Update on Research Findings

So far, good results! I have been able to get 24 people to answer my survey. I mainly stuck with people with people between the ages of 16-18. I asked them different questions like "Have your parents ever helped you with your homework?, Has your family ever done regular family activities? Would you ever feel comfortable asking your parents for help with problems? Do you believe in true love?" Simple questions that should show a positive side effect of having an intact family. At a quick glance looking at my results, only 4 of the 24 people have parents who are divorced and yet all 24 people have responded Yes to believing in true love, even if some of their parent's marriage may have failed. PEOPLE STILL BELIEVE IN TRUE LOVE! Thank goodness! And this isn't coming from just all hopelessly romantic girls, half of the survey takers have been males, so hey, I guess boys want love too. 
Well I'm very happy with the way the survey is going so far and I'm excited to continue looking at the results and getting all my results together for the presentation.

Research Project

So my for this research project I am going to start sending out a survey to people who I expect will be in the age range of about 14-18. I plan on asking questions that ask how subtly ask how they feel about committed relationships and their thoughts on love. I want to ask how they feel in family situations and if they feel they are supported in their family environment. By asking questions such as these in subtle ways I want to see what some of the positive and negative side effects there may be from an in-tact marriage, or see how an divorced parent family affects the child's view on comfort with relationships and their sense of security. I hope to send our this survey through social media sites and see what types of responses I can get. 
Wish me luck for some good results!

Further Detailed Research Plan

So for now, I believe I have decided to do a survey research in finding out more information about families in tact. I want to get a survey out to people my age, girls and boys, and adults. I want to see a range of differences between how families differed from those of adults and teens today. I want to get my survey out to my friends through social networks like facebook and tumblr. If I can get some people on tumblr to respond to the survey I know I will definitely get some variety. I can get this survey out to people as soon as I am done with coming up with questions. 
I will be using a Likert scale as a part of my survey to evaluate people's opinions on specific situations of having parents who are not divorced. I'm researching it this way to get a record of people's experiences and see how their parents being together has affected them in some way. 

Suggested Research Method

So, it's time for RESEARCH!
The time has come for me to put Marriage and Family in Tact into action. Though I am not COMPLETELY sure, for now I have decided to use survey research to find out information about people and ask them a variety of questions regarding their family. I think it would be interesting to find out what my fellow classmates family life is like and see what their responses are to some of the questions.
I think with a variety of girls at the school, comes with a variety of responses. I will also reach out to my fellow guy friends (whoo!) and have them answer the survey to add on to the research.
In the name of research, here we goooo!

Choice Post

Welcome back to another week of Marriage & Familia In Tact! (Yes, I purposely wrote familia)

This week I decided to do my choice post on an article  I read that I actually REALLY REALLY liked. The author began talking about how when he went away to college he thanked his parents for everything they had done for him in his 18 years. He realized how much his parents had given him and took the opportunity every now and again to tell them he loved them. He then goes on to talk about how many teens today don't follow the 5th Commandment. All you Catholics out there should know which one that is! Am I right? *spoiler: "Honor your father and mother* The author goes to speak to young adults about the importance of honoring, respecting, and thanking our parents. He then says how when his father died, he knew he had expressed his love for his dad while he was alive, but wondered if his dad ever really knew how much. He then wrote a long tribute for his mother and tell her now how much he appreciated and loved her. He encourages his readers to do the same for their parents.

I think this article says a lot about the relationship of a child and their parent(s). I think it's extremely important to let our parents know how we feel about them, how we thank them for all they have done for us. All the sacrifices and struggles, they did it for us. That is truly one of the greatest loves of all in my eyes. I think we need to reevaluate ourselves before we let a stupid comment slip when we talk to our parents. Yes, they make tick us off, but that is definitely no reason to disrespect them. Been there, regretted that. 

As I'm getting older I'm realizing how important family is, how they become one of your only life lines and you'll depend on them much more as you get older, but you also have to separate yourself from them to find your own independence. Having a perfect balance of both, interdependence, will allow us for a a successful relationship with our parents. 

I think before the end of my senior year, I will also write a tribute to my parents. They deserve it.

Choice Post

So for the choice post, a video about the benefits of families helping their kids do better in school. Families are proven to help boost their child's performance in school, which makes sense when you really think about it. You grow up with parents that have helped you and encouraged you to get your homework done. Parents help in the progress of their children's development. 

Without the encouragement or input from your parents, why would you even care about school? Why would you feel the need to do homework or study if it didn't matter, or if you didn't have that one parent telling you constantly to get your homework done before you watch tv. It's extremely important for our parents to be involved in our school lives because they care about our education and want us to have something better than they had. Sure, we may never need calculus or need to know what the chemicals in our bodies are, but our parents do want us to learn. They want us to understand what it means to learn a topic, sturggle with it, and then excel. Our parents are just the driving force to help us and tell us "you can do it!" when we are at our lowest points. *cough SENIORITIS cough *


I guess all the nagging from your mom or dad saying "Did you do your homework yet?" or "Finish your homework" was just for our own good. Our parents DO care and want us to succeed. 

Article Post

In this article it talks about how less American teens are living at home with biological parents that are still married to each other .The importance of a strong family foundation provides their children with information on how to build stronger families in the future that sometimes step-parents don't provide. Less than half percent of 17 years old live with their biological married parents. It affects not only the relationships between the parents but with their children as well and ultimately with the entire family structure. Couples who remained together were mostly Asian, then Whites, Hispanics, and then multi-racial couples. 


I think it is rather shocking how less teens are living with their biological parents who aren't married to each other. I think that parents who don't stick together often give a certain view to their children that marriages don't work. 

