For this week’s blog, I’ll talk about ways to maintain a strong healthy marriage when kids come along.  Kids are wonderful, and a blessing in a marriage, but sometimes the strain and stress of children cause marital problems. 

     In a reading titled “Early Marriage Adjustments” is an outline of a typical newlywed couple. “Newly married couples tend to have certain relational strengths that enable them to deal with challenges and problems of forming a new family unit (Schramm, Marshall, Harris and Lee 2005). Among other things, they are likely to have a high degree of mutual trust. They respect and appreciate each other. They are committed to the marriage. They enjoy high levels of affection for each other. To the extent that their sexual life meets the wife’s initial expectations and remains at a frequency desired by the husband, they have a satisfying sexual relationship (McNulty and Fisher 2007). They engage in a good deal of self disclosure, sharing their thoughts and feelings. And they are likely to have few serious conflicts. Such qualities mean that they have a strong foundation for beginning their life together as a married couple.”   

 

     As you can see, newlyweds are enjoying each other’s presence very much and have little stress. Sure, there’s school and loans, but when there’s only husband and wife who are both mature capable adults to worry about, the responsibilities seem easy to handle.

     After the first child is born, “Any previous routine you may have had is gone, and day blends into night. You are bleary eyed and chronically exhausted, a slave to the feeding and sleeping schedule of your baby. Your focus and energy (and those of your spouse) are intensely centered on your new child, and you are both expending massive amounts of energy to attend to the constant (and often unclear) needs of your baby. 

You are highly attuned to your newborn, completely focused, hyper-vigilant about any signs that something might be “off” or to any early indication of potentially life-threatening health problems. In this context, if a researcher asked you how satisfied you are feeling with your marriage or how close you feel to your spouse, how would you be likely to respond?” (Shauna H Springer Ph.D.). 

     As you can imagine, children bring a lot of unwanted stress and worry to both the mother and father.  The father wonders if he’s making enough money to provide for his new family and thoughts of inadequacy run through his mind when asked to help with the baby. 

     One of the best things a pregnant wife can do is to include her husband in everything baby related.  There’s a lot of good information and apps about baby development where you can see real pictures and descriptions of what your baby looks like week by week.  Talk together about what foods are good to eat while pregnant and learn how to make them more often.  Make baby plans with your husband like where the crib should go, what names for the baby does he like? Picking out clothes for the baby together, give him as much responsibility as you possibly can before the baby is born so he feels more responsible and adequate after the baby is born.

     Husbands, avoid the attitude of “Well, I don’t care, do what you want” when it comes to baby things.  Be involved as much as possible! As previously stated, try and be involved in the clothes of the baby, the name of the baby, everything you possibly can.  It makes a big difference in marital satisfaction after the baby is born.

     Lastly, and perhaps most important, learn how to give compliments and positive reinforcement during times of stress and anger.  With a new baby in the home, there’s a lot of opportunities for stress, late nights, snapping at each other, and hurting each other.  Practice and train your brain now to think positively and verbally express praise and compliments to your spouse when feelings of hurt or stress come.  It makes talking through it a lot easier and brings happiness quickly.  Above all, enjoy your baby because they’re only a baby for a short time.  You’re both learning together so find the humor in everything you can. 

     In this week’s blog, I’ll speak on love, it’s different meanings, and the ways we can show love to each other. 

     M. Scott Peck said, "One result of the mysterious nature of love is that no one has ever, to my knowledge, arrived at a truly satisfactory definition of love. In an effort to explain it, therefore, love has been divided into various categories: Eros, philia, agape; perfect love and imperfect love, and so on. I am presuming, however, to give a single definition of love, again with the awareness that it is likely to be in some way or ways inadequate. I define love thus: The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another's spiritual growth." (The Road Less Traveled, 1978, p. 81)

     There are certain ways that love can be expressed.  The 5 love languages are key to understanding how we can nurture someone else’s spirit and show our love for them. The 5 love languages are quality time, physical touch, words of affirmation, service, and gifts.  Everyone has at least one of these love languages that Is dominant, meaning how they feel love the most.

