Fat Panda

So i was raised in a family where spanking was the norm. However, it wasn’t always the most righteous spanking. It was sometimes out of anger but luckily my mom was able to realize when she was about to lose it and would just hand it off to my dad which is why it might have been successful because my dad was normally cool as a cucumber. He was normally more mad that we made our mother upset then he was with what the actual deed was. I think that spanking is a good thing. I believe that if you are able to use it as a learning tool and do it in the right context and not out of a whirlwind of emotion, that it could be a good thing for the child. I have seen many kids come out of the situation with spanking in a very negative way. They normally were more likely to blow up on those around them and generally had a short fuse. I also believe that its important to talk through the reasoning behind the spanking and love them after they have been beaten. This ensures that the child separates the punishment from the parent and understand the reason they are being spanked. My dad when generally just let me run of to my room with a reconciliation of the situation which was hard for me.

The idea of structure versus agency is a really interesting subject. Its sort of like the question of nature versus nurture where it is hard to draw the line between the two. Agency plays a major role but is essentially just a smaller circle in the bigger circle of structure. Our family plays a major role of how we are raised and how are morals and beliefs align, but they fall into the same realm as structure because structure is the bigger picture of our culture, and our culture is a sort of a boundary that guides us on our way. Its hard for us to see things from other countries perspectives because we are so tightly knit into or cultures belief system. Our culture creates a basic path that is deemed acceptable to follow down. Even though we think we are so unique and independent, most of us will follow along a similar  path.

I am not really concerned about getting married. The closer more i grow in my relationship with Christ, i’m  sort of losing the desire to get married anytime soon. I remember we talked about a few factors that help marriage be more successful. For example, getting married past the age of 25, not sleeping together for marriage, becoming financially independent first by having a job. I’m not going to create a major expectation for a women to come into my life, because then i would just be depressed when i didn’t find someone. I realize that, I will probably marry someone around my SEC and educational level. That person will probably be in the same sphere of influence and more than likely have the same beliefs and will probably be in my group of friends or a close circle in my church. So if what we talked about in class is true, then the “women of my dreams” should come my way sooner or later, so no worries!

I believe marriage is a beautiful thing that was created for financial stability and the ability to raise children in a constructive and positive atmosphere. Of course that is not the standard scenario considering there are a large amount of single mothers and the divorce rate is pretty high. I believe that marriage is an important thing that helps development and allows one adult to bring home the bread while the other is able to raise the kids, while they work together in this process of balancing and making each other happy.

I will most likely have a few children and i have always desired to adopt a child. So my family structure will be sort of different but i hope i’m able to distribute myself as equally as possible. I don’t really care who takes care of the kids and who makes the most money. I’m secure in the idea of being in the relationship so i don’t mind if my wife makes a lot of the money and i stay home. I want her to be free to do what she pleases and i want to be a good dad to my kids.

My parents are still married and i believe that i will fairly close to how my parents raised me. I  don’t believe I will have as much as my parents and i will probably live a little simpler instead of always working for a bigger house. I hope that my home is a little more spirit led and we are more involved in community. I believe i will probably have 3 kids so that means the dynamic will be a little different from my family. I love my parents and how i was raised and i pray i can only improve from there.

I dont believe I am very likely to divorce. I have never really been around divorce for most of my life and staying together through marriage has always been very important for me. I pray i find a woman who i am compatible with and have the same values so i hope divorce will never be an option. I know most people say that, but i genuinely believe i wont ever get a divorce.

After looking at the data showing that love is not necessary to make a successful marriage, i believe that it is not an essential ingredient, but i do believe that love will keep the marriage more exciting and help create a more loving atmosphere for the children. I believe if you truly love someone, that you will have a strong desire to love and secure the other person. I believe that love is a good way to make a child feel secure and that if you love your spouse it will make a good example for the children.

I believe marriage is just like anything else in life, you have to constantly work on it and grow with it by not settling with yesterdays joys. The essential thing for a marriage to be successful is being able to die to yourself and live for another. if you are able to do that and consistently pursue and respect your partner. The marriage should last for a long time and work pretty well. It takes learning a lot about your partner and sometimes humbling yourself to prevent unnecessary conflict, also the ability to forgive and give forgiveness will be a major factor.

