The Power of Family Work

I am a firm believer in the idea that hard work builds character. Work is something I feel is necessary for not only our physical growth, but our emotional and spiritual growth as well. Today I want to talk about the importance of family work and how it is not a burden, but a means of strengthening the family. The world in which we live today teaches us that our ultimate goal should be to do as little work as possible. In an article called Family Work written by Kathleen Slaugh Bahr and Cheri A. Loveless, they mention that “Reformers of the day sought to alleviate these miseries. In the spirit of the times, many of them envisioned a utopian world without social problems, where scientific inventions would free humans from physical labor, and modern medicine would eliminate disease and suffering. Their reforms eventually transformed work patterns throughout our culture, which in turn changed the roles of men, women, and children within the family unit.” The family unit has changed drastically since the world began and I believe work is a huge part of it.

Since the days of Adam and Eve, and before the Industrial Revolution, family work was work. In the Old Testament, particularly Genesis 3:19 we read, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground…” They labored for everything, their whole life was working to support themselves. This is the kind of work that builds families.

I don’t have many memories in my own family of hard physical labor other than having to clean the house every Saturday while being yelled at and told what to do constantly. They aren’t the best memories of work in the home. But I am grateful to have been part of my best friends’ families and for their parents’ hard work. I remember having several opportunities to work in the yard with my best friend and his father. It was hot, I was sweaty, but I enjoyed it. I’ve helped in building a shelf for their garage, and I’ve spent hours helping them with cleaning their garage. There’s another friend of mine with whom I spent all day helping him cut down a huge tree in his yard. He and I have done quite a bit of laboring together. I have had a lot of fun with my friends over the years, playing all kinds of games and doing all kinds of activities, but it is the times we’ve worked together I cherish the most. Someone in my class mentioned that all the fun and games invites competition while work builds unity. There is something to be said about spending a significant amount of time with someone you love building something or making progress on something rather than spending a couple of hours having fun only to realize you didn’t actually achieve anything. I’m not saying having fun and playing is bad, I definitely won’t stop having fun, but what I’m saying is work is what really brings us together.

In closing I’d like to offer some words of wisdom. I don’t think it’s a good idea to give your kids allowance, they shouldn’t be paid to help around the house. You’re not their employer and helping around the house shouldn’t be something that’s an option. They should learn the value of helping without expecting anything in return. I personally would want my kids to grow up knowing that helping is a reward in itself. I love to serve others and to be helpful. Can you imagine a world in which everyone is willing to help one another without any expectations? That’s one of the goals of the church in which I grew up. Bahr and Loveless have said, “Here lies the real power of family work–its potential to transform lives, to forge strong families, to build strong communities. It is the power to quietly, effectively urge hearts and minds toward a oneness known only in Zion.” To put it simply, Zion is a community of oneness, a community in which we all support and strengthen one another. Hard work, when done in oneness can change the world.

Compromise vs. Consensus

Every family at some point has important decisions they need to make. There are big questions that need to be answered such as where you’re going to live, how many kids you’ll have, how you’ll raise them, how you’ll maintain a budget, will both of you work or will one stay home and rear the kids and many more. There are also questions that can be unique to a specific family for example, I know a family who faced a really difficult decision, and keep in my mind that it doesn’t just have to be decisions made between husband and wife, extended family can be involved as well, in which the mother of the parents was very old and had Alzheimer’s. What should they do about her, which of the children she had should she live with or should they put her in a home? A decision that big can result in some tender or bitter feelings. What about another scenario in which a relative is in critical condition and on life support, there doesn’t seem to be any chance of them making it, what do you do? Those are obviously extreme scenarios, but maybe you in your family have some very important decision that is unique to your family that you feel is really challenging. Maybe you haven’t come up with a solution and are still trying to figure out a way to make it work. I hope to provide some principles that will help coming up with solutions easier. My goal is to highlight the difference between compromise and consensus.

Now there are a number of families I have seen that compromise on most, if not all, major issues. When it comes to compromise, you usually come together with two different opinions or ideas, or two different ways of thinking, they don’t always have to be disagreeing. From what I understand about compromise, you come up with an agreement in which both or all parties sacrifices something to come to a decision. What usually ends up happening in someone ends up sacrificing more than another which can result in someone feeling they were treated unfairly. Let’s say a couple was deciding on where to move, one wanted to live in California, the other in let’s say the other wants to live in Utah. It then becomes either one person gets their way or no one at all in the event they say, “Well let’s meet in the middle and move to Nevada.” Marriage just can’t be about winning and losing battles. Compromising may work for smaller decisions, but it isn’t a good recipe for all your decision making, especially those extreme scenarios I mentioned in the first paragraph.