Quality Time

     This love language focuses on spending one-on-one time with someone.  I personally react to this one.  When my wife wants me to be a part of her everyday activities and includes me in her daily routines I feel loved.  I feel special to her and needed by her.  Quality time is when you will choose someone to spend time with, focus on them, talk with them, and are interested in what they do and say. 

Physical Touch

     My wife’s love language is this one.  Every time she’s feeling sad, hurt or embarrassed I know I have to hug her to make her feel better.  Whenever we have some disagreement or are trying to figure out some problem, I always make an effort to hold her while talking about these issues so she knows she’s loved and I care about her. 

Words of Affirmation

     My Mom’s love language is words.  It’s interesting because she’s rather sensitive to words.  She’s really good about talking about problems and getting to know people.  She loves words and she always gives compliments and tells you when something you’ve done is wrong.  She loves getting cards and people writing her notes and building her up with compliments.

Service

     My Dad’s love language is service. Service could be anything: dishes, mowing the lawn, walking someone across the street, building furniture, anything.  It’s interesting because my mom and dad have had to learn to realize when the other is giving love.  My mom’s love language is words, and my Dad isn’t very good at complimenting her, but he’s very good at doing things for her and helping her.  My Mom has learned that he loves her and cares about her through his actions. 

Gifts

     My brother love getting gifts! One time my mom went to the store and my brother asked for a certain box of cereal.  When my Mom got back from the store she realized she forgot the cereal! My brother was so sad and hurt.  To someone whose love language isn’t gifts, this wouldn’t be such a big deal.  Because my brother’s love language is gifts, he felt like my Mom forgot about him and didn’t really care.  To my Mom, she just simply forgot.

     It’s important to know how you individually receive love, and how your spouse, kids, or other loved one receives love so you can know what’s important to them.  If you know your child’s love language is words, you would know to be more sensitive and give compliments frequently.  If your spouse loves gifts, you would know to make things for him/her and make an effort to get them special and meaningful gifts on birthdays and so forth.  It’s also important to identify your own love language so you can share it with your family so they know how to praise and show you love. There is a website you can go on to the test love language test, and it will tell you what you need most. You can also have your loved ones take it so you can know what you can do for them!

 http://www.5lovelanguages.com/profile/

     The topic for this week is gender.  I’ll be speaking on the differences between men and women and how they complement each other in the family unit.  Contrary to society’s belief today, the world needs both men and women in families.

     To start off, I would like to share a quote by President Gordon B. Hinckley (15^th Prophet of the Latter-day Saint Church).  He says, "In His grand design, when God first created man, He created duality of the sexes. The ennobling expression of that duality is found in marriage. One individual is complementary to the other. As Paul stated, 'Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord' (1 Corinthians 11:11). There is no other arrangement that meets the divine purposes of the Almighty. Man and woman are His creations. Their duality is His design. Their complementary relationships and functions are fundamental to His purposes. One is incomplete without the other."

     God created both men and women for a reason.  I ponder on my own marriage and the differences between my wife and I and how happy I am that we’re different.  Whenever disagreements arise or life decisions need to be discussed, we’re able to talk through them and come up with solutions.  If my wife thought and acted like me then nothing would get solved and life would be rather boring.  Women are generally more emotional, pay attention to detail, and creative.  Where men are more straight shooters, get it done now and problem solvers.  Neither is better than the other.  Society is trying to make more men like women, and more women like men.  We need to encourage and support traditional men and women values and behavior.    When there are both men and women working together to solve problems, more options and ideas arise because of these different qualities.

