Chloe's Insights on Marriage and Family Relationships

Hello my friends!  For those that don't know I started this blog for a class I was taking. The class was called Family Relations and each week we studied various topics of the family and marriage. Although I was required to start this blog it quickly became a very therapeutic experience for me. I was able to talk about my opinions and experiences as openly as I wanted to because I knew that anyone who read it would probably not even know me!   I'm so glad I got this opportunity to create this blog and be able to write about these things I'm so passionate about. If you've been here since the beginning, you might know that I am a psychology major with a minor in marriage and family studies. I've always been fascinated by how these unspoken systems work (or lack thereof) and how we can help each other to create better and stronger relationships!   And I hope you guys learned some stuff along the way as well. I know I am not perfect so there are many other sources t...

     Greetings again to my friends of the blog and welcome to another discussion where we learn more about topics regarding marriage and family! Today I want to discuss parenting. This topic may have a different tone for each individual as parenting looks different in each household. Although it is subjective, generally speaking, there are children that have experienced good parenting, some experienced bad parenting and some experienced a lack of parenting completely. A good question to ask yourself is am I actually parenting them or am I just keeping them alive?  Speaking for myself I think I experienced good parenting, with some bumps here and there. After all what you realize as you get older is that your parents are just big kids and don’t truly know what they’re doing most of the time. This results in some mistakes being made every once in a while, a lesson is learned, and they move on with new knowledge. And it also will look different for each child. You may h...

               Hello my smart and distinguished pals! As always, my name is Chloe Capener, marriage and family topic enthusiast and learner, and I am back to discuss another family topic with y’all! I would say today’s topic is very commonly experienced by everyone within a family, especially myself. And this is because according to a recent survey done by the Institute for Divorce Financial Analysts, this topic is one of the three leading causes of Divorce as of 2013. The topic is finances. More specifically family finances and fatherhood. It is primarily expected in a traditional family for the father to be the primary or sole provider of the family’s finances. But with today’s climate and inflation, it is merely impossible for a family to live on one salary. Usually both parents now need to work for the family to be able to live above the poverty line, unless one spouse has a very well-paying job.         ...

               Greetings friends! I would like to welcome you back to another discussion on a subject surrounding marriage and family relationships! The topic I would like to discuss with y’all today is problems with communication. Communication is something we participate in every day and is one of the most important skills in all variations of relationships. It is also an ongoing skill that we develop as we grow and will never fully finish developing. We can always improve our communication skills and through that our relationship quality and duration can be enhanced in every way.                  For the benefit of this discussion, it is important to understand the types of communication we participate in in relationships. You may only think of a person’s words, but there is much more to it. According to multiple studies done it is generally agreed upon that non-verbal language (not sp...

        Hey readers and welcome back to our discussion of marriage and family relationships! Today’s topic is a little more uncomfortable than others just because of some intimate subject matters. However, I do believe that these conversations not only are beneficial to discuss but are vital to those who are considering marriage with someone.          How did you first hear about sex? The age we hear about this can really depend, when we consider where someone is from and what culture they grew up in. I think the majority of us in the United States can say that they learned about the concept of sex at a relatively young age. For me, I think I learned about sex about the age of maybe 8 or 9. I had a neighborhood friend who was a year older than me and must have thought I needed to be under her wing with this subject matter. Luckily, it was not in an abrasive or crude way that I know a lot of others have experienced. I do believe that that...

           Happy June!           Hello again readers and welcome to another discussion on my personal insights into marriage and family relationships! Today I wanted to get the ball rolling and discuss the transitional periods in a marriage. This can be any period of time where there is a big shift in the dynamic or form of the family unit or couple. Some of these big shifts could be officially getting married, adjusting to married life and cohabitation, choosing to have a first child, and decisions regarding having additional children.            There are several things to consider about these periods of change that I would like to talk about. One thing that’s been on my mind is transitioning into married life and living with your spouse. Growing up one thing I dreaded and even now don’t prefer is sharing a room and bed. I like to choose sporadically when I'm going to bed, like to be by myse...

          Hello blog viewers and welcome to our fifth post to this series! For this discussion I wanted to talk about preparing for marriage and how it looks different for different groups. It seemingly looks different for everyone, but culture and generations change how we prepare for marriage.             I first think of the difference between western cultures and other cultures within the context of dating. I know in other cultures it would not be completely strange or wrong to suggest a price for a woman to marry. In our culture we would consider that inhumane and would very much consider that objectifying to women. I do find it so interesting that we fail to realize a lot of the time that we hold paradigms and perspectives from our culture and environment that make it hard for us to understand how things could be done any differently.             I secondly think of the di...

💗Hey there friends !💙 It's been a very interesting week full of pondering and discussion around the role of gender and how that makes males and females different, especially within the context of family. I th ink sometimes we att ribute these traits and behaviors to who your mom, sister, brother, or dad just is, but most people follow those certain patterns of gender roles just in their nature. This nature is theorized to be caused by so many things. Some people believe it is evolutionary in that the man used to hunt, and the woman would care and nurture.   In my own experience growing up and even now m y family is  a g reat exa mple of male and female gender roles. My mom does not work anymore, and my d ad works to provide fo r o ur fa mil y .   My mom stays home and takes care of the kids and all other domestic duties such as cooking and cleaning.   I am a religious person, so I truly believe this to not be a coincidence. I believe God created ma...

            This week I wanted to discuss how the social classes and cultures that we are surrounded by affect our behaviors and attitudes in our own family units. We truly are fabricated by our environments and how the people that raise us react to those environments. A very simple and minimal example of this principle is that my parents raised my siblings and I in the state of Oregon. The area of Oregon where we lived was , for the most part, the stereotypical Oregon city. A part of the classic stereotype is being very environmentally conscious, and in my area we were. More specifically our community was big on recycling. It was very normal to recycle cardboard, cans, plastic, etc. Anything you could think of, we separated it from our normal trash. So, when I moved to Idaho, my roommates I was living with (who were mostly from the South) did not separate the recycling from the trash. And to add to it, my apartment complex I lived in did not do rec...

Something I have been pondering this week is the communication that happens without any words said. Sometimes I only think of the words I say and perceive that as what people are receiving on their end, but a lot of communication does not require spoken word at all. Most of it is through body language and sounds we make. Think of sighing, or scoffing.        This within a family context can be incredibly interesting to observe . So many families have different body language or sound cues that signify a response from the other person. These are often rules we input into our own behavior because we see others do it and adopt it as our own code of behavior.        A personal hypothesis I created is that babies mimic their parents when they are just learning how to talk, behave, etc. So, we normally also pick up on these unspoken rules as we grow older in order to fit in with the family dynamic and society in general.    ...