Unit 6: Family Stress Theory

Family stress theory focuses on a crisis that takes place within a family, the resources they have available, and the definition/perception of the event. Many families go through periods of crisis including mine and I never though to put a label on that process, but now having this information I have begun to take another look at some of the harder times my family has faced. In my blog I am going to give one example from my family in which resources and perceptions did help change the potential outcome of the event.


The event that took place was one of ambiguous loss. Back when I was in my senior year of college my grandfather who was not even 70 had an accident and he slipped and fell. Now don't get me wrong he was not the perfection of health but certainly no where near death. When my grandfather was taken to the hospital he was looked over and given a clean bill health, the doctor however did have him stay overnight just in case there was an issue with his spleen. Long story short my grandfather ended up slipping into a coma due to fluid in his lung. Despite being seen by a respiratory therapist some how they missed the fluid. After a week in the hospital my grandfather passed away. If that wasn't enough my sister and I both were at the end of our semesters with finals around the corner. Fortunately my family had a lot of resources to help get us through this, financial and support from friends. Our perception of the event was despite being sad and angry with the hospital we did not want to see my grandfather suffer so we were relieved when he finally passed. I learned that day how important perception and resources can be when dealing with a crisis. My friends supported me through a very difficult time and without them I would have felt lost. They allowed me to be sad and upset but kept my perception of the event grounded, reminding me that he was suffering and better off.

Unit 5 Family Development Theory

  

The family development theory talks about the stages of life that we all experience; married couple, childbearing, preschool age, school age, teenage, launching center, middle aged parents, and aging family members. I chose the images from the two Father of the Bride movies because I believe that these movies perfectly show this theory in action. The first Father of the Bride deals with Steve Martin's character dealing with the idea that his daughter is going to be getting married, Launching Center and Middle aged parent stages. Throughout the movie the father is reminiscing on when his daughter was younger and now has difficulty accepting that his daughter is moving on and leaving the home to be married. Eventually he becomes comfortable with the launching center and moves into middle aged parents where he enjoys time with his wife. In Father of the Bride II we are introduced to the father now coping with becoming a grandfather, aging family members. Like when his daughter was moving on and getting married he struggled with moving into the next stage of his life. 

I really enjoyed these two movies and feel like they are good examples of how a nuclear family goes through the life cycle and the transitions between the stages. The movies do a good job of bringing a good balance of comedic relief to the idea of family development but also shows what I believe to be a very realistic picture of the difficulties that can happen when transitioning to new stages. I speak from experience, because when I got married and new I was leaving my parents home for good it was difficult both for me and my mom. 

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Unit 4- Structural Functionalism

The structure of the family is a topic we have talked about in every unit thus far. Structural Functionalism focuses heavily on the roles each family member is supposed to have and how it contributes to society as a whole. One of the concepts in this theory is the benchmark family. The benchmark family  is the traditional family with a husband and wife and their children. The husband is the sole provider for the home and the wife is to stay at home and maintain the home, her husband, and her children. Well according to this theory my husband and I are not in equilibrium.

My husband and I do have roles in our relationship but they are not the same type of roles that are mentioned in this theory. First off I think it's fabulous when a women makes a choice to stay home, but only if it's a choice. In my relationship both my husband are equal breadwinners with no intention of me stopping even when there are children involved. We divide and conquer the house work and the cooking together. There are times where it has fallen on me to do the majority of the domestic chores but that was out of necessity. My husband and I both fulfill the instrumental and expressive roles. Depending on the situation, I can be instrumental in my approach, I am very task-oriented and sometimes I just want to know how to get to where I am going in-spite of what may be happening. The flip side to that is my husband at times can be very expressive. There is nothing I love more than after a rough day finding a random sticky note on my side of the bed with some words of encouragement. I do believe in the importance of family and it's structure in today's society but I find this theory to be very dated and in need of some new research.