     Mothers have a remarkable impact on their children and family.  Abraham Lincoln said “All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel Mother.”  Mother’s nurture, teach, comfort, guide, encourage, love, and care for their children.  A news article published in the New York Times in 1994 said “If a son or daughter who loses a mother never receives adequate substitute mothering, the loss can do long-term damage to his or her self-esteem, ability to relate to other people, overall feelings of security and ability to trust others.” I remember my Mom would talk to me daily about manners and how to be a good boy.  She would teach me to open doors for girls, be polite, say please and thank you, and to always do the best I can in every situation.  If I ever had an issue with someone or a problem with something in life, I knew I could always go to my Mom and she would help me and give me the guidance I needed. 

     Fathers are equally important to mothers.  I remember when I was a young teenager doing household chores and having family responsibilities. We lived in a house that had a septic tank sewer system, and one day, the back toilet wouldn’t drain properly so my dad had to fix it. One of my responsibilities was to help with fixing problems in the house when needed. In order to fix this problem, the ground outside had to be dug up about 4 feet to reach the pipes for the plumbing.  I remember helping my Dad work outside for the entire day: digging, trying to snake out the pipes, and figuring out the problems. I did not know it at the time, but my Dad was making an impact on me by showing how to be a hard worker that gets things done.  It was because of his example from that day as well as many other days throughout my childhood, that I now know how to be a good worker.  According to the Father Involvement Research Society, “Boys show less aggression, less impulsivity, and more self-direction. As young adults, children of involved fathers are more likely to achieve higher levels of education, find success in their careers, have higher levels of self-acceptance and experience psychological well-being.”

     I hope you can see the importance of both Mom and Dad and why we need them and their God given behavior and personalities.  In The Family A Proclamation To The World (an LDS publication) it says, “…Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, and to teach them to love and serve one another, observe the commandments of God, and be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. . .” 

Reference

“Children Without Mothers Are at Special Risk.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 30 Apr. 1994, www.nytimes.com/1994/05/01/opinion/l-children-without-mothers-are-at-special-risk-954179.html

     For this week’s blog, I wanted to talk about something fun but also very important and beneficial. The topic is family traditions. The best definition of traditions is "inherited patterns of belief or behavior".  So, which traditions encourage the best in families and individuals, and which might be better off discarded?

 Personal Family Traditions

     One of my favorite family traditions is at Easter time.  My family has an annual Easter egg roll contest.  Each member of the family has their own hardboiled egg which is personally decorated and prepared for the roll off.  Once all the eggs are ready we all go out back and proceed to the starting line (which is just our backyard lawn). Someone yells, “3, 2, 1, Roll!” then we all roll our eggs at the same time. We keep doing this until someone’s egg yoke breaks out of the egg which results in elimination.  The last person to have their egg yoke intact is the winner! 

     The reason why this particular tradition sticks out to me is that of how simple and fun it is.  It’s exciting to look forward to the painting of the eggs and having the whole family participating.  It’s fun, wholesome, and cheap (a good formula for family traditions!). Although this could be seen as a rather simple activity, it has a great impact on family relationships. When families participate in games and activities together they are developing and strengthening relationships with each other, building trust and building close friendships. These are why we continue to have this tradition in our home. 

     Traditions build on each other and become more and more meaningful the older children become.  When I was younger, probably around twelve years old, I would always want to go grocery shopping with my mom.  She would go twice a month sometimes three, and I would always look forward to going with her.  We lived about 45 minutes away from the “big city” where all the stores and good deals were so going grocery shopping was an all-day thing.  Looking back, this was a tradition in the making and I didn’t know it.  Because it was just my mom and I, we developed and strengthened our relationship. This became a good and long-lasting tradition for us.

Negative Family Traditions

     Now, not all traditions are good.  Remember our definition? Traditions are inherited patterns of belief or behavior. Let’s take the dinner example again, when it’s time for dinner does your family gather around a table and talk about the events that happened in the day? Or does every child grab food and run off to their room or sit in front of the TV? The latter is an example of a tradition that negatively affects the family.  There can be much good when a family sits together and has dinner.  There’s time for teaching manners, politeness, the children can even be involved in cooking the meal and setting the table, and there are great opportunities for discussion about school, work, and countless other things.  All of these positive experiences can be missed when families are separate at dinner.  Can you see all the valuable time and relationship building that is lost?  This is just one example of a negative tradition.

