Blended Families

Most children in the United States, 60%, will spend some of their life living with someone other than both of their biological parents. There are many families whose parents are separated because of divorce, death, or some other reason. Many people choose to remarry after these tragedies. This is a unique situation when two families come together to make a new family. There are some things the new parents can do to help establish this new family.

1. Be patient. Studies show that it takes at least two years to establish normalcy in a blended family. A blended family is different than a traditional family and it takes time for the members of the blended family to feel comfortable and normal in their new family.
2. The birth parent should be in charge of handling the heavy discipline of their birth children. When two families come together, they come with different rules and expectations. Their new parent needs to establish a warm healthy relationship with their new children before they can effectively discipline them.
3. The step-parent needs to build a good relationship with their new children. They need to be supportive, loving, and encouraging to them. They also should stand by their new spouse in their parenting of their birth children.
4. The couple needs to take time to counsel with one another. They need to make sure they are communicating with one another so they can rely on one another for support. The transitioning into a blended family is difficult and the best way to help children adjust is for the parents to build a strong relationship with one another.

Family Crisis

Reuben Hill created a model to understand why families react differently to the same stress or crisis. His developed the ABCX model.

• A is the Actual event: what happened
• B is the Behavioral responses: resources the family has and uses to cope with the stress
• C is Cognitions: the way the family defines the stressful situation. 
• X is the total eXperience: everything that happened as a result and the outcomes of the event

The families that were able to overcome the crisis and return to the same level of happiness they were at before the event or to a higher level, were those families who used their resources and defined the event as a hardship but not something they couldn't overcome. 

For example two families, the Smith's and the Jones's, face the event of their fathers being laid off of work. The Actual event is the same for both families. Say the Smith's define this event as the end of the world and that their way of life is ending. None of the other family members seek to find work to help provide income. And they don't have very much money saved up for emergencies like these. Obviously the Smith's will struggle and do very poorly if their father doesn't find work quickly.
The Jones's, on the other hand, define the event as a hardship but they know it will pass. Every able family member decides to look for work to help the family through this hard time. They also have some money saved up to spend if necessary. The Jones's will do okay even if their father doesn't find work very quickly. Even though both the families had their fathers out of a job, the Jones's will do better in the long run because of the way they defined the event and because they used all their resources available to them.

The Divine Role of Mothers

I love all of these quotes about Mothers and their divine role in our Heavenly Father's plan.

Elder Cook: 

"No woman should ever feel the need to apologize or feel that her contribution is less significant because she is devoting her primary efforts to raising and nurturing children. Nothing could be more significant in our Father in Heaven’s plan."

President Hinckley: 

"Encouraged them to leave their employment and give their individual time to their children."

"The greatest job that any mother will ever do will be in nurturing, teaching, lifting, encouraging, and rearing her children in righteousness and truth. None other can adequately take her place."

"As the years pass, you will become increasingly grateful for that which you did in molding the lives of your children in the direction of righteousness and goodness, integrity and faith. That is most likely to happen if you can spend adequate time with them."

President Benson: 

"Mothers…are, or should be, the very heart and soul of the family. No more sacred word exists in secular or holy writ than that of mother. There is no more noble work than that of a good and God-fearing mother."

"But a mother's role is also God-ordained. Mothers are to conceive, to nourish, to love, and to train."

"The Lord clearly defined the roles of mothers and fathers in providing for and rearing a righteous posterity. In the beginning, Adam--not Eve--was instructed to earn the bread by the sweat of his brow. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a mother's calling is in the home, not in the market place."

"Mothers in Zion, your God-given roles are so vital to your own exaltation and to the salvation and exaltation of your family. A child needs a mother more than all the things money can buy. Spending time with your children is the greatest gift of all."

President Kimball: 

"Become a career woman in the greatest career on earth--that of homemaker, wife, and mother. It was never intended by the Lord that married women should compete with men in employment. They have a far greater and more important service to render."

"Her place is in the home, to build the home into a haven of delight."

"No career approaches in importance that of wife, homemaker, mother--cooking meals, washing dishes, making beds for one's precious husband and children. Come home, wives, to your husbands. Make home a heaven for them. Come home, wives, to your children, born and unborn. Wrap the motherly cloak about you and, unembarrassed, help in a major role to create the bodies for the immortal souls who anxiously await. When you have fully complemented your husband in home life and borne the children, growing up full of faith, integrity, responsibility, and goodness, then you have achieved your accomplishment supreme, without peer, and you will be the envy [of all] through time and eternity."