Taking media into account on Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Kourtney (the sister who has 2 children and is not married) said she didn't want to get married because she saw her parent's relationship fail. She fears that her kids will suffer what she did. 
I agree that it definitely could affect children's lives to see their parents not keep a strong relationship and make them feel like love can't be achieved or successful. 

LOVE IS POSSIBLE PEOPLE! DON'T GIVE UP ON LOVE! 

Choice

For this choice post I decided to base it off of this article  that talks more about marriages. It says that married couples that attend church together tend to be happier. Those who spend more time together before their child is born also grow closer with each other during the pregnancy. It also says that marriages where each person comes from intact families tend to have a strong and more enduring marriage. Marriages in which the individuals moved in together before getting married also reported a greater likelihood of divorce. These reports on all aspects of dating into married life are very specific, but could also turn out to be wrong in some situations. 

I do agree with the thought that couples attending church together may strengthen their connection because they both set their focus on their God and may feel at peace during Church. (On Married to Jonas, Kevin and Dani were seen attending church together and how she felt at peace being at church with him). I also think that when someone's parents are together, the person looks up to their parent's marriage and uses it as an example of how they will behave in their own marriage. Monkey see monkey do. I agree with these two points because I feel that a relationship can be strengthened through faith and be successful when the couple has seen another successful marriage all their life. Though that's not to say someone whose parents are divorced can't have a success marriage.

Marriage is such a crazy and wild adventure, you can only hope that you and your spouse try and see eye to eye in your morals and values. It's only when a couple can really work together can they make their marriage thrive. 

Video

In my video post, I want to talk about a video I watched featured on familyfacts.org. In this video, it makes claims that in tact families help to support the children and less likely to have their children get involved in any substance abuse. It stresses the importance on "How to Say No" and that family plays a very important and large role in a child or teen's decision to get involved in a risky situation. Parents are the main teachers in a family that socialize their children on how to live in society. However, society often implements factors that are not for our well being and more often than not, many teenagers fall into that trap. Instead of finding comfort in a family, one finds comfort in drugs, drinking, or smoking. 
My parents have always guided me and taught me that drinking or doing drugs are never an answer to anything. They are substances meant to ruin a person and prevent them from becoming their selves. I have never attempted or wanted to do any of these things because what my parents have told me always stood in the back of my mind. I feel that parents truly are the important teachers in a child's life and if they are not the ones to teach a child right from wrong, the child will just be left to experiment and find out for themselves and possibly suffer some serious consequences. 

Choice

In my choice post, I want to talk about my own experiences with marriage and family in tact. My parents have been thankfully married for more than 30 years. I want to say 32 years, but for now to be safe let's say 30. (sorry mom and dad). They have had their ups and downs, three lovely children, and to me, my parent's haven't changed a bit. One thing I can appreciate about my parents is that they have always loved me and supported me. But what I've noticed is that the spark between my parents has never fizzled. My mom always tells me stories about how when they were younger they would go out together and always dance the night away at family parties. To this day, that still holds true. My parents are always the life of any party they go to. They are happy, outgoing, and positive people and I'm glad I've been able to inherit some of those traits. Whenever my family goes out, they always insist on taking a million pictures. But I guess a million is an understatement. My parent's mantra is to take pictures so they always have a memory of everything they do. Personally, I love this little hobby of theirs, because it is an easy way to remember everything we've done as a family, but also we treasure the moments we spend with each other. My parents love to have a memory and thanks to them, I feel the same way too, even though getting candid pictures taken every minute bothers me at times. 

My point is: my parent's love has always been strong and I think because of this, it keeps my family together. Even through the arguments, we remember what it is to love and be loved. Family is centered around love and without it, what would be the definition of a family? 

(my friend) Nikki Pire: "You're parents are literally so cute, you can quote me."

1st Article

Hey welcome back! 

So as you might recall from my previous blog post, I talked about an article I found on Yahoo! that talked about whether in a marriage, should the love between the man and wife be stronger or more important than the love between parent and child? At first, most would say, who wouldn't do anything for their child or love them more than anything, right? Well I would have been one to agree. But this article proved a point that children look up to their parents for the love and nourishment and learn from the type of love formed between the parents. The article said that if there is no love between the parents, how can their children learn and express love if they don't see it between the two people who should have it the most? 

I feel that after reading the article, our parents should really put their relationship first. Kids look up to their parents and want to see them be happy and hope that maybe one day we can experience the same type of love our parents have. I know that many people think its gross when they see their parents kiss or be affectionate, but isn't that what we would want from OUR spouse in the future? I feel that in order to maintain a healthy and functioning family, the parents must love each other first and foremost. They then can focus their attention on their children and the love can only build in the family. 

and now time for a sing along!

Intro

Hello blogger!

Well this is the start of my sociology assignment and my topic is *drum roll*
Marriage and Family-In Tact!

Now what does that mean? This means that throughout my blog I will be discussing stories and information regarding Marriage and Families that have parents who are NOT divorced and are still together and married ('til death do they part).

I chose this topic for my blog because about a month ago while on Yahoo! I came across an article that talked about whether spouses should love each other more than they love their children. I'll be talking about that article in another future blog post but it really got me thinking. I was interested to know why some families and parents stay together while others unfortunately do not. How does this affect the children? How does this affect the divorcees? Also families in tact could also go as far into saying, families where children have not moved out to live on a campus for college and how that can affect the dynamics of a family. 

All these questions and ideas will be explored more in depth, coming very soon. I'm very excited and interested to research more on this topic and see what kind of information is out there regarding the topic. 

Check back soon!