Family Trends

    This week we learned SO much in my Family Relations class! I felt like every time I went to class, I learned something new! We started the week off by talking about how the trends of family have changed. This is in relation to divorce rates, marriage rates, and fertility rates. One of the most interesting topics we talked about was about fertility rates. We talked about how they have change and how they compare to different countries around the world. When I say fertility rates, I mean how many kids each family on average has. I knew that it was going to be low, but I didn't expect it to be 1.6 kids per family! That seemed crazy low to me! I come from a family with seven kids, so my idea of a small family is pretty much anything smaller than five. I knew it wasn't going to be way lower than I was expecting but I still thought that the average would be higher than that! This has lowered over the years and is at a lower average than ever before! In my own personal opinion, I don't see it going up any time soon. When I talk to friends who are around my age, they always tell they will hold off to have kids or that they don't want more than one kids. This is so different from my perspective that it makes me laugh when I talk to them about my growing up experience! I have always loved growing up with siblings and I don't know what I would do with my time if I didn't have siblings and I want that close relationship for my future kids! 

    My professor was also talking about how many kids the majority of the 'baby boomers' were having. When he mentioned this, I thought about the different stereotypes that go along with the 'baby boomer' generation. Some like how they had soooo many kids. I really didn't know how many I was imagining but I was picturing more than four! The average kids a 'baby boomer' has is only four! The majority of the families I know have more than four kids, but they aren't even the 'baby boomer' generation! This was SO shocking to me for some reason! I feel like four kids is a normal size family and that wouldn't be considered a lot. 

       We also talked about how divorce rates have been going down and why we think that is happening. Most of the discussion in class went toward the idea that people are just deciding to live together, and that marriage isn't necessarily important or required. Which although that it probably partially accurate, I also learned that it is because marriage rates are going down. Which makes sense if less couples are getting married then there are fewer couples to get divorced.

    Another thing I learned about this past week was about the book called Population Bomb. This is a book that talked about all the negative effects of having kids. It talked about how the Earth can't handle that many people and that the environment won't be able to restore its resources quickly enough and that it's all your fault because you decided to more than one kid! This book went on and on about how much pollution your kids will be putting off and hurting the environment. This is something that we have all heard but when this book came out it scared a lot of people out of having kids. This book was an interesting topic for class because of the fear factor it had on its readers. We talked about how fear is the biggest motivator.

    We talked about so many other important topics but these were some of my favorite!!