Trends

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What a week! This has been a busy week starting school again for me after coming back from a wonderful study abroad semester in Israel. I am hoping that I will be able to share some insights and things from that over the course of my blog to add to and supplement some of the wonderful concepts and ideas I am learning about in my family relations class. I just wanted to start out this week with a little insight into my life that I want to tie in with some really cool things I learned in class.

I am one of three children in my family, I happen to be the middle child (yes everything they say about being a middle child is true), and I have a very large extended family. On my mother’s side, there is a lot of divorce and re-marriage which has caused a lot of conversation in my house about how to and how not to have a successful marriage. I love my family and I can’t imagine my life without any of the members, but man is family a topic of heated discussion at times. After seeing so many failed marriages, almost failed marriages, unhappy marriages, and contentious relationships, it has been easy for me to look around and wonder if a happy successful marriage exists.

Societal trends are interesting, that is why they are so thoroughly studied. For example, it is a widely excepted “fact” (I use the term “fact” very loosely”) that 50% of marriages will end in divorce. Looking at my family, you may think that this is true. Looking at the “facts” that others give you or tell you it would be easy to accept this as well. It was shocking to me to hear that this isn’t actually true. In reality, only about a quarter of marriages end in divorce. While this could be considered as being a lot, it is nothing compared to the whopping ½ of what people used to believe.

This is just one example of many social trends that might surprise you. For example, did you know that:
-       Women are having children later
-       Fewer people are getting married/marriage is in decline
-       Unmarried births are increasing
-       Pre-marital sex has increased
-       The divorce rate has decreased (perhaps because less people are getting married)

Some of these may be a surprise, some may not, but either way, these societal changes are striking when considered not as separate pieces, but a whole concept that family is in the decline. Family is not being treasured. Family is not the first priority. There is a flip side to all of these facts. Instead of simply looking at them you may ask instead:
-       What are women doing earlier if they are having children later?
-       What are more people doing if fewer people are getting married?
-       Why are married births decreasing?
-       Why aren’t people waiting to have sex until they are married?
-       What is the cause of the decrease in divorces?

Societal changes suggest a change in the practice of the people which is always a result of something else. For example, the Baby Boom was a result of economic prosperity. Following the boom, people were scared of overpopulation because of research based on that small moment in time. This caused fear and a decrease in fertility rates. One thing caused a large scare societal change. This makes me wonder what the cause of our current societal trends are. Are we still dealing with small scale fear as a result of the Baby Boom? Is the prevalence of homosexual relationships affecting the statistics like we haven’t seen before? Is family simply less of a priority than it was before? This is something that I want to investigate more as I continue to learn throughout this semester.

As for me and my thoughts about successful marriages. I am still working on developing my opinion on how to do it, but I do believe that it is possible. Looking at the “facts” it sometimes is difficult to see that you can feel happy and fulfilled in a marriage even though the world is not viewing marriage and family as a valuable thing. What it comes down to is your own personal values though and surrounding yourself with things that will help you to achieve your goals, whatever those might be.



Also: I am going to try and post a picture from my week every week so that you can get to know me and know a little more about my life as we go along! This week a bunch of my friends came to Rexburg to visit me for my birthday weekend! We had a great time, this is a picture of us at lunch on campus. I am the blondie in the back(:


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