Many families may feel that compromising is the best they can do, but coming to a consensus is very possible as well as ideal for any family. When you come to a consensus, yes you may have to sacrifice, you may even have to sacrifice something you feel very strongly about, but you ultimately do what is best for the unit as a whole. It’s not a matter of being right, it is a matter of what is right, not just for one, but for all. It is my personal belief that every family should come together and counsel when there are important decisions to be made. I caution against inviting collusion into your family by recruiting allies for your ideas or against someone else’s ideas. Families should pray together before and after having these counsels and if you don’t pray, invite peace and love into your counsels by expressing affection towards each other before so it is easier to not simply focus on yourself and your own wants. It’s important to also involve your children in the decision making so that they learn. Of course they don’t get the final say, but it’s crucial that they’re included because they are also a part of the family and your decisions affect them too. Ultimately, it can be a much more powerful experience when you’re able to reach a mutual agreement as a family. There is just this understanding when everyone has the family’s best interest in mind. It’s a lot easier said than done, but it can be done.

It's Okay to Have Issues

This week I want to take some time to address the fact that all families have problems, both good and bad, and I’ll get to why they’re good in a moment. All families go through periods in which they are under stress and I want us to be on the same page here so I’m going to define the words stress and distress. Stress according to google means “a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances” while distress means “extreme anxiety, sorrow, or pain” according to the same source. Something that I have learned recently is that not all stress leads to distress, that is something very important to understand.

There are definitely a number of circumstances that cause families distress. I’m sure you’ve seen quite a bit of them in your own personal life. I’ve had a few friends who’ve dealt with miscarriages, that is emotionally exhausting, especially for a woman. Other families deal with abuse, financial instability, mental or physical illness, a strain in a relationship, substance abuse and the list goes on and on. My family is currently going through some financial struggles and that has been extremely difficult for our family to deal with. Some families let their problems tear them apart while others are brought together through those tough times. I’ve known a number of families who have reconnected and strengthened their relationships through the death of another family member like a parent or grandparent. People meet and catch up with each other at the funeral, tears are shed, hearts are softened, it is amazing. When we go back and take a look at the meaning of the word stress and focus on the mental or emotional strain, stress all of a sudden becomes something that is necessary and healthy. Without strain in life, without something to push us, we can never learn and grow. We must learn to be grateful in our circumstances and may I suggest to we be grateful when we have challenges and look at them as an opportunity to become better and to come together.

As I said, families can either allow their challenges to break them apart or to bring them together. There are certainly different ways in which families cope with things which ultimately leads to one of those two results. I’m going to give some examples of how not to cope. First is to be in denial, to pretend that a problem doesn’t exist. If a family never acknowledges that they have a problem then the problem may only get bigger until it gets so big and becomes so obvious that you can no longer deny it. A second way is to avoid the problem meaning that you know the problem is there, but you never address it therefore it never gets resolved. I personally feel like denial is a prerequisite to avoidance, but sometimes denial gets bypassed altogether. Avoidance can lead to the same results as denial. The last one I’ll bring up is scapegoating. It’s one thing to avoid a problem, but it is, in my opinion, so much worse to push your issues onto someone else, letting someone else take the blame or just flat-out putting the blame on them. One must be able to hold themselves accountable for an issue in their own family, especially if the issue is caused by them. Putting the blame on someone else means avoiding taking responsibility for what is happening, while the person being blamed inherits all of the responsibility. In any of these cases, the problems don’t get solved.

It is very important for families to learn to effectively communicate with each other, to work out their problems whether it be with someone inside or outside the family. Share the load, share the responsibility and work together to come out on top of your issues.

Having "The Talk"

I want to start this post off with a question. Who would you rather teach your children (or future children) about sex? Would you rather it be you or would you leave it up to society? I personally don’t have much confidence in our society. In my home growing up, I was never actually taught anything about sex, as a matter of fact, most of what I learned came from high school around my peers. Let me tell you, that is definitely not the best place to learn, especially since I went to a school where there were so many teen pregnancies. I’m sure it would have made a big difference if I wasn’t so sheltered, particularly on this topic. I know that I’m definitely not alone in this, it is very common to learn things about sex outside of the home whether it be amongst peers, or through media and literature. I believe on average kids are being exposed to pornography by the age of seven. Parents really need to step it up and prepare their kids to face the world we live in.

