Divorce and the Aging Family

This week’s class discussion focused on Divorce and the Aging family. This is something that I feel most of us face or see in our own families. First off it causes heartache, not surprising to anyone. For parents, it causes pain, depending on the situation it can cause major frustration. This is usually the cause of problems that have never been resolved and continue to a breaking point. Another reason that it may have happened is because of infidelity. Some find their spouse talking with someone else intimately, either virtually or in person. They may also find them having sexual relations with another person. The question is, is it good that a person divorces because of infidelity, abuse, and other problems. In a study shown they answered that divorce can be good and also no. Divorce can be good in the sense that those who divorce go through personal growth, increase optimism, spiritual comfort, and improved communication and conflict skills. Also, those who were in high distress marriage report to increase happiness. Even if divorce is a very traumatic experience for the person, after a while they adapt to it and some come to view it as a turning point in their life necessary for their health. Although this is not the case with everyone, some may take divorce as a negative experience. It has been know to also affect physical and emotional health. A big part of it is due to the stress that the couple goes through. Stress may come from parents thinking about their kids in this hard situation. Sometimes divorce is not counted as an option for these parents. They may know that it can play a hard toll on their children, so they may decide to stick through their unpleasant relationship just for their children. Children are impacted largely because they want to be with both of their parents whom they love. They do not want to see them fighting and they do not want to see someone else take the spot of their dad or mom. Another issue that may never completely connect with the children is when their mother and father marry someone else. They may not look at this person as a parental figure in their life, the most that it will be is a friend that they can trust. Some children have a hard time accepting this new person in their life as well, for the children they just want to their mother and their father together. This may be hard when one of their parents passes away as well. This also causes a change in the family structure, most big problems that lead to discipline should be done by the biological parent due to the fact the child will obey them more than their step-parent. The relationship between the step-parent and the child is also one that may need a keen awareness due to the fact they can’t act like they are their parents because the child may have a negative thought about that step-parent. This should be done in a light manner and with patience. As I said before the biological parent should be the one that takes the responsibility of things and that is one of the other changes that happen in the family structure. Life can never go back the same, the biological parent and the step-parent must come together and make plans how are the children going to be raised, who can take the role of disciplining the children and when, also depending on the case, when they should bring the children to see their other biological parent. Sometimes I feel there are drastic measures that should be counted for in this big decision. We need to take a step back and look at what is the problem in your relationship with your spouse and ask yourself is this truly something I need to get frustrated about to go to the point of getting a divorce. If it isn't ask yourself what you can do to resolve those problems.

Parenting

This week’s discussion in the class focused on the topic of parenting. This is quite a controversial topic, so please respect those who share their opinion. Three types of parenting that we discussed are autocratic, permissive, and active. Autocratic parenting styles is one in which we are most familiar with, the classic shows depicting mothers and fathers yelling at their teenage children to do something that they want them to do. Whether that may be requiring the child to do chores or following the rules that they had established. All these things end with a battle of power. Most of all it ends with heartache pain and no clear end of resolution of who wins or loses. I remember from my own experiences when my parents yell when they want something done, I usually feel more inclined not to do it and on top of that, I always feel horrible. My dream as a parent was to be someone even greater than what my parents were. The type of parenting that I am hoping of becoming is an active parent. This type of parenting is one in which the parents understand their children, where they are coming from, but also help guide them in this journey of life. In the videos that we watched it should these parents working with their children in building ways to support them. They also showed the parents working with their children in making consequences together when the child disobeys the rules. As parents and future parents, we need to understand that they are people and have a mind of their own and we need to treat them as such. We cannot let them walk over us though, but we cannot be over them all the time. Something they stated is that we need to place limits, but also give them freedom. I would also like to describe a bit about permissive, this parenting style is one that we may see quite often in which they let the children run over their parents. They let their children do whatever they want to, without any consequences and rules. A way it was described was through an example of a parent asking their children to eat greens. Then they asked the child would decline and that was that. Through further study, they found that these children soon grow up with high chances of receiving health problems. They also tend to go into the route of pain, finding themselves in circumstances leading them to jail. They also tend not to have the best grades in school. The way we parent our children affects them in the long run. I know many of us do not want to see them failing in this world. We would rather want to see them succeed. To do such a thing I believe we need to change the way we parent our children to an active role. It is not easy, many may blow a fuse due to some of the things our children do, but we need to may an effect. If we do become angry, simply state that you will talk about making consequences together at a later time after you have calmed down. Something we need to know is that all of us need five things to fill our needs. The five things are contact and belonging, power, protection, withdrawal, and challenge. If we don’t tend to these needs the children start to have mistaken approaches to undue attention-seeking, tend to control others and rebellion, revenge, undue avoidance, and undue risk-taking. There is a way to tend to these five things. It is through a wise parental approach of offering contact freely, teaching our children to make contributions, and giving them choices for consequences and response-ability. Also, it is through Assertiveness and teaching them to forgive, teaching them to break a task, and go back and encourage skill-building.

Fathers and Finances

This week of class we discussed Fathers and Finances. In contrast to what the world may say and view fathers as being, they are an essential part of the structure of families. Some researchers have found that there has been a correlation between school shooters and the shooters having a loss in father-figure in their family. They indicate that without a dad as a role model the boys are unable to have a way to direct their ways of interacting with themselves and others. They start to indulge in videogames, pornography, and in essence, they start to become a destructive force according to what they have found. Boys are not the only ones that are affected by this as well. Girls are affected as well, they become more prone to promiscuity, depression, and self-harm. Fathers are naturally the provider in the family and are usually the breadwinners of the family. Providing can be able to make money for the family. It can also be described as providing in the sense that they can be able to take care of the finances that their family have. Although it is balanced between both the mother and the father, fathers are usually the ones that as noted to be the budgeter. Men are usually more hyper-focused on the activity that is taking their attention. This hyper-focus allows them to be able to go to work and come home and interact with their children as nothing happened. They can leave work at work and leave home at home. This is why for men it is a lot easier for them to be able to work, without feeling a sense of trouble that they didn’t do something at their job. It is interesting as well that we don’t need both parents to work usually. They have found that when both parents work there are more expenses the family has then there is again. This happens due to one of the jobs requiring the person to be well dressed, making the family spend on expensive clothes. Then many people believe that since they are both gaining a good amount of money, they can spend a bit more. Another thing that also affects their expenses is the false idea that if they can bring their family to something big like an amusement park once a year, they can make better relationships with their family. I’m not saying taking a vacation to go to places is bad with the family, but it shouldn’t be central in making the family happy and to be able to make relationships. From my own experience, it is when we are both working together, may we be sweating from hard labor or washing the dishes, that we can build relationships. In times like these, we can talk, joke around, and be able to teach one another. We both have the same goal of accomplishing something, we may be at different points in that goal, but it brings unity. I’m not here to point out that being a single mom, is bad. There may be big reasons why they are not with a male. I just want to point out that fathers must play a part in the family structure and are important just like mothers. I feel there is a wide-range of hate towards fathers, that people ridicule them and say they do nothing for the family. Another important thing that I would like to state is if you are not doing good financially, start to make changes to get on track. Ask yourself what is causing me to be bad financially? What can I do differently? What am I doing good?