Ruminations and Reflections of a Marriage and Family Studies Major

 Hello everyone! Another week has gone by in my family relations class which means I have another full week of thoughts and impressions to share. As far as I know, this is the last blog I will be writing for this class, as it is already the end of the semester. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly 14 weeks can pass as a student. Since it's the last blog, I want to say a few things about my overall experience from taking this class. It's definitely been an eye-opening experience for me. From my first blog, I discussed how I felt that many of my assumptions about family and relationships were being challenged, and that it was a refreshing experience. I can now say that those feelings have carried through the entire class. I think what's made it so refreshing is that this class taught me things that let me replace my previous assumptions with better knowledge: something much closer to the truth. I know a lot more than I used to know, and my own life and what I want for my f...

 Hey everyone! another week has gone by and that means it's time for another blog post. This week we focused more on the role of fathers and finances in family life. This is an interesting topic in these times, since masculinity in and of itself has had a bit of a negative view in society recently. The idea that masculinity is "toxic" and unnecessary makes it hard for the idea of dedicated fatherhood as something important to keep traction in today's world. Earlier in the semester we talked about how having healthy marriages and families are unnatural, or are something that you have to work for. Our professor compared this to the animal kingdom and other mammals. For most mammals, the males are there to provide protection and to reproduce with the females. Child rearing is left entirely up to the mothers for most mammals. I think society's view of the male position in the family has started to mirror this line of thought: that males aren't very useful to the f...

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I've made a post here. Life has been getting the better of me lately, and unfortunately my consistency with this blog and some of my schoolwork have fallen as a result. Now I'm back and I've recommitted to do these consistently through to the end of the semester.  This last week we focused heavily on communication. More particularly, on the problems of communication. While I was sitting in class, I felt myself being drawn into the discussion. I could tell others were as well, and if any of them were like me, it was because communication is something we all struggle with and want to be better at. I find this interesting, since most of us have been communicating in some way or another since we were born, most of which has likely been actual verbal communication. Why then is it the case where we feel like we have such a need to be better communicators? I know that, like me, many people in today's world grew up with the resources to...