Family Mapping

    Imagine you are looking to purchase your first starter home. After searching Zillow, you find 3 homes you like within your price range. How about that! They're all on the same street. You decide to drive over to the neighborhood and check it out.

    As you drive down the cull de sac, you see the first home. There’s a cinderblock wall surrounding the perimeter of the home. As you look around you notice that it completely circles the entire property, and that you can’t even see the home inside, besides the slope of roof over the top of the wall. You decide to move on.

    Next you walk down the sidewalk to look at the next house. As you get closer you see that an astonishing number of people are coming and going, in and out of the house. You also notice that there is loud music playing, people sitting on the roof, and the whole property seems to be in disarray. Empty soda cans lay all around, and you notice there seems to be no fence of any kind on this property. You decide to move on.

    Lastly as you hear the noises of the previous property start to fade away and you round the bend, you see the 3rd home. It mirrors the photos you saw perfectly! Freshly painted, yard mowed and kept up. A little white picket fence surrounds the property. What a relief it is at least one of these homes was worth the trip.

    The previous scenario may feel relatable for anybody who has purchased a home; however it is a good illustration for a specific scenario that happens in parenting. In some cases, especially in the case of a parents with only one child. (See data on only children below) Think of the parents as the house, and their actions as the fence or lack thereof. The first home with a cinderblock barricade around the property, is similar to parents who are not present. Perhaps they both are very invested in their careers and the child spends most of their time with a nanny or babysitter. This leads to children being blocked off from their parents, as they are not playing an active role.

    Next let’s take the 2nd home, with a complete lack of barriers, we can think of this like helicopter parenting, because the child (or children) have complete access to the parents anytime they want. Perhaps this looks like the child sleeping in the same bed as the parents, or the child being clingy and dependent.

    Lastly the final home, it sits with a semi permeable picket fence. This allows the children access to the parents when necessary. The parents are allowed to have time for themselves and raise their children on a unified front. It is super important for parents to put their marriage first, because there are huge benefits for the children. Children are happier and better suited for life when they know they have loving and unified parents to look up to.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7313008/ 

"The prevalence rates of anxiety symptom, depressive symptom, and comorbidity of anxiety and depressive symptoms among college students were high, especially in only children. There were no differences between males and females in anxiety symptom, depressive symptom, and comorbidity of anxiety and depressive symptoms among all college students, only child college students and non-only child college students. Only children were associated with anxiety symptom, depressive symptom, and comorbidity of anxiety and depressive symptoms after adjusting potential and important confounding factors. We should pay more attention to the mental health of college students especially only child college students. Intervention measures should be considered for mental health in college students especially only children."

Can you run a Family like a Business?

 Just like a Business, families function best on a system of roles and responsibilities. Oftentimes we aren't even aware of our roles, and yet we fulfill them dutifully. 

    In my family my Mother was very present in all aspects of our lives, she fulfilled the role of stay at home Mom. Making sure we made it to school on time, that we made it to our sports practices and that we practiced the Piano. (Which for most of my siblings we hated) It became her personality that she was available at all times for her children. It was rare that she ever had free time, and when she did it was extremely difficult to find joy in her hobbies. This extreme dedication is very fulfilling yet exhausting.

    Another example is my oldest sister, who is exactly 10 years older than me. As she got to be older she often was required to take on a motherly role as well. She had 5 younger siblings that were getting older and required more help with homework, and being shuttled around to various events. There was a role for her to fill and she filled it.

    Last example of family members filling a void. As a stereotypical middle child I assumed the role of the jokester. I think without realizing it I came to the conclusion that if people were laughing at me, then they would be happy. I made jokes and said edgy or crude things to try and shift attention away from arguments or hard feelings. Does any of this feel familiar? 

    Now that we've discussed children & parents roles and responsibilities in the family unit. Similar to roles in a business, we ask the question "Can you run that same family unit like a business?' Well there's more to it I think let's think about a couple situations.

