of the family with the financial income. He has been a great example to me on how to be a great father.

Stress in the Family

Something that was taught this week in class that I seemed to learn really well was the teacher taught about how stress on an individual affects everyone in the family. He had a few volunteers in the class go up and hold hands in a circle.  The teacher would then pull on one of the volunteers and say stuff like "work was hard today.... you don't have enough money to pay the bills....etc." and then he would go and pull on someone else in the circle and say stuff like "that girl at school is such a bully.... you failed that class.... etc" all the while pulling on that person in the circle. It showed that when one person is going under a lot of stress in the family, everyone else can feel stress too.

I feel like in my family we seem to handle stress very well. Or we just don't have many things to be stressed about. We don't do drugs, No one has any significant diseases, And I think we do pretty well financially as well which helps not have too much stress. A lot of times it's good to talk about the stress you are having with members of your family. sometimes they can help or they might be able to understand some of the difficulties you are going through.