Family Relations

       This last week we talked about dating so this week it would make sense we talk about engagement and 'courting' as we called it in this class. This was an interesting topic because many of the students in the discussion have not been married and aren't engaged. We learned some interesting statistic on how successful marriages usually happen. One of them that I thought was oddly specific was talking about how long you should date before getting engaged. It says that those who date 1-2 years have more successful marriages than those who both date for under a year and those who date for more than two years. This seemed a little weird to me because it seems like the longer you date someone the more you get to know them. The research shows that people often get too comfortable in the relationship status of 'dating' that the transition to marriage is much harder, and many times doesn't work out.      This part of the discussion led right into question of, 'H

     This past week we talked about dating and how the culture has changed over the last decade or so. we talked about how when our parents were dating in college you could go on a date one day with someone and the next day with someone new. there wasn’t this thought that you were DATING someone just because  you went on a DATE with them. We talked about how this has changed. If you were to go on a date with someone people might think that you're super into that person and might want to see if you should go on another date. I remember having this conversation with my mom many times in high school. You can't just date around because you might be considered some rude names. I think it would be so fun to be able to go on fun dates with a bunch of different people! How else are you supposed to find out what you want in your future partner?! Since I have left for college, this culture has kind of changed. It's more acceptable to do this kind of dating.      We also talked about

    This week in my family relations course we talked about the characteristics of a female and male. How they are different and how they are alike. I really enjoy learning about what makes boys and girls different because, for some reason that I don't understand, the relationship between the two work together so well.      Today in class we talked about gender roles and how it effects the dynamics of a family. I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little worried at the beginning of the lesson because I was prepared to hear someone say that a man can't have feminine traits and a female can't have male traits and that they SHOULDN'T. Good news! That's not how the discussion went! It was actually the opposite. We talked about this study that had been done on little kids around the age of 4 or 5. I mention how old these kids were because they are at an age where they haven't been influenced by outside forces, telling them to act a certain way because they'r

     What does someone’s social class mean to you? I have been thinking about this question a lot this past week based on our discussions we have been having in class. Do I judge a person based on their social class? Do I care at all about someone’s social class? I don’t know if there is a definite answer for any of those questions, but I do think that maybe we, myself included, are often too quick to judge a person or we put them in this universal box of what we assume their life should be, whether it’s their character or appearance based on their social class.      This week we talked about what that means and looks like. I learned that we sometimes create a social class in our minds based on how much money a person has or we think they have, their job, how much education they have, or even who a person has connections with. I thought this was interesting because in many cultures, social class is something you are born into, and you stay in. For example, a student in my class is from

     At the start of the week we talked about the different family relationships and theories. Naturally I started thinking about my own family and the relationship I have with them. An interesting thing we talked about this last week in class was  symbolic interaction theory. This is a very basic thing to understand but the discussion that occurred in class to was so interesting to me. Symbolic interaction theory is the idea that we show symbols, or do small things, that show others how we are feeling. These symbols are often different based on the situation. An example we used in class was a simple hug. When it comes from a friend or a family member, you feel loved and cared for. But when it comes from a random person, it is often weird and a little creepy. I think everyone has had an experience like this where the relationship with a person and the action didn't quite match. These small interactions sometimes change the notion we have of a person whether that is intentional or n