I have always wanted to be a mom. That is something I have always known. But a lot of people struggle with this, I think because there is such a push in today’s society for women to have “real careers” instead of “just being a stay at home wife and mother”.

I think one of the main reasons that more and more women are pursuing careers rather than mothering children is that we are conditioned as children to really know what we want to have as a career path. There is such an emphasis on having careers at such a young age. Kids as young as two or three years old get asked, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” and are always expected to have an answer.

I remember getting asked this question time and time again as a child and one specific time when I answered that I wanted to be a mom, my teacher told me that I couldn’t “just be a mom” and I needed to choose somewhere to work. As a five or six year old child, this was very puzzling to me. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t “just be a mom” because my own mother was a stay at home mom and I wanted to be just like her.

I think we are hurting children by telling them that they can’t be “just a stay at home parent”. I would argue that there is not a more fulfilling career. I honestly cannot imagine doing anything else that brings more maturity and joy. There are so many benefits for not only children having a stay at home parent, but also for the parents themselves. Parents learn to problem solve, grow so much maturity, and dare I say even learn from their children. We are not only benefiting our children by staying home with them.

The purpose of parenting is to protect and prepare to strive and survive in the world. How can we truly feel we have accomplished this if we ourselves aren’t the ones actually parenting our children? How can we leave this up to a daycare or a nanny?

As I said before, I grew up with a stay at home mom. I can not imagine growing up any other way. I understand that not everyone has the means to be able to stay home with their children, but I firmly believe that when at all possible, stay home with your children. It will benefit them, as well as the parent, in ways that we cannot fully comprehend. I learned so much from my mother growing up that I would not have had the opportunity to learn if she had worked and I grew up going to daycare. I am immensely grateful for my parents’ sacrifice for my mother to stay home with us kids so that we had those extra opportunities to learn from her.

My husband and I, ever since we were dating, have always known that this is the route we will go. No matter our financial circumstances, we will do whatever we need to make sure I am able to stay home with our children. I can’t imagine leaving my children with someone and not be there to nurture and teach them myself. I even chose to get my degree in marriage and family so that it can benefit me as a wife and mother. I want to do whatever I can to be the best mother to my children that I can be.

I will never imagine myself as “just a stay at home mom”. Any stay at home parent will tell you that it is infinitely harder and much more fulfilling than any other career path one may choose. I cannot imagine doing anything else that would be more fulfilling and bring me more joy than being a mother to my children.

One aspect of family life that I believe often times gets overlooked is the importance of not only having a father in the home, but also fathers’ involvement in the home and in their children’s lives.

There are many differences between mothering and fathering in the traditional family, but perhaps the most obvious one is their difference in roles. Mothers, in a traditional home setting, most often stay home with the children and nurture/teach them, while the father is most often off somewhere else working in order to protect and provide for the family.

While both these roles are essential for raising a successful family, when fathers are gone so much from the home and work long hours, this can be really hard on the family. Not only does his wife end up feeling like a single mother, but the children often end up feeling like they don’t have a dad, or at the very least thirst for a better relationship and more involvement with their father.

I personally felt this growing up. I grew up in a happy, comfortable home with a mom, a dad, and siblings; however, in order to maintain this comfortable home with the opportunities for us kids that my parents desired, my fathers was left working long hours. Especially when he started his own business, I felt like I never saw him. He traveled frequently, but even when he was home he was always working which was really hard on my family.

Don’t get me wrong, I am immensely grateful for all the many opportunities my parents provided for me and my sisters. However, I think it would have been much more beneficial for my family to have a dad who was more present in the home. I would trade all my extracurricular activities and material things I was blessed with for more time with my dad as a child in a heartbeat.

I sincerely hope for a different lifestyle when it comes to my husband’s relationship with our children. We have had countless conversations about how important his relationship with our children is to us. We will do our absolute best to put ourselves in a position where he will never have a job that requires traveling or working long hours. Our kids and family life will always remain first priority above work or material things. I would always rather have a small house with a present husband and father for my children than have a mansion with nice cars with a husband who is working long hours.