I believe that this class has changed my theology on how things work through life. Its helped me realized that who we are is more than just whats going on inside your head and how much cultural influence plays a role in that. I now see the bigger picture and how we shape our narratives around cultural norms and evolve as our culture changes. That the different groups that come into our life will drive what we do and what people we meet. We are all tossed into a different environment with different possibilities, i guess the most important thing you do is stick to what makes you happy and avoid the things that tear you down. We’ll be alright.

This semester has been a lot of fun getting to see that what seems to be naturally occurring events, actually have a lot of reasoning behind why they occur. It never registered with me how certain things in families and relationships are the driving force behind much of what happens in the world. It was hard to learn about all these events that lead to pain and destruction, but it was interesting to see how it all happens. The cool thing about being a sociologist is trying to figure how to stop the trends. Its one thing for us to sit comfortably in our classroom chairs and observe as the world spirals out of control. I think its amazing that we have been giving the unique opportunity to learn how all of these phenomenons work, and now we get the chance to change the world. I once heard a sermon about how statisics desensitize ourselves to the point where we feel helpless to save the situation so we just move on with our existence, and watch as things crumble. I hope that you take what you have learned in this class and you use it to change the world. That you don’t feel like you have nothing to offer, because the world is filling up with people that feel helpless, but it only takes a few to raise up many.

hahaha so this unrelated to anything we have talked about in class, but i found it interesting so im gonna post about it. I was reading various articles for my sensation and perception class and I came across one that was really interesting. It looked at the relation to how people perceive others based on their body image.

The study first looked at the media. In todays society there are two separate ways to view an image. You can either look at the image in relation to the body or the face. When someone generally looks at the body of an individual, they are more likely to objectify the individual and view them more as an object and less as a person with a mind. Also, the more the body was shown in photographs the less intelligent the person was viewed as. While on the other end, a photograph in which the face was the prominent part of the picture, those people were viewed as more intelligent.

Now lets look at media in todays society. If you havent noticed by now, almost every magazine of women, they are wearing really revealing clothing in hopes to make their bodies more desirable. On the other end, most photographs of men are taken of their face which shows that they are more intelligent. Take a second and think about who is more intelligent. Brad Pitt or Richard Gere. Jessica Simpson or Julia Roberts. Each of these famous people are known for different reasons and we therefore make inferences based on what we see.

Americas media dilutes the intelligence of women, the more and more they show revealing images of them. This causes more mean to see women as objects of desire and less as a real person with emotions and feelings, and so it all starts to spiral. The more and more the media shows of womens bodies and not their face, the more men will see womens as objects. It is easier to abuse an object than it is to abuse a person. So the media may play a role in destroying the minds of the younger generations, because the more and more negative media they see, the more the will be set up for failure.

So for women it is important to not to be very revealing, because you are actually causing yourself to be seen more as an object to men and therefore causing men not to treat you with as much respect as you deserve. Modest is hottest! and smartest!

I volunteer at the family abuse center here in Waco. It is an awesome place! You can go and spend time with kids, sit in on woman’s group and even hang out with the coordinators! They always need volunteers and love having Baylor student SS majors, cause they usually work with the kids the best. If you’re interested in it, ask me in class.

So we have talked a lot about why families fail and other factors related, but i’m not sure how much we have talked about abuse, or how prevalent it is in marraiges. In 2009 there were approximately 3.3 million cases of abuse in the United States. The rate of death of a child due to domestic violence has risen to 5 per day. This is staggering to me. When i look at how many women come through the center, there are only 10 or so women, and i know that there are hundreds of women in Waco that get abused daily.

I didnt know this but neglect is actually a form of abuse and makes up about 78% while 10.8% is physical abuse and 7% is sexual abuse. These numbers and the reality of this gets me really stirred. Having worked with kids in Waco for a few years, i see the negative impact of abuse, and its hard to watch women intentionally not tell anyone because they are scared of more abuse or loss of a stable income. This encourages women to be more independent and not rely solely on a male partner but unfortunately, children that are abused are more likely to be abusive later on in life and more likely to become pregnant earlier.

It seems to me that this abuse is just a cycle that keeps digging it self in a hole due to un forgiveness.A vicious cycle that is doing to destroy lives and is taking a hard hit on our economy.

I found our talk about different birth order jobs to be interesting. I’ve always noticed how the older kid was generally the more responsible while the middle child was the communicator, and the youngest was the spoiled crazy one. I think its interesting how these identities are pressed into people from a young age.