Conclusion

     Traditions are whatever we want them to be.  It can be as simple as an Easter egg roll and family dinner, family movie night or game night.  Whatever wholesome family traditions strengthen trust and communication, that’s a good tradition. There’s both good and bad, and the bad traditions are often not labeled as “bad” but when we stop and analyze the outcome of those traditions we’ll see there is a better way. 

     In this week’s blog, I’ll talk about how family members can better understand each other through the silent messages they send.  Also, I’ll share some examples of how to work with those messages.

     It’s extremely important to understand different forms of silent messages that you or others may be sending and what you can do to deal with them.  There are six kids in my family (5 boys and 1 girl).  Growing up with so many brothers was very fun!  We would wrestle and "play" fight, sword fight with wooden swords, play Power Rangers and super heroes, play video games together, play football, or play out back on what we called our "back yard play thing" (a huge structure that my Grandpa and Dad built which had a climbing wall, two bridges, a fort, a jail, a picnic table, a sandbox, climbing poles, a swing rope, and a professional boxer's punching bag).

     Sometimes, however, we would get a little too worked up and physically hurt each other or say something rude which would make the other person angry.  My Mom taught us that there were certain things we could do and things we could not do when we were angry.

     When boys are hurt, sad, frustrated, tired, hungry, or pretty much any other feeling, the emotion that is usually expressed is anger.  Anger is a silent message that many times represents something else.  My Mom understood this "boy behavior", and set rules in place to help us manage our actions when we felt angry.  Rule #1 was that we could not lash out at another person (as in hitting, yelling, or being mean).  Rule #2 was that we could not lash out at the house (as in slamming doors, throwing things or breaking things).  Then she gave us options of what we could do.  We could go on our bed and scream into our pillow, or punch our pillow.  We could go out back and punch or kick the boxing bag.  We could go out back and jump really hard on the trampoline.  Or we could ride our bike really hard out front around the cul-de-sac. 

     After the angry sibling cooled down and felt better he would come back and then we would talk about it.  We would all sit down and talk about what caused that person to get upset and then try not to do it again.  We would then continue to play, and then the cycle would repeat itself.  It’s very important to understand and notice what kind of messages children and spouses give, and not to neglect or ignore that, but work with it and through it.

     Here is a classic situation.  It’s 5:00pm, and Dad comes home from work to see the house a mess, and Mom trying to gather kids around and get dinner ready.  Dad sits down on the couch, kicks his feet up and starts reading a paper (this scenario is probably more valid in the 1950’s).  Can you see the message Dad is sending to Mom?  It's, “I did my Job for the day, looks like you’re still busy with yours.”  Or, “I work harder than you, I deserve a rest.”

     Albert Mehrabian published a book titled, Silent Messages.  He says that only 7 percent of all communication is verbal, and 93 percent is non-verbal (with 55 of that percent being body language).  It’s important to note that non-verbal communication is one of the best measures of how someone is feeling or what they are thinking.  The Mom in this scenario is getting a lot of communication and messages from her husband without him even saying anything!  Needless to say, there will more than likely be a "discussion" between Mom and Dad later that evening.

     We need to be aware of the type of verbal, and especially non-verbal, messages others around us are expressing, and also what silent messages we may be sending out ourselves.  There needs to be particular rules set in place, and then a time to talk about the behavior in order to correct it.

     When I was a boy following the "anger rules" that my Mom had set up, I didn't know that what she was really teaching me was how to be more aware of people around me, or how to "think" about my actions when my emotions were boiling over.  As I and my brothers grew, we learned how to recognize these feelings and notice the silent messages we were sending, and how to deal with them. We learned proper behavior and then how to talk about why we were upset in the first place and how to make the necessary corrections.