Fathers already have a hard enough time connecting with their children as they are away from the home more often than mothers, so we should strive to make the most of it! Wherever the father can step in to help or enjoy hobbies with his children, he should try to do so. I can’t wait to see my husband as a father because I can imagine him playing sports or music with them, taking them on fun outings and vacations, and anything else he may choose to do with them. I believe these activities are vital for a father’s relationship with his children.

Though it is not always possible for there to be a father in the home, much less for a father to be so involved with his children, I hope it is a goal we can all have. My heart goes out to single mothers because I sincerely cannot imagine raising my children without my husband by my side. Male role models are so important for children’s development and mental health, and I hope that as mothers we can strive to have that for our children.

Most of us can agree that we all have stressors, especially within our families and we all have our own ways to “cope” with these stressors. But what most of us don’t realize is that coping is not just “getting by”. In order to completely overcome hard times and become stronger from them, we must learn to really deal with these trials and not just “swallow” our feelings in order to get by.

When I was 18 years old and a senior in high school, my parents got divorced. While this was really hard for me, I just kept telling myself that everything would be okay and pretended like it didn’t bother me. Instead of talking to my parents about how I felt, I just continued to live my life as if nothing had changed.

It wasn’t until nearly a year later that I started to realize how much the divorce was affecting me, and started to connect with my parents about how it made me feel. However at that point, my parents had already moved on. My mom was engaged to my now stepdad and my dad was dating a lot. I still was able to work on my relationship with my dad, but because I didn’t deal with my feelings toward the divorce when it first happened, it was a lot harder because everyone had already moved on.

I learned firsthand that it is vital to deal with things right as they happen and not “swallow” my feelings only to have them come back up later.

I am actually really grateful for the natural consequences that came with not dealing with my feelings from my parents’ divorce. It prepared me for the hardest trial I have ever gone through, because it taught me to accept my feelings as I go through hard things.

Just three months ago, my husband and I lost our baby due to a miscarriage. This was hands-down the hardest thing I have ever gone through. Miscarriage is something that really needs to be talked about more openly and is something that you cannot even comprehend unless you go through yourself.

When I lost my baby, instead of hiding it and keeping it to myself, I chose to share my loss with others in order to gain support from family and friends. This was so important for my healing process. While I had people who told me it “wasn’t a big deal” or “it was just a pregnancy, not a baby” or “just try to not think about it”, I had even more support from friends and family who had gone through the same thing.

The biggest piece of advice someone gave me was to let myself mourn the loss of this baby as long as I needed to. This baby was just as much my child as someone who loses their child to cancer at 10 years old. My dear friend told me that no matter what anyone told me, this baby was my child. And I lost them.

This was CRUCIAL for me. It made my feelings valid and allowed me to let myself feel everything I was feeling. All the empathy I got from others who had experienced this same loss helped me truly COPE. This baby was my child, not just a “lost pregnancy”. Feeling all the feelings helped me learn to love my child and not to just never think about them in order to not feel sad. I decided that I wanted this child to be as much a part of our family as the rest of our children and I wanted him/her to be someone we always talked about with our kids.

Just a month after my miscarriage, I learned that I was pregnant again. If I didn’t deal with losing my precious angel baby, I don’t think I would have been ready to accept this new baby. I am so grateful for those kind words from my dear friend about allowing myself to heal and know that anytime I go through another “stressor” in my family, I will always make sure to cope the right way.

Everyone knows that the transition into marriage can be difficult, whether you have experienced it yourself or have heard it from others. There are many different factors that go into this transition into marriage–there is more to it than just getting used to living with another person. Marriage is merging two completely different families together, which is no small feat.

Personally in my marriage, there have been so many different transitions that I didn’t even think of when my husband and I were dating/engaged. The first few months consisted more of learning how to live together, how to share a bathroom, preparing meals for each other every day, learning how to split up chores and other responsibilities, budgeting/finances, etc. These things were definitely a big transitional period, but after a few months, we had it down and now it seems like that transition never even happened.

