When Children come into a marriage usually marital satisfaction goes down and continues to go down more with every child. It stays low till the first child leaves, then it continues to go up till the last kid leaves and stays at that high. This is extremely common for people who are married. How some of them find happiness and stay happy with each child they have is by constantly involving each other during the pregnancy. As the baby is coming along making sure that every decision you make brings the two of you closer, rather then further apart. One thing we talked about being a big problem with the actual birth of the baby, is when the father is not involved with the baby's birth. Many times when it comes to the birth it seems this is a time for the Mother of the daughter who is having the child to bond, when it needs to be the other way around. This is specifically a time for Father and Mother to bond while the child is coming. When we have moments like these and push Dad away, we start to build a wall between the married couple. The more we cling to someone else other than our spouse, we end up blocking out our spouse more and more. We need to cleve unto our spouse. If we are not willing and trying to do this, why in the world did we marry the person anyway?

"Marriage is crafting, not found"
                                     -Bruce A. Chadwick

As we went over the four different types of love I couldn't help wonder where marriage fit in.
4 Types of Love
*Agape- Charity, compassionate, companion-ate love
*Eros- Physical, lustful, sexual, romantic love
*Philia- Friends, brotherly, a specific person love
*Storge- Parent-Child, commitment and emotion/responsibility, connection love.

I came to the conclusion that we need 100% of all these different kinds of love. How can we stay and grow in love if we don't have connection, or commitment with romance? We need charity to look past the weakness both of you have, while also having a sense of deep friendship or closeness with that person. I believe you need all these "types of love" in order to make a marriage work for forever. Love is not just something that once you have, you have for ever, or even something that just appears. Through growth we gain love. "Love at first sight" might be better put "major attraction at first sight". As you get to know that person love grows, and can continue to grow till you can't even describe in words how you feel for that person. Over all we need an even balance of all these types of love, even though there will seem to be days when one matters more than the other. I don't think Love can necessarily be taught because it's our own choice to love and recognize that, but love does stem out of simple things like kindness, friendliness, and similarities. Love is an amazing thing and a necessity of life and relationships.  

This week our main focus was on gender.
We live in a society where many of the day to day tasks that we do LABEL us as certain gender. For instance, cooking and cleaning is the woman's job. Hunting and fixing things around the house is the man's job. The only problem with this is when a woman does some of the "man's jobs" we have this term for her called tom-boy. When a man likes to knows his colors or can cook and clean, we call him femmie or "mom". Do these things really make us girl or boy? If your little girl plays with cars, is she going to be less of a woman when she gets older? If your little boy plays dolls with his sisters, is he going to be less of a man when he gets older? In my house, I played with cars and video games. I remember my older brother playing beanie babies with me and my little sister. Are we less of our gender now since we seemed to be more of the other gender back then? Never. In my house we all were taught to clean, cook, work, mow the lawn, fix things when they broke, change a tire, and know what our roles are as a female or male. So what are our underlining roles whether female or male? A boy is born with the instincts to protect, provide, and preside. A woman is born with nurturing. I believe we were born male or female for a reason, and you can't go "change" the gender of how you are. Even a male who is raised around women, he might be more sensitive and like to do "girl" things, but he still has those desires and need to protect, provide, and preside over. A woman who is a "tom-boy" her whole life, still will nurture and care, it is a part of who she is. Most of the task I mentioned are daily tasks, necessities of life that need to be taken care of no matter if you are male and female. We can't base gender on those kind of things, we need to realize that we are born in the gender we were before we came here to earth, and those bases "nurture, providing, presiding, and protecting" come with who you are, it is a gift and you need to recognize that and use them properly instead of throwing them away think you are really the other gender or you like your same gender.

CULTURE, AND CLASS

        This week I learned a most valuable lesson. When we talk about race, culture, class, and all these things having an equal part in pulling families apart and giving them a hard time; we neglect to mention how our hearts and minds, and Christ can bring us together in spite of those things and make us stronger than we ever would have been on our own.  A family can stay together no matter how many different races or low of income they may have. This week I learned that if I care enough and my husband cares enough, then culture, race, and class will not a be a struggle in our home. Will it come up now and again, or course it will, but once you are aware that it may cause an issue or strife in the family it’s easier to tackle. And you come out caring and loving for your family more than you ever did before. The problem is that many of us don't learn this thing early enough, and it begins pulling the family apart. Even if we live in a family of all the same race, we still need to teach out children about other good things when it comes to races and cultures, so then they will be prepared to stand up knowing that we all are children of God even with our differences.

Why are families so important?
                In the world today we have many things happening that effect the family. Cohabitation, Employment in mothers, living alone, household sizes getting smaller, premarital sex increase, divorce, and unwed births. Each one of these cause failure in the home and in future homes. I come from a home where both of my parents were married before having kids, they are still married and I have six siblings. The only reason I am confident, have many friends, in college, happy, respectful, healthy, married, trying to have my own kids is because of my family. My father is the one who taught me to be strong and to date and marry a man who respects me. My mother taught me to be tender, help others, find the beautiful joys in life, and that I was able to become all that I wanted to become. On the other hand my siblings taught me social skills, showed me the example of surrounding myself with good people, and gave me experience in building and helping them which brought me to helping others.What I have become in life, would never be possible without my family. Love is the greatest of all things we can learn on this earth. Everyone needs it, and wants to have it. The first place we can learn love without being used or abused is home. And if we can't find it at home, imagine how hard it will be to find it else where. If we continue to just live together, we may never have children and if we do have children we will not teach them the importance of commitment. Same thing happens with unwed births, the kids born into that family not only learn that it doesn't matter to commit but also to not put 100% into their relationships. If we continue to have both mothers and fathers working out of the home, children will be separated from parents and learn bad habits earlier on from daycare's and babysitters. No one can ever raise your child the way you would. If we continue to live alone, we not only suffer ourselves but we stop the option of having children, and if we do have child they are without a father. Same goes for premarital sex, we either use everything we can to not have children (which usually results in depression, no satisfaction, and no happiness) or we end up with a one parent household. Which usually results in someone who can barely take care of themselves let alone a child, or someone who doesn't want a child so they won't teach and love the child like they need to. With smaller household sizes we see the one spoiled kid who has a hard time finding where they fit in reality when they move out. Sometimes those children are rejected by peers and find it hard to make friends. I would not be so outgoing and willing to talk to others if I didn't have six siblings I was always trying to keep up with. Divorce is obvious that it takes a tole on both the parents and the child/children. I'm so grateful for my family. I literally owe them my life.

A Memory....

My mother use to say to me 'you always learn something new every day'. Some how it stuck in my mind that when I learned one new thing that was enough and my day was over. I would try hard to learn one new thing as early as I could, in order to tease my mother with the words "Oh! I just learned something new, that means my day is done, I can go back to bed." It was worth saying in order to see the smile that came on her face. 
As I have moved out of my home, attended school, and have married a wonderful man I continually think back on the truth of my mothers words. You do learn something new everyday. This has become a motto for me with school. I find myself learning MANY new things each and every day, the fun part though is I now get to call my mother and tell her one new thing I learned during that day.

Mothers can say the simplest words, but have the greatest impact on their children.