    Take the example of an overprotective father, and a misbehaving daughter. What role is left for the mother in this family unit? She is stuck in between the two, trying to keep the father from pushing the daughter away. The daughter is secluded from her father because they are prone to conflict.

     What is needed? Understanding. If the daughter could understand that her behavior scares her father, and the father understands his daughter needs a positive and understanding father figure. That would bridge a gap left between the family and the mother would be allowed to resume loving relationships with her husband and daughter.

    Now take yourself back to your childhood, and imagine yourself sitting in the kitchen while mom prepares dinner, you and your mom are talking about how your day has been, what you learned at school etc. Now your dad walks in after work and puts down his gym bag and wraps his arms around your mother, embracing her from behind and kissing her neck. 

    I think back to my childhood and during moments like this, and it's hard to imagine anything wrong in the world. When parents are in love with one another, and united in everything they do they create an environment that allows children to flourish and not worry about roles and responsibilities. You see, families aren't all business, they require love and attention. So you may try and run your family like a business, and you may succeed for a time. However connections and roles are not the same thing, many families miss the mark because they misunderstand each other. Parental roles are primarily for parents. Families are the perfect structure for preparing children to live successful and happy lives, including work relationships, friends, future spouses and especially their own family some day.

How your Family affects the future directly

 Howdy and welcome to the Not-so-Charlie-Browns blog, where the score is made up and the points don’t matter. The essential function of this blog is to act as a catalyst for my thoughts and research on the topic of Family Relations. It is a subject near and dear to my heart, I come from a family of 8 people, and I have 2 sisters and 4 brothers. Needless to say I have some experience around family!

We all get along very well and enjoy spending time together as often as possible. I come from Lehi, Utah and proudly am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints. I hope that as this blog can serve as a platform for open discussion, I am more than willing to have my mind changed! I try to be an open thinker who makes decisions based on fact and reality rather than feeling or emotions.

 There is nothing that affects your happiness in life greater than the quality of your family relationships. No surprises there, right? Now, what if I told you that the quality of your family directly affected the success of the country...

    Children raised in homes where both parents are of the same sex, are statistically put at a disadvantage in life. Our children are the ones who will continue to shape the world when we grow old, they will govern our politics, and perhaps most importantly they will educate the up-and-coming generations to come. Continue reading to learn how your choices may affect the future directly.

    FamilyEquality.org has the following data to offer 

           " Nearly one in five children being raised by same-sex couples (24%) live in poverty compared to 14% of children being raised by different-sex couples. In 2015, 33% of LGBTQ+ parents raising children experienced food insecurity, compared with 20% of their non-LGBTQ+ counterparts." We also know that children from these LGBTQ+ families are more likely to be arrested for criminal offenses, more likely to become addicted to drugs, and less likely to graduate from further education etc...

    From this data we learn that children raised in these same-sex families are put at an economic disadvantage, in many more ways than one! Nearly 4.5% of adults in the U.S. identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ+). That means that there are more than 11.3 million LGBTQ+ adults in the U.S.

I ask you to consider the biological necessity for Man and Woman, why would one of each gender be necessary for creation if it wasn’t necessary for up bringing as well?

    This is a tremendously huge group of people, many of them are living among us and we don’t even know. These people really aren’t all that different from us and don’t deserve anything but love and friendship just like anybody else. However, we cannot disregard the fact they children from these family situations statistically aren’t given as good of a chance to become successful in life. You may think that because of all the freedoms we enjoy as citizens of the United States of America that what you do doesn’t affect others. You’re wrong, you cannot exist in a bubble, everything we do affects the people in our family, community, and country. 

            I hope that despite what might come off as arrogant or insensitive you can tell that I do in fact care about the lives of people, even people in the LGBTQ+ community. I am a big believer in education, but if education is not grounded in reality, then it serves no purpose, worse than that it becomes a poison. Whichever religions or ideologies you subscribe to, that fact remains immutable.