Transitions in Marriage

One of the first subjects that we talked about was cohabitation. This is something that is quite common around the world, but is not noticed as much as I think it should be. There are many different types of cohabitation.

The first type of cohabitation is “parallel living.” This means that two significant partners do everything together, and is seen a lot as “the next step” before getting married. Another type of cohabitation is when people do it because “they are getting married anyway.” Opposite to this, some people cohabit “instead of marriage.” One of the most common reasons for cohabitation is to be more financially stable. This is really common among individuals that have different jobs and want to make a better living by sharing property. The last is “co-parenting.” This is when a man moves in with a single mother or a woman moves in with a single father to help parent the children that they have. While there are many different types of cohabitation, they mostly have the same effects on the individuals. An “LDS parallel” to this can simply be that you basically spend every waking moment with another individual that you are interested in.

After cohabitation, most couples share everything the way that they did before when they get married. This means that it becomes a “mine and yours” situation. It can be negative because then you do not share money, have joint responsibilities, or work as a team. This can lead to divorce or unhappy marriages. It is proven that not sharing a bank account makes couples feel separated. It leads to people being more worried about the person’s “other half” rather than the actual person. This can be extremely negative, especially if the individuals feel like they do not meet up to their spouse’s needs.

One thing that I think is important is knowing the proper steps of engagement. The first is dating. This is when you get to know the person and decide whether or not they are a person that you would be interested in marrying some day. The next is courtship. This could be modernly described in today’s society as “becoming exclusive.” The next step is actually getting engaged. Lastly, you are actually married. All of the steps are important because it helps you set yourself up with a healthy marriage. While engagements are a happy thing for your love and emotions, becoming engagement is a money commitment.

One thing that many people think is old fashioned, but is actually quite important is for men to ask for the father’s hand in marriage. This is important because it gives support from the family, it humbles the man into explaining how they will take care of their daughter, and it makes a genuine and formal commitment. I find it very interesting that when men propose, they are on their knees. The way I see it, it is a genuine question.

Lastly, as my teacher would say, do not make marriage a Facebook event. This means that it does not need to be a gigantic, expensive, out of this world wedding. The average cost of a wedding ranges from $27-36,000. Pulling out a loan for this sized wedding can lead to financial issues within the marriage. Having parents and family paying for the majority of the wedding can lead to many different things. It can sometimes cause a family to think that they “always have a say,” it may establish a pattern that mom and dad pay everything, or it may make it seem like the children owe their parents something. Trying to save up this money can lead to cohabitation, or postponed marriage which also has negative side effects. 

Preparing for Marriage

This week's material has been one that I was looking forward to. My major is Marriage and Family so this subject really interested me.

In Hanging Out, Hooking Up, and Celestial Marriage, it says, "Have faith in God and Father and in His Son. They will guide and strengthen us because we are on Their errand of creating eternal families and raising children in righteousness."As individuals, we come across many bumps in the road when it comes to starting a family. Whether it be having a hard time finding a significant other, being infertile, or being financially unstable, there are frequent changes in our plans. I have a strong testimony that if we have faith in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, what is meant to happen will happen. Our greatest goal is to make it back to Heavenly Father with our families.

It is apparent that dating in high school, and sometimes after, means that "you want to marry that person." In my high school, I noticed that a lot of guys would not ask girls on dates because they didn't want them to think that they wanted a serious relationship out of this, and I am sure that a lot of people you have seen experience the same thing. However, JeaNette Goates Smith's article, Casual Dating is Alive and Well, she disagrees. She states that "the most common lament I hear from single women both young and old is that men don't ask girls out on dates anymore." For some people, dating seems dead. It is interesting to see that the idea of dating has been morphed and that it is not an easy discussion to talk about. How can this issue be resolved?

Cohabitation is an increasing trend in America today. In Selecting a Life Partner written by , it says about cohabitation, "this number will no doubt continue to grow. A survey of adolescents found that they expect to cohabit at some point in their future." I think that it is important to remember that we look into ourselves and find our own personal values. Whether you are LDS or not, I know that it is important for everyone to have set goals in mind to find the perfect spouse for them.