President McKay: 

"Motherhood is the greatest potential influence either for good or ill in human life."

"This ability and willingness to properly rear children, the gift to love, and eagerness, yes, longing to express it in soul development, make motherhood the noblest office of calling in the world."

"She who rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters, whose influence will be felt through generations to come… deserves the highest honor that man can give, and the choicest blessing of God."

Adoption at its finest

This family is amazing!

Importance of Family

This week in my classes I feel like the overall theme was the world is deteriorating the family. We studied many trends that are sweeping nations all over the world that are leading people away from families. These trends include increased amounts of people participating in premarital sex, more women are having out-of-wedlock childbirths, more people are living alone, more people are choosing to cohabitate, more people are delaying marriage, decreased fertility (women are having less children), the average household size is decreasing, more mothers are working while they have children living at home (especially for women with children under the age of six), and divorce is still present in our societies. I know that families are central to God’s plan. Families are essential in our journey to our return to our Heavenly Father.  Sister Julie B Beck has said, “the plan of happiness and the plan of salvation was a plan created for families… without the family, there is no plan; there is no reason for it.” President Henry B Eyring has also said, “the family unit is not only fundamental to society and to the Church, but to our hope for eternal life.” Elder Robert D Hales said, “because of the importance of the family to the eternal plan of happiness, Satan, makes a major effort to destroy the sanctity of the family, demean the importance of the role of men and women, encourage moral uncleanliness and violations of the sacred law of chastity, and to discourage parents from placing the bearing and rearing of children as on the their highest priorities.” As you look at the worldly trends you can see that Satan is working hard to demean the family.

Here are some of the effects of the crumbling of families around the world. Paul R Amato, a Professor of Family Sociology and Demography at PennState with a Ph.D. in Behavioral Science, did some meta-analyses of the effects living in different types of families had on children’s cognitive, emotional, and social well-being. He found that the best family environment for children to be raised in was in a home that had both of the child’s biological parents who were happily married to one another. Children in divorced families, those who were born outside the bonds of marriage, children living in discordant two parent families, step families, or single-parent families all had some risk of cognitive, emotional, and/or social risks or problems when compared to children who grew up with both their parents in their families. There was actually less risk for children who had had a parent die than those in non-traditional families. Many gay and lesbian couples are pushing for legalized marriages and unions and want the right to adopt children. The world says these people are in love and that there is no effect on the children who are raised in these families. In class we looked at a study that had evidence that these children suffered risks similar to other children who live in non-traditional families. I know that “children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity” (The Family a Proclamation to the World). Elder David A Bednar said, “By divine design, both a man and a woman are needed to bring children into mortality and to provide the best setting the rearing and nurturing of children.” This next quote is from The Divine Institution of Marriage, which is a statement from the church newsroom. “Marriage is far more than a contract between individuals to ratify their affections and provide for mutual obligations. Rather, marriage is a vital institution for rearing children and teaching them to become responsible adults… in almost every culture marriage has been protected and endorsed by governments primarily to preserve and foster the institution most central to rearing children and teaching them the moral values that undergird civilization…The complementarity of male and female parenting styles is striking and of enormous importance to a child's overall development.” Throughout the world there are decreases in fertility: In The Family a Proclamation to the World it states, “God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force.” We still need to have children. These next two quotes show the importance we have in raising our families in the gospel. President Spencer W Kimball, talking about before we came to earth, said, “you understood that you were to act in partnership with God in providing bodies for other spirits equally anxious to come to the earth for righteous purposes. And so you will not postpone parenthood.” President Brigham Young said, “There are multitudes of pure and holy spirits waiting to take tabernacles, now what is our duty?—To prepare tabernacles for them; to take a course that will not tend to drive those spirits into the families of the wicked, where they will be trained in wickedness, debauchery, and every species of crime. It is the duty of every righteous man and woman to prepare tabernacles for all the spirits they can.”

            I know that the Family is of God. Before we came to this earth we lived as a family with a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother. I know we rejoiced when we heard that we would have the opportunity, on earth, to become parents. I know there are spirits waiting to become part of my earthly family. I know that through faith the Lord will help me and my husband raise a righteous family.

This link is to a video about the joy they have received from having children.

Having Children Enriches Your Life

I know the family is of God and that it is part of his eternal plan.