FAMILY RELATIONS: MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

Around the world, we can find a variety of marriages and families. Whether the married couple is man/woman, man/man, woman/woman. One other type is co-habit living. As for families we see husband and wife who have their own children, foster, adopt, and stepfamilies. There have been studies, research, data collection, and interviews done around the world within the controversy of how marriage and family are or should be. 

One example of this was in 2005, the APA (American Psychological Association) issued an official brief on lesbian and gay parenting. Social science research came out in 2012 with the studies, research, and interviews they did. However, the research had some flaws. There was a gay couple who went to court after getting married in one state where it was legal, but then wanted the state they lived in (California) to recognize their marriage and they were wanting to adopt. The brief done was presented that "Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents." Seven central questions address: 1- homogenous sampling, 2- the absence of comparison groups, 23 comparison group characteristics, 4- contradictory data, 5- the limited scope of children's outcomes studied, 6- the paucity of long-term outcome data, 7- lack of APA-urged statistical power.

This brought about a unique discussion in our Family Relations class. We were quite frustrated with the lack of research done, as most studies and interviews were compared with same-sex parents to single mothers. As we went over the data collected, most of the groups in the study were less than 100. In any type of research, a greater number and more variety of people should have been studied.

What factors were thought about you may ask? Income level, careers, most people were Caucasian, and other similar advantages children may have. We may wonder can children no matter what type family still have advantages or disadvantages? I think in any situation the answer is yes. Children have a greater advantage in a family with a biological mom and dad. We visited a website that showed different percentage and categories for children who are in different parent households.  I don’t recall one situation for kids where the mom and dad weren’t the best percentage

Another outlook on how people feel were in interviews we watched online. As a class we had mixed feelings of what we heard. Some people believe that it is easier to just co-habit instead of getting married to see how compatible they are, and figure why marry if will ruin what they have going. Others believed that the world doesn’t need big families, due to lack of resources or the couple want to travel and why add kids to what they have. Others interviewed, felt that traditional families are what we more of. I personally love my family and am grateful to have them. I come from a family with 5 kids total and I have 4 boys.

Along with families, in the past we have also learned that fertility rates were low as the population increased. Families were afraid that there would not only be a mass starvation if they had more than one child, but there wouldn’t be enough resources for what is needed. Other reasons for lack of bigger families, are women who work outside the home, their careers they didn’t want to leave, and for men and women being set in their own ways.

Family values are changing, and not only are people waiting to get married at an older age, but physically women getting pregnant at an older age can be high risk. For those that want their own children and are unable adoption is available as well as IVF.

I am grateful to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who values in family’s being forever and are there to support and help others around us. The world will change but our values and morals and what we believe don’t have to.