The transitions that were harder were the big ones that happened in the first year to year-and-a-half of marriage. One big one was when the holidays came around. I never even thought about how hard it would be to decide whose family we would spend the holidays with. For one thing, both of our sets of parents are divorced, so instead of having two families to spend holidays with, we now have FOUR. Most couples choose to switch off spending the holidays with each side of the family, but that is significantly harder for my husband and I because there are not only two sides to switch off. My husband’s parents live in the same town, so holidays are easier with them since we can spend half of Christmas day with one of them and the other half of the day with the other. But when it comes to my family, my parents live across the country from one another which makes seeing them for holidays so hard. Someone always ends up getting hurt and we always end up having to choose one over the other.

This isn’t the only aspect of holidays that is a huge transition when going into marriage. Everyone has their own holiday traditions that come from their family growing up, and trying to merge those traditions together can be difficult. Fortunately, this is not something that my husband and I have had to deal with yet since we don’t have children yet, and we spend all our holidays with our families. But I can imagine that once we start celebrating Thanksgiving and especially Christmas with our kids, there will be a lot of transition and figuring out our own traditions to celebrate with our own little family.

Another transition that my husband and I have been experiencing lately, at a year and half of marriage, is preparing for our first child. We are currently 11 weeks pregnant and are finally getting past getting used to being pregnant and moving into the planning period of getting ready for the baby. It is a very exciting time, but also a major transition from being just a married couple to starting a family and having another human being to care for.

There is also a lot of transition when it comes to our parents because there are so many of them, and so many different opinions when it comes to the baby. One thing that we have to remember is that this is our child and when it comes down to it, our opinion on how we raise the baby and what we buy for the baby is our decision. It is important to become our own unit, and that perhaps is the hardest transition of all.

Gender is defined as the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones). This explains that since gender is a social/cultural term rather than biological, we can relate this to specific gender roles.

So are men and women really all that different?

Let’s use directions as an example. Have you ever asked a man and a woman for directions? How are their directions different? Typically, (not always) men will focus more on spatial orientation (North, East, street names, etc.) while women will focus more on relationship orientation (landmarks).

This example explains a lot about the difference in men and women’s brains. The spatial orientation/relationship orientation goes past just directions. this relates to how men are more likely to take action immediately while women will take a moment to handle the emotions of a situation. Men are typically more straightforward, only handling one thing at a time, while women like to look at many different ways to complete a task and can be working on many things at once.

When it comes to parenting, mothers are generally more nurturing, while fathers are more playful and are most often the provider and protector. It’s important for a child to have both and mother and a father in the home, because having both of these gender roles as parents will give them the best upbringing possible. It helps children learn how to handle their emotions in both perspectives.

So if men and women are so different, how are we supposed to work together?

In a talk by Linda K. Burton, she says, “In a chapter about families, the Church handbook contains this statement: ‘The nature of male and female spirits is such that they complete each other.’ Please note that it does not say ‘compete with each other’ but ‘complete each other’! We are here to help, lift, and rejoice with each other as we try to become our very best selves.”

I could not agree with this quote more! I have seen in my own marriage that our traits, as men and women, work together beautifully if we will let them. When men and women work together, we can bring great things to the home and create a successful, loving family. It is important to use these traits we have been given as men and women to work together–to create this sense of “completing each other”. We as men and women have been given divine roles to use in our families, and if we can all find a way to put these traits together, we can be oh so happy and teach our children the wonderful joy of family!

I have found in my own marriage that my husband and I have completely different traits, some regarding to gender and some not. When we are willing to work together, my traits complete his, and vice versa. For example, I hate cleaning the bathroom and my husband hates doing laundry. So because he doesn’t mind cleaning the bathroom and I don’t mind laundry, we told each other that he will always clean the bathroom and I will always do laundry–our system works out so well! This is just a small, minor example of our traits as men and women working well together, but I have realized that because we communicated this to one another, it makes us so much happier and it makes our household so much more efficient!

Gender roles are so important when it comes to parenting. Although my husband and I are not yet parents, we have already talked about how we will handle things when we start our family. Because of our values, we have decided that my husband will work and I will stay at home with our kids. We believe that because women are more nurturing and teaching in nature, it is best that I stay home with the kids, to help raise them to be loving individuals. Similarly, because men are more protecting and providing in nature, we decided it would be best that my husband go to work and provide for our family. It is extremely important to decide family roles based on personal beliefs and values, while taking gender roles into consideration.

