Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Week 1: Marriage and Family Trends

This week our class has been covering the many different trends that have increased among marriages and families in America.  Trends such as cohabiting, marriage age, the number of children couples have, the age when married couples have children, teen pregnancy, premarital sex, etc.  We were talking about which ones may be significant, interesting, or incidental.  They were more opinionated rather than factual.  As I looked at the list of trends, I noticed that they all effected the family in some way or form.  For example, cohabiting can lead to marriage at a later age, which leads them having children at an older age, which can lead to the number of children being one or two possibly because they lack energy or youth to have children.  If the couple married at a younger age, they have more time to be able to have children.  So many of the trends correlate with each other.  Teen pregnancy can lead to single mothers that need to be employed.  There are plenty of examples like this.  My insight from class Monday and today is that most of the list of trends are significant to me.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Blog Introduction

This post is just an introduction of myself and an explanation of what this blog is about.  
I'll start with myself.  I'm a college student who has been married for almost 2 years.  My husband and I are expecting our first child which is really exciting and nerve-wrecking at the same time.  I am now 4 months pregnant and get to find out the gender of my baby in a month.  So don't be surprised if I talk about my baby a lot, it's going to make me a mother in about 5 months, and what I learn in my class will be related to parenting.  
I am in my first week of my Family Relations class and keeping a blog is one of its requirements.  The point of the blog is to share my thoughts and insights that I gained from class each week.  For those reading who may not know what the class is about, here's a little description.  From just the word "Family" you've probably already guessed that it has to do with families, which is correct.  It also has to do with social science research skills about families that we'll gain from the class.  I still have yet to figure out what more I'll be learning about, but that's what I'll be sharing with you as I make my weekly posts.  I'll keep you posted starting next week!

-Brenna