Sources:
Hanging Out, Hooking up, and Celestial Marriage: https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/bruce-a-chadwick_hanging-hooking-celestial-marriage/
Casual Dating is Alive and Well: https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/bruce-a-chadwick_hanging-hooking-celestial-marriage/
Selecting a Life Partner: https://byui.brightspace.com/content/enforced/287582-Campus.2017.Fall.FAML160/FAML%20160%2001,%2014/Lesson%2005-%20Preparing%20for%20Marriage/Lauer%20%26%20Lauer,%20Chapter%2007%20-%20Selecting%20a%20Life%20Partner.pdf

Gender Roles

If asked the questions:

             -What makes someone a female?
             -What makes someone a male?

what would you answer with? This is a topic that has diverse opinions across the entire globe.

A more critical term for describing the differences and actions between males and females is a sex-typical tendency. For example, a woman is commonly known as the nurturer of the family. A woman may think, "I am not a nurturer, does this mean that I am not a woman?" or a man might think, "I am not into sports, does this mean that I am not a man?" This root of confusion, to many, can be the cause of bisexual and homosexual feelings and relationships.

An epistemology is basically ways that we come to conclusions. With this particular subject, there are many epistemologies about how individuals come to the conclusions that they are gay. In the article Infants Prefer Toys by Gender, written by the ASCH Staff, it says "children as young as 9 months-old prefer to play with toys specific to their own gender, the study found, suggesting that boys and girls follow different developmental trajectories with respect to selection of gender-typed toys." Because of this statement, when some parents see their male children playing with barbies it causes a red flag, and vise versa. Some parents even consider their children already to be gay at this point, and start identifying them with that.

In the video, Understanding Same-Sex Attraction, published by Family Watch International, it says that "many homosexuals did not choose to have the homosexual feelings they have felt, sometimes beginning at a very young age." This statement does not necessarily mean that "children are born gay" or that being say is part of your gene make up. It suggests that some homosexuals and some researchers believe that early childhood experiences or memories can trigger this feeling among individuals.


I did not mention all of these sources, but here are some interesting links to learn more about various opinions on this issue:

Infants Prefer Toys by Gender: https://www.acsh.org/news/2016/07/22/infants-prefer-toys-by-gender?utm_source=email%20marketing%20Mailigen&utm_campaign=News%207.29.16&utm_medium=email

Understanding Same-Sex Attraction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJhyzqdzpnM

Transgenderism: A Pathogenic Meme: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/06/15145/

Normalizing Gender Dysphoria is Dangerous and Unethical: https://www.acpeds.org/normalizing-gender-dysphoria-is-dangerous-and-unethical?utm_source=email+marketing+Mailigen&utm_campaign=News+8.10.16&utm_medium=email

Growth and Success of Children Within Different Family Structures

When reviewing FamilyStructureStudies.com, I have come across nearly all types of parenting and studied how there are different results from each.

I would like to explain a few. The first is divorced parents or future joint custody. This means that the parents were together until the child turned 18, and then got divorced after. The next is a single parent household, where the children lived primarily with one parents who did not remarry. The last is an intact biological family. This type of family included the married parents in the home for all of the childrens' lives, and never got divorced.

The first issue that I studied was unemployment. Of the families that were divorced in the future, 15% of the children became unemployed. For the single parent homes, 13% were unemployed. Lastly, 8% of the intact family children were unemployed. As you can see, the children of the intact family were the most employed, opposed to other family types. In fact, the most unemployed children were from the children who had a mother with a lesbian relationship. Elder Oaks, in his CES Fireside talk, "Truth and Tolerance," he states, "we live in a world where more and more persons of influence are teaching and acting out a belief that there is no absolute right and wrong, that all authority and all rules of behavior are man-made choices that can prevail over the commandments of God." It is widely known among the religious community that same sex marriage leads to unhealthy homes and negative consequences for the children, while the worldly views are different.

The next subject I studied about the outcomes of children was depression. I discovered that out of 4, 1 being the lowest amount of depression, divorced later families' children were at a 2.01, single parents were at a 1.91, and intact families were at a 1.83, which was the lowest of all family types. The highest amount of depression came from those children who were raised by mothers with same sex relationships, and the next being fathers in same sex relationships. It seems relevant to mention that Oaks states, "in this troubled circumstance we who believe in God and the corollary truth of absolute right and wrong have the challenge of living in a godless and increasingly amoral world."

I know that we should all take a step back and figure out what is best for our children and what we want within a family before we get married and before we make life long decisions. I know that Heavenly Father's Plan of Happiness involves us having children and forming families, and raising them to make it back to Heavenly Father some day.


http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/-truth-and-tolerance-elder-dallin-h-oaks
http://www.familystructurestudies.com/