Juli's family relations blog

This week in our class, we discusses the differences between girls and boys and men and women.  Some in the social sciences believe that these differences are just social constructs and that we need to weed out any bias that we put on our children when they are little.  Being the mother of 4 boys and a girl, my experience, while anecdotal, I believe is duplicated in most families.  There is an inherent difference between the way girls and boys act, play and when they grow up think and act and play.  That difference is not a problem but something to be celebrated.  When I was in my first year of college, over 30 years ago, my first psychology teacher told us about a case where one twin at the age of under two was terrible injured during his circumcision and his penis was burned beyond repair.  The distraught parents didn't know what to do and turned to experts for advice.  The experts told the parents that they should castrate the injured twin and rai...

What do families do for each other?  In a few words, ALMOST ANYTHING!!!  This week we reviewed a study done on immigrant families who came to the United States illegally in order to give their children a better life.  In most of the families studied, the father came first and got settled and then their families came.  What the families initially thought would be a year separation in most families became a 3 year separation.  That in itself would be a huge stress on a family but there were so many other stresses put on the family.  When the parents were asked why they would do this, it was for their children.  It was to allow their children to have the chance to live a better life than they had.  When asked if their life was better here in the United States, almost all of the parents said, our life is not better but it's worth the sacrifice.  As I studied this immigrant experience, I thought about a recent experience in my own life and what my...

This week in my Family Relations class, we had some really interesting discussions about Family Systems.  Of particular interest to me was the Symbolic Interaction Theory.  While I am generally a pretty good communicator (my kids would say, blunt and probably  a little bit too honest )  I was able to see that I am not so good at reading cues from those who are not very good at verbally communicating.  While my professor was telling us a story about an interaction he had with his wife where he thought she was rolling her eyes at him, I had an epiphany about my sweet husband.  It brought tears to my eyes because I no longer have the opportunity to hug him and tell him how much I love him as he passed away 5 months ago this week.  As I thought about some of the things that annoyed me, I realized they were actually his way of trying to be the husband he thought he needed to be I was just misinterpreting the cues he was sending.  How often do we assign...

I am trying to finish my homework assignments late because I spent the past two days attending the BYU Women's Conference in Provo Utah.  As inspiring and educational as the speakers were, the highlight of the weekend was spending my time with 20 of my sisters, nieces, Aunts, daughters and friends.  It was a huge boost to my overwhelmed self.  Having not attended school full time for the past 30 years, taking 18 units is SERIOUSLY OVERWHELMING!!!  The support these ladies have been to me (I have a huge family that all support me) and my children through our recent loss I can not even begin to describe.  I am writing this because of the homework assignment I had which was to watch  a two part series on Youtube called Demographic Winter.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8XQjfG2wYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw3OQgFsHZI As a very short summary, it is about the economic problems that will eventually come to the entire world because of falling ...