I watched an interview in which Laura Brotherson, an author who wrote books like And They Were Not Ashamed: Strengthening Marriage through Sexual Fulfillment and Knowing HER Intimately, gave her thoughts on topics such as sexual intimacy in marriage and when to teach your kids. She tells us five particular times in which to talk to your children about sex:

1.      Before school (before the first time they get on a bus and interact with kids who are actually just starting to be aware of their own gender and body parts)

2.      Before the age of accountability (in LDS terms this is when a child turns eight and is preparing for baptism)

3.      Before puberty (you know, when hormones start to kick in)

4.      Before dating

5.      Before marriage

I think these are actually great times to talk to your kids because those are prominent times when they’ll actually start to develop questions. It’s very crucial that your kids know that they can talk to you about this sort of thing so it’s important to be open about it. Coming from “A Parent’s Guide” https://www.lds.org/manual/a-parents-guide?lang=eng,  if your kids have questions don’t discourage them, answer their questions, but leave it at that. I feel that the more open and comfortable you are in talking to your kids about sex, the more they’ll come to you when those questions arise, or even when someone outside of your home teaches them something contrary to what you have taught them. Another thing I feel is important is to use proper terms for example terms like “penis” and “vagina” the very basic terms. If you feel strange using those words, trust me, you’re not alone. Those words were never used in my home growing up, just because we never talked about things like this. But getting used to the proper wording may help your kids avoid confusion and it makes it so much less awkward when they grow up.

Early Adjustments in Marriage

Hello everybody, this week I want to take some time to talk about some of the adjustments that couples make or struggle to make early in their marriage. Making the transition from single life to married life is so huge. One can no longer just think of themselves, or live the life they were living as a single adult. I guess you can, but living separate lives wouldn’t really make a happy successful marriage. When you’re married you legitimately become a team and it’s the most important team that you will ever be on.

One of the major adjustments you’ll make is learning how to live together and there’s a lot of adjustments that falls under just this. A couple usually must figure out what roles they will have in the home, and that probably will depend on their personalities. Another adjustment that is so huge and key is being able to work together as equals. It’s essential to be able to make important decisions together or discuss and work out critical issues together. It may sound cliché to say that communication is key, but it is so true. Communication is something that quite a few people don’t have a very good grasp of in general and if it’s something that’s important in all types of relationships, then of course it’s going to be important in marriage.

I had a long chat with a couple of friends who have been married for almost 5 years. I’ve known the husband since I was a kid. When I asked him about some of the early challenges they had in marriage, one of the things he mentioned was scheduling, having to incorporate and account for another person in his life. It isn’t something that is a burden, but it is something that you have to consider and think about. Their schedules were very different with work and school and I’m certain it affected the level of intimacy they were able to have with each other since they didn’t have as much time to spend together. He also mentioned finances as an adjustment with planning and making the decision to have one joint bank account. This particular area is where a lot of couples may struggle as it is one of the most common reasons for divorce. His wife mentioned that it was a difficult adjustment trying to be selfless, again, having to think of another person being a significant part of your life. She talked about small things like going out to eat she would say she wanted to go to a certain place rather than asking him where he wanted to go. It took some work for her to be able to change her mindset and be mindful of those things.

It’s also very important not to assume, and that is with anything. One shouldn’t assume that their spouse should just know and be okay with all their habits or to pick up on certain signals that something needs to be done or something needs to happen. Laundry was an example shared in our class in which the husband would leave his dirty clothes on the floor and expect his wife to pick them up because that’s what his mom did for him. Those are things you talk about.

One last thing I want to cover is boundaries, how much time you spend with your friends and whose friends you spend time with. Who you invite into your home and how often. What is okay in that regard and obviously that is between the married couple. But it becomes so different after marriage that you don’t just go spend time with the boys whenever you want or just have a random girls’ night out without first talking about what is okay. There’s nothing wrong with spending time with your friends after you’re married, one just needs to consider that there is another important person in your life whose time and feelings matter, the most important person in your life.