 Hello! Welcome to the first week of my discussion! The topic I chose to address this week is, "Current trends in the family, and the impacts of those trends" Without further ado, let’s dive right in!

     Some of the more noticeable and widely accepted trends in the family are: Women working outside the home, half of all marriages ending in divorce, and lastly cohabitation.

Women Working Outside the Home  

     According to the U.S. Department of Labor, “The labor force participation rate—the percent of the population working or looking for work—for all women with children under age 18 was 70.5 percent in 2016. The participation rate for married mothers (67.9 percent) remained lower than the rate for mothers with other marital statuses (76.0 percent).” Let’s look at these same statistics nearly 70 years ago.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in the year 1950, only 23.8 percent of all married women who had an employed husband also worked.

     Could it be that there are more problems with society, broken families, and rebellious adolescents because of mothers choosing to work outside the home? Before I continue let’s make things clear.  I am not saying every mother that has a job will damage and ruin her family. Some mothers have to work full-time out of necessity to support their families. I am saying, however, that when a mother willingly chooses to pursue their career over raising their children, (when there is a father present who can reasonably support them) that negative effects come to the family.

     Think about it, when a mother and father both work full-time they drop their kids off at a daycare or have someone else watch their child for them 8 hours a day while they work. According to news reports by the New York Times, CBS, and Child Care Aware of America, children placed in some sort of daycare system experienced aggression and disruptive behavior in early years.  Think about it, if you were placed in some facility with a bunch of people for 8 or more hours a day wouldn’t you start feeling a bit annoyed and agitated? Sounds a bit like going to work full-time, doesn’t it?  The difference between adults and children in this situation is that children haven’t fully developed! They haven’t had experience and don’t know how to handle these emotions. I could go on and talk about the social issues these children may face but I’ll let this suffice. 

     Washington Irving said, “A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.” This special bond and trust cannot be achieved if a child hardly knows his/her mother because she’s always gone at work. I say, bring mom home!

Half of All Marriages End in Divorce/Cohabitation

     Why are fewer people getting married nowadays? If you’re curious, then you should find these next few paragraphs rather interesting.

     First off, there’s a statistic that half of all marriages end in divorce. Most young people think to themselves, “Well, if my marriage only has a 50/50 shot at lasting then why even bother?”.  What would you say if I told you this statistic is actually false? Here’s why: “To illustrate the problem, let’s say that 2 million couples are married in a particular year and 1 million divorce. There are 55 million other couples who remain married from previous years.” Quote from “Marriage and family the quest for intimacy”.

     It could be said that 50% of marriages that year ended in divorce, but not all marriages end in divorce.  Claire Cain Miller said: “If current trends continue, nearly two-thirds of marriages will never involve a divorce, according to data from Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist.” Bottom line is this, if newlyweds have it in their minds that half of all marriages end in divorce (which we just proved to be wrong) then they are already setting themselves up for failure! There needs to be optimistic attitudes about marriage and the commitment to work things out when it gets hard.

     Because of the false divorce rate statistic, people will often cohabitate instead of getting married. Cohabitation is wrong. One reason, there’s no commitment to each other. Basically, cohabitating people say this to each other, “I love you and want to be with you but let’s leave the back door open in case this doesn’t turn out the way I was hoping so I can back out” What is that?! When married people overcome disagreements, struggle through hard times, live on a budget, and strive to have devotion to each other, then their marriages thrive and prosper.  It’s going through the hard times that polish and keep a marriage strong and lasting.

     Hello! My name is Caleb Tucker. I'm from Monterey California and my wife and I are currently full-time college students.  My major is Marriage and Family Studies.  I started this blog to share what I'm learning in my courses and what we as a class discuss about families.  This blog will mainly be about tools that can help marriages and families be happier.  You can expect a new post every week!