Trends in Families Today

During these first couple of weeks of my Family Relations class, we have talked about several different things. During the first week, we discussed the importance of conducting and studying reliable research. When doing a sampling comparison, you always were a control variable, and then a variable that can change, be studied and experimented with. When studying something as important as the family, you want to be careful about where you get our sources, and whether or not they are biased. One thing we studied was the effect on children being raised by gay parents. The results concluded that there was essentially no lasting negative impact. Some might look at this and think it was researched well and the results are accurate. If you really look deeper, you would realize that the people doing the research were all white, and the gay parents they talked to and interviewed were white too. This shows a little bit of bias in my opinion. This is one example of being careful where you get your research from. It may not always be the most reliable. An important thing to remember is that a random sample will always be more reliable than a convenience sample or any other kind of research/experiment. Moving forward, we talked about some thing or outcomes that could be learned more about by doing research on families and children. They are;

  1. Mental/emotional health
 2. Attachment and relationship
 3. School and academic performance
 4. How they handle stress
 5. Delinquent behavior
 6. Employment success
 7. Marriage rates
 8. Divorce rates

 These are all significantly important things. Really quick, are there any questions or things that you would like me to try explain or go deeper into during this semester? Particularly relating to the family? I would love to try and do that for those of you who may be interested. I may not know much but I think we can all learn from each of our own life experiences and opinions, whether we agree or disagree or come from completely opposite backgrounds. I think that we see a lot of trends in today’s world that some might find concerning. What are some common trends you see today that relate to marriage and family that may worry you? The ones we discussed in class are the following;
 1. The age of marriage- those outside of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints marry around the ages of 28-30. Those of our faith are now getting married around 24-26. This is higher than it used to be.

 2. Cohabitation. 60%-80% of couples today live together before they are married. I believe the divorce rate is higher for those couples.

 3. Employed mothers. A lot of mothers are choosing to work outside the home. I personally fully support mothers getting and pursuing educations, before or even while they are mothers.

 4. Living Alone and Depression- studies have shown that there is a significant correlation between singles living alone and depression. I think we all know that depression and suicide is practically a national crisis at this point. Sometimes dating and marriage is completely out of our control, no matter how much effort we give. But there are things that can be done if we start to feel those feeling of depression and loneliness.

 5. Sexual Intimacy- a large number of couples choose to have sex before marriage. Everyone has their free will to choose, but I believe that sexual intimacy should be reserved for marriage, between a husband and a spouse. It connects and bonds the two of you together like nothing else can.

 6. Household size- people are choosing to have fewer and fewer kids. There are special circumstances where maybe your finances won’t allow children at this point in time, but there is also the well-known argument that the world is running out of resources and overpopulation is going to be a huge problem down the road.

 7. Divorce- this can be a touchy subject, especially when I believe divorce is completely justified in cases such as abuse or when one’s safety is at risk. Divorce rates are higher than ever. Some see their first marriage as a “practice marriage” therefore not giving there all when hard things come their way.
In conclusion, I know these are some touchy and hard subjects, but I hope that I seem objective and do not offend those of you who may have or are currently experiencing any of these things. I know that families are so important and I want to talk about them in the best way I can.