One of the interesting parts of the article that i read was; only children are more likely to be executives and hold six digit salaries. So i was wondering why this was for the longest time and i realized its because the parents make them believe they are royalty, they put all their focus on encouraging and making the child believe they are on top of the world. While children with siblings do have to become part of the team and at times have to lower themselves and receive criticism for how they treated their siblings.

Most people agreed that they enjoyed working with someone that was not an only child, because they were not used to working with different personalities and were used to having it their way. I also read an article that talked about four sister that all became executives and then went and read about their father. The difference between this family and others was that their father always told them that they were going to succeed and built them into the success that they would receive. So i guess the take away is that you have tear away from people believing the stereotypes.

“Those who are born first usually go into the fields of government, information technology, engineering and science. Middle children often go into law enforcement, fire-fighting, construction, education, and personal care. Those born last frequently go into art/design/architecture, editing/writing, information technology and sale.”

So a common belief is that when i parent loses a child, the parents are more likely to divorce. I always believed that the loss would lead to grief and pain and that would lead to blaming or contempt. I thought that it would lead to a void in the relationship and the parents would have a hard time coping with it.
However the more i read, the more evidence showed that when parents lost a child and got a divorce was less than the national and half of those said that it was because of other factors not related to the death.

After an intense google session on this topic i found that women and men grieve a loss differently. There were two separate models, a “male model” and a “female model”, but to limit men and women to one model would be ignorant, so we will just view them as two separate ways. The “male model” was viewed as just moving on with life, finding other things around them that would take their time and and focus their efforts towards the future in an attempt to leave the past behind. The “female model” on the other end did not just separate but would latch on to other ties.In other words, “you don’t break your ties, you change your ties”, which is why the birth of a new child would really help a person with this model.

So the women would more likely try and reach out to the support system in an attempt to feel community. While the other model would retract from the situation, they would internalize the pain of the loss and try not loss there sense of control.

I believe that this is where men and women disconnect during a childs death, but at the same time they grow closer and in most cases latch on for support and according to a few internet posts, the idea of divorce being the result was because of a journalist in the seventies that posted claims of this myth and a few others used this idea for books and movies.

There are so many things that go into this question!!

From looking at some statistical data. I found it interesting that liberal families were more likely to stay together than the typical conservative family. Meanwhile, politically they hold opposing views.

Im not sure what this means sociologically, I think with the freedom to get a divorce, there will be more fatherless or motherless homes which increase the likely hood of them getting into trouble such as drugs and stealing. So i would say that if a two parent home restricts these then i believe that families should try as hard as possible to stay together. Because who knows how long it will be till a step-parent shows up or how they react to the kids. Granted i have heard good and bad stories.

I believe that there a few reasons why parents should split, granted they are biblical. If someone is to commit adultery i believe it is grounds for divorce, and i also believe that physical abuse is appropriate for divorce although i’m not sure that is biblical, but if you are not honoring your wife consistently then you are not keeping the covenant.

Overall i believe that we live in a quick fix society and don’t understand or value the idea of patience in commitment. This reflects the culture we live in and the mentality we hold as Americans. I believe that separated parents can raise wonderful kids if they are both actively committed and don’t take their troubles out on their kids.

So this is really interesting to me because my girlfriend and i broke up about two weeks ago, but it had nothing to do with the holidays coming up. I am really interested why the phenomenon occurs. The data however, i believe to be misleading from the graph we saw in class. First off, author only looked at 10,000 Facebook statuses. I dont know if you are aware, but i believe there are nearly 500 million users, so this may pose as a slight problem. So a larger data set could really help you pinpoint a little more accuracy. Plus the data looked like it was over only a single year, so that could also be misleading, but thats not why im writing this.

I want to know why the times when you go home are the most likely time of breakup, and i have come to a conclusion of my own, which mind you is purely a hypothesis. First off, the age group that we are looking at is most likely college age. When a person in college goes home for the break, they are sepereated from the world that they created at college. They are a diferent person, sometimes they have inflated themselves to something different, and when they come home they come to realize that there parents will start asking questions. Parents have an ability to sway the ideas of ours and i believe that some of the drops might be due to the parents questioning of whether or not she is really “good for you”. They may also ask about your major and try to keep you in check when it comes to your future and you significant other may not align with those goals. I also believe that leading up to the break the initiating partner had probably thought about it for a while. They probably realized that with the break comes the opportunity to separate themselves from their significant other, and they realize that the other person probably wont take it as hard if they are going back to their home where there is a support system. Support System + Separation = Easier Break up.

Well that was fun. Food For Thought