I have missed quite a few weeks of the blog. Here are a few entries all in one post.

The single parent family – I found this interesting to learn about because of how common it is in the world today. “Single-parent families have increased over the past decades, from roughly 3.5 million in 1970 to 12.8 million in 2009, representing 15.4 percent of all families.” So many people are choosing to raise children outside of marriage these days. It makes me sad that the value of marriage is so little in the world today. I have a testimony of families and how strong of a unit they can be. 

Gender roles: nature or nurture – Men and woman have different gender roles. Some people think to call it sex roles which would suggest that the differences were innate. There are the roles that were set up by the culture and the roles of their sex. It is interesting to learn about how they differ and what they qualities of the goals are.

Violence in families – Not only can there be physical abuse in families but emotional abuse that accompanies it. Emotional abuse can sometimes be worse than the physical abuse. In the textbook it says, “Next to death, separation, and divorce, family violence is the most difficult experience people have to cope with.” I found it very interesting learning about violence in families. I was surprised to hear how often it occurs in the United States.

Nature of communication – There are two different kinds of communication; nonverbal and verbal communication. Verbal communication is the use of words to convey our ideas to others. Some nonverbal ways to communicate are clothing, facial expressions, eye behaviors, touching and cues we give in oral speech apart from the content of the words themselves like the tone of voice and the emphasis given to words. Learning to communicate properly can help build relationships and trust between people.

Functions of dating – There are many functions of dating and they are: recreation, intimacy and companionship, mate selection, status attainment, and socialization. It is important to learn these so that you can properly date. Depending on where you are in life determines why you are dating at the time.

Challenges of remarriage – Some challenges of remarriage are complex kin relationship and ambiguous roles, unresolved emotional issues related to the first marriage, adjustment of children, financial issues, and legal issues. These can all be really tough issues on a family and can make the functions of a family struggle.

Coping with infertility – Infertility can be really hard on a woman emotionally and physically. It is important for people to be aware of the ways to cope with infertility because you never know if it could happen to you. My mom had infertility issues and when she finally got pregnant it was such a blessing. My mother learned to be extremely grateful for every pregnancy she had.

Abortion – Abortion is such a sensitive subject in the world today. It is important to learn about abortion so that you can be aware of the effects it has son people. In my opinion, when a woman gets a divorce she is taking away the chance of a child to be brought in to this world. That is unfair and I would never vote to allow it.

Homosexuality – This is always a subject that I find interesting to learn about. My whole life I was taught that homosexuality is a sin and now the world is telling everyone otherwise. My older sister came out and told our family that she was going to live the lifestyle of a gay woman three years ago. I have had to develop my own testimony of the truthful of the sinful nature of that lifestyle. As much as I love my sister, this class has helped me learn that it is still a sin. Same sex marriage should not be allowed or tolerated. We same still love everyone but that does not mean we need to agree with their lifestyle.