We must always remember that males and females are not the same. We weren’t made the same biologically, and we shouldn’t be treated that way culturally either. It is also important to note that while we are not the same, we are still equal. We both have amazing things to bring to society and both roles are equally important, especially in families.

 

Culture is something that most would agree has a great impact on today’s society. But how does culture affect our families?

First, let’s define culture. Culture is defined as customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or geographical group. Each family typically has their own culture based on their traditions, religion and other beliefs, ethnicity, language they speak, geographical location, even the family dynamic determines their culture. But sometimes subcultures emerge in families, when a family member changes there religious beliefs, when not all family members speak the same language, when a family member moves to a new geographical location, you get the idea.

I would like to use my own family as an example of these “subcultures”. I grew up in a traditional family with my father, mother, and three sisters all living under one roof. We were your typical American family—went to church every Sunday together, ate family dinner every night, had family night once a week, we even did movie and game nights quite frequently. However, our family culture completely changed when three things happened.

First, my dad started his own business which kept him traveling nearly every week. This changed the culture of my family a great deal, because we got used to our family being us five girls the majority of the time. We still had family dinner, still wen to church every week, still spent time together as a family. But because my dad wasn’t home very often, we had this new subculture of us girls. It was much different when my dad was home, almost as if he were an outsider. And things became much different for our family from then on out.

Second, my dad changed his religious beliefs. This was an extremely drastic culture change for my family, because being member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, this was a very big deal for our family. Religion is a huge part of culture, and my dad’s change in his beliefs caused our already formed subculture to be even bigger, and he became even more of an outsider to our family.

Thenthurd thing that drastically changed my family’s culture was my parent’s divorce. Their divorce created even more subcultures in my family, because now it wasn’t just my mom and us girls compared to the entire family. Now we had this new subculture emerge of just my sisters and me because we were going through this incredibly hard thing together. My family culture was completely different, and continues to change as my parents hav remarried and there are new step-parents and step-siblings thrown into the mix.

Through all this change, I have at times ondered how my family got so far from the culture I grew up in, all the way to this completely different, new culture. I have often told myself that I would never allow my own family to get so off track, but have also wondered if it’s inevitable that my family’s culture will always affect me.

But I learned something recently that has completely changed my perspective on things.

We all get to choose the family culture we create so long as we are aware of it and willing to change.

This has stuck with me ever since I heard it, because I realized that I have the power to choose the culture of my family. I can choose which things I take from my family and which things to throw out. I have the power to completely change.

Though family culture is an aspect that will always be there whether we realize it or not, it is in our control. This piece of information has completely changed my perspective Andy I hope it can help even one person out there too.

 

Whether aware of it or not, all family members have specific roles. This concept is important because it helps the family to function properly. Roles are always based on values, whether we evaluate our values beforehand or not. While the most commonly thought of roles in the home are the father and the mother, children and siblings also hold important roles in the family.

I come from a family of all girls. In my family, my role was the “bossy older sister”. I’ve always had an innate motherly nature, so I naturally took on the role of what I thought was a caring, second mother, but my sisters viewed this role as a bossy older sister who thinks she knows better than you. Though I genuinely thought I was being helpful and lightening my mother’s load, I came off as bossy and naggy to my sisters (and probably to my parents as well). This is why it is important for families to not only understand one another’s roles, but also understand the intentions behind those roles. I firmly believe in weekly family council and believe that if family roles are discussed among family members, we can be much more effective.

My husband and I do not have any children yet, but we have already established some pretty distinct roles for our future family. Although we both work since we don’t have any children (yet) to care for, it has already been decided between us that he will be the provider and I will stay home with our children. We believe that mothers staying in the home is of great value and tremendously benefits children. We also have established our roles as parents when the time comes, and we will continue to counsel with one another as we have children and need to make adjustments.

