Week 1

Everything this week was so fascinating!

Some of what I liked was our discussion on the definition of family.  The variety of family has changed so much where race, gender, and age is concerned.  We've seen that a variance of intimate relationships prompts people to seek family anywhere, with any one.  To most, family is defined now in terms of who we have affection for and have made a strong connection.  The desire to redefine family comes from the dissatisfaction that people have in families.  Structurally you may be in a family but if there is nothing to bind you together, you will seek "family" somewhere else.

Although this is not a religious blog, in my mind God's opinion cannot be left out.  I am a member of the Mormon faith and one of our modern prophets sent out a proclamation on the family.  I thought that I might include it here because in it, God is telling us His definition of family.  If you're interested in reading a little more about a Christian faith's beliefs on family here's the link:  http://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation.

Another topic we touched on were trends that are showing up now that affect families.  As a class, we voted on what we thought were significant trends(meaning they were important to the development of families), interesting trends(things that were fascinating but weren't so important), and incidental(things that were unconnected with families but are current trends).  The results were fascinating because no one thought the trends were incidental.  The majority of the trends were voted as significant to families because we could see many connections between ALL of the trends.  While some were not deemed as significant as others, they nevertheless have an impact on families.  Here is a rough graph of how we rated the trends:

As a class we also decided that the people who are impacted the most are children.  They are the ones who will feel the good and the bad of these trends.  I think of the Jolie-Pitt children who experience cohabitation, both parents working, and a working mom.  They notice that something isn't right with the idea of living together and not being married and have been pressuring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt to get married.  If children are aware that some modern social habits are not good, we need to take notice and listen.  Perhaps we will be the ones to learn something.