Just one example I can give of where the benchmark family is not always what it seems, comes from a former student. To the public this family had it all; a husband who worked, a wife who was Susie homemaker, a son who played high school sports, and my former student who was their dirty little secret. My student was a threat to their desire to be a benchmark family and he had to be dealt with in private and quickly because no one could know. Unfortunately for my student this meant he did not always get the mental health help he needed due to risk of being seen going into the "crazy doctor". This family also had other issues that played out like a lifetime movie; drug use, physical and emotional abuse, and infidelity. Keeping up with the Jones' is not always beneficial, especially when the Jones' are probably hiding some big skeletons.

Blog 3-Social Interactionism

Symbols are very powerful. I used to look at pictures like this and feel moved and patriotic. The idea of war was scary and I always hoped for better solutions, and the pictures of soldiers funerals, and soldiers coming home always invoked sadness for the families. All those feelings changed for me when my husband came home a year ago and told me he spoke to a recruiter. My husband and I had been married for 3 years and was trained chef. one day he decided he would stop by and get some information, and from that point on things moved quickly. My husband said he wanted to serve our country, and I mean who can say no that! After much conversation and advice from our family and friends he enlisted and went to boot camp September 3, 2013. Since then these symbols have a much deeper meaning to me. They still invoke sadness and pride but now it's personal. There are also feelings of fear. War is no longer something terrible that affects other families, now it affects me.

SI talks a lot about how symbols have meaning and that meaning can be different for each individual. There are some symbols that are cultural norms such a circle with a line through it signifying no, or a red octagon signifying stop, but then there are symbols such as the one above that can have personal meaning as well as societal meaning. The American Flag is used to represent the United States but it can also signify many different things to a individual. I once looked at those symbols proud to be an American and now I  look at them proud of my hero!

                      

        

Blog 2: Changing Families

In unit 2 the focus was on the changing family and how it affects theory. This unit struck a cord with me on many different levels both professional and personally and I will definitely take the lessons I have learned and apply them as necessary. Especially in the area of ethnic/racial group labeling. Although there were many aspects of this unit I enjoyed, for purposes of this blog I am going to pick the one that I have most had to deal with in my professional experience. In the NY Times article we read, many different family units/households were written about. Giving a complete picture of the ever evolving family structure. The specific section I want to address is the section on incarcerated parents.
I teach in an Elementary school that has 1,200 students in what we call the general education population. My school has a cluster site and that's where I teach. I am a teacher in a self-contained classroom to 20 (all boys this year) Emotionally/Behaviorally Disabled (E/BD) students, whose ages range from K-5 (5-13 years old). I enjoy what I do and the disability I work with, but it does bring along a set of challenges my undergraduate degree did not prepare me for! Over the years I have had the pleasure of working with the same students and their families, but at times with mental illness the apples don't fall far from the tree, this is true as well in the case of my behavior students. Every year I have at least 6-7 students who have at least one if not both parents incarcerated, for various reasons. Spending 7 hours a days with these kids has put me in a unique role or caregiver in the absence of their own parents. One of the most powerful moments I have had to date came in the form of a wannabe 10 year old thug.
I had had this student in my class for three years at this point, and like I do with all students I studied up on his file and tried to get a complete picture of where he was at emotionally this year. I knew his dad had been in and out of jail for all his life. As a matter of fact all of his siblings births coincided with the times his dad was out of jail. My student had one older brother who ran with a local gang and his mom was always "busy" or to tired to deal with him. I'm not going to lie he was a difficult student coming in everyday refusing to work, fighting, cursing, hitting me, and throwing desks. One day I gave the students an assignment to write about their best memory. I broke down in tears when I read his and realized his best memory was being able to go see his dad. I later learned that his dad is doing a life-sentence and my student had only been taken once to visit his father. So I scheduled a meeting with mom and needless to say her response to me was "you take him if you care so much." To make a long story short, I took him. It was unbelievable to how many other kids were at the jail visiting parents. I can only imagine how scary that must feel and with how prevalent it is becoming what are we doing to help these kids? These kids are trying to navigate in an uncertain world and I have made it my mission to ensure I educate them as best I can.