As a married couple, we also have current roles, specifically pertaining to house chores. I would say for the most part our roles are pretty traditional, but we are both always willing to help out wherever and whenever is needed. For example, I typically cook dinner and do laundry and my husband takes out the trash and does any handy work around the house. But if ever my husband wants to cook dinner, he does. And if I see that the trash needs to be taken out, I’m more than willing to help out. I believe that these traditional roles are there for a reason, because men and women were created with specific innate abilities and talents, but I also think it is important to know how to accomplish all of these tasks.

This is something that my husband and I believe is very important to teach our children. While it makes sense to have our sons mow the lawn, take out the trash, etc. because their muscle structure is different, I also want them to learn how to cook, do laundry, grocery shop, etc. The same can be said for our daughters. Yes, I look forward to teaching my daughters to bake as it can become a fun thing to do together, I also want to teach them how to do yard work and all other household chores. These are skills that I believe everyone should have and I want to give my children the best upbringing possible so they can be effective members of society as adults.

I believe that family roles are vital to functioning families. It is important for family members to know their place, and for everyone to understand why their roles are what they are. Having roles that meet your values and knowing all these skills will help families become effective and functional, and I believe if families will counsel together to establish these roles, this can be accomplished.

Our society is completely changing in many different aspects–especially regarding family. So many things that used to be completely taboo subjects are becoming so socially acceptable that even the media portrays it as normal. What a lot of people don’t know, is that these exact subjects are completely DESTROYING the family.

I believe that premarital sex is the basis for all of these changes in the family. Premarital sex leads to delayed marriage age, birth rates decreasing, cohabitation, an increase in births to unmarried women… the list goes on and on. This is a problem because it is creating an increase in more broken families among our nation. Research shows that the best situation for children is in a traditional, two-parent family, as shown in this study. Unfortunately, premarital sex is creating a dramatic increase in single parent homes, which is affecting the next generation.

Cohabitation is another one of these dangerous trends that is creating more single-parent and broken families. Most don’t see the harm in cohabitation, and some even believe that cohabitation creates a stronger marriage because you get a “trial run” for marriage. According to Meg Jay in her article on the downsides of cohabitation, “Couples who cohabit before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriages — and more likely to divorce — than couples who do not.”

But why? Many who cohabit before being married or even engaged would agree that they wanted to live with their significant other to “test it out” while the door is still open. They want to be able to leave whenever problems arise without having that high commitment of marriage. The problem with this is that when these cohabiting couples do get married, the door never completely closes. They don’t know how to resolve major conflicts in their marriage because if these conflicts had come up when they were cohabiting, they would have left. These couples also have a lower level of commitment–because if they had a high commitment to their significant other, they wouldn’t have needed that “trial run” before committing to marriage.

An unfortunate trend in our society is the increase in births to unmarried mothers. Sadly, this trend is becoming something that most don’t even view as a bad thing anymore–it has become completely socially acceptable. While we should always lend our support to these single mothers, I don’t believe this should be a “normal” trend. 41% of babies today are born to unmarried mothers. This means that nearly HALF of the next generation have entered this world into broken families.

In his article on fragile families, LaVar Young says, “Previous research demonstrates that children who live apart from one of their parents at some point in their childhood are twice as likely to drop out of high school, twice as likely to have a child before age 20, and one and a half times as likely to be out of school or work by their late teens or early 20s.” To me, this is a scary statistic–a trend that absolutely needs to change. Having children out of wedlock is creating a domino effect for even more children born into families without both parents in the home. This NEEDS to CHANGE.

While I have written about some rather disappointing trends in today’s family in America, there is still hope. We, the next generation of parents, can make this change. All it takes is a little education and a lot of action. Let us do what we can to make these changes to create the best world possible for our children. It all starts with FAMILY.

 

 

 

 

Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Elisabeth Hampton and I am originally from Dallas, TX but I  am currently studying Marriage & Family Relations at Brigham Young University-Idaho. I have been married for a little over a year and my husband is my best friend and adventure partner. I hope to use this blog to share my insights about the family that I learn in my Family Relations Class, along with things I have learned (and will continue to learn) in my marriage.