Luke's blog for family relations

     This week in class we talked a lot about culture in families, and if they all meet the same purposes with the same effectiveness. There were a couple situations we talked about to see how culture would play a role. One was what a younger child might do if something were to happen that would cause said child to have to step up and possibly take the role as a parent. The other was a story in the reading that talked about a family immigrating to america.      I would first like to explain my thoughts on the definition of culture. Google defines culture as:  the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group. Usually when we think of culture we think of a group of people in another country that have unique practices, but culture is everywhere. In our country, in others countries, in our friend groups, and in our families! I have an example of a custom in my family, and it might seem kind of s...

    This last week we talked about the different theories of families and why they are important. The four theories are: conflict theory, exchange theory, symbolic interaction theory, and the systems theory. I am going to cover each of these theories, but first I would like to address why they are important. Family theories can be very useful in observing other families and in observing our own families. If you feel you may be having problems in your family relationships, you can use the theories to resolve the problem.     Conflict theory: Lauer & Lauer defines the conflict theory as: asserts that all societies are characterized by inequality, conflict, and change as groups within the society struggle over scarce resources. Usually with conflict theory the problem within the family is that not everyone can be satisfied. They have different opinions on lots of situations and have a hard time resolving them. There will always be conflict within the family, the tri...

     Last week's blog, was a little bit of an intro blog. I talked about the few things we talked about in class. It focused mostly on the pros and cons of studying family relations and I talked of the declines in population and declines of the average family size. Because we hadn't had much class last week this blog might cover some of the similar topics as last week, but we researched some different articles, so I will be covering those as well.      We read appendix A from Skogrand, and there was a section I wanted to share. It said "it has been argued that the family is the most difficult institution in human society to study. The reason for this is that families tend to be closed to outsiders; they often 'put their best foot forward.' To study important issues and to solve family problems, researchers and practitioners have to get below the surface and deal with both the positive and the negative aspects of family life." Even from a students perspectiv...

     I am excited to be blogging my experiences and knowledge I gain while studying the family in my family relations class. We have only had one class period so far, but we learned about the value and challenges of family science research. At first I wasn't super excited about the class or the idea of blogging my thoughts, but as we talked about the family and discussed the reasoning for the blogging I became more excited and I hope my thoughts will help my readers with or without families to see the importance of relationships within families and the importance of families in general.     As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints, we believe strongly in the importance of the family and as I have grown up (I am currently 20 years old) I have come to know the importance of the family in my life as well. During our class I was touched when our professor shared a story of a young lady he had in class whose parents did not support her being at ...