Mothers and Finances

Woman are very blessed with the opportunity in our modern society to pursue an education, careers and their dreams! This is a wonderful and blessed gift of our time. Just because a woman can though, is getting a job really better then staying home and being a mom?  Some people believe that it is necessary to help bring in extra money. Others feel it is the only way to have a truly fulfilling life. Today I want to suggest a different idea. 

Many mothers feel the need to get a job to help bring in money when things are tight in a family but contrary to popular beliefs studies have shown that when there is a dual income home money is lost. On the face it is easy to think that makes no sense; let me explain. When both parents are gone this means they are required to get some kind of childcare, this on its own is quite costly. Often when their is a dual income there is more money paid to gas, cars, and taxes. People tend to spend more to gain nicer things. This normally tends to cancel each other out. One study showed a family where the father made $42,000 and the mother made $21,000. Their net income however for the year ended up being $40,000 because of all the extra expenses. Just the job of being a mother, if paid, would be one of the highest paying jobs in the world. They would need to pay the "mother" to cook multiple meals, clean the entire house, take care of children, do laundry, do possible hair cuts, teach, and much more. How quickly those expenses would add up and in a dual income home much of that needs to be paid for since no one is home to do it.

Having a dual income family can also lead to other problems such as ideologies over 'yours' and 'her' money instead of 'our' money. Most divorces are over money and a non-shared view of a couples finances can potentially be very dangerous to a marriage.

Many woman feel like they aren't making any kind of contribution or that they are stunted if they stay home. I believe quite the opposite! Motherhood is a wonderful time for growth! Having children teaches you selflessness and patience. You learn hard work and how to multi-task. Your contribution is huge! You are raising the next generation. Whether the next generation is kind, hardworking or a problem solving people is largely influenced by you! As for a stunt in your learning that is completely up to you! A dear friend of my mother's stopped school despite her love of knowledge to be a mother. That did not stop her from learning though! She bought many textbooks and would study and read to her hearts desire.

A desire to work and especially to follow your dreams is a wonderful thing! I would just caution a mother who is unsure of some of the possible consequences. Unlike what many would like to believe, I believe that motherhood is one of the most beautiful and dutiful "jobs" we can ever have on this earth. There is not a greater power one has then the power a mother has when she is home with her kids. Their is no money that can replace how much it costs to do the job of a mother. I am proud of motherhood and can't wait until that day comes for me.

Family Counsles

One good way to check up on your spouse and children is to have family counsels. As a religious person this post will rely heavily upon ideas  in the belief that there is a loving God who will guide and direct us. Family counsels should have 4 main aspect, first, they should be done with love and appreciation. Second, they should start with a prayer. Third, they should discussion and then fourth, you should all come to a consensus. Note, this pattern can also be used as a couple to make a decision.

This first aspect is that there should be love and appreciation. You can bring this in by starting the  event off with compliments and other forms of loving acknowledgement. This will start the evening with a feeling peace and self worth.

The second aspect is prayer. If you want to come to a consensus and have a peaceful, respectful atmosphere where the spirit can guide you need to start off with a prayer.

The next aspect is how you run a discussion. One way to run this is you have someone in charge who keeps order. This normally is a parental figure. This person presents what is to be discussed. Then you go around and one at a time have each member put in their input. This way all members have an opportunity and a say. It is important at this time to make sure that all views are respected and listened to. This also is an important time to apply humility. All family members no matter how young can feel like they are truly apart of the family and that they are valued and respected.  You then discus till you come to a consensus.

That leads us to our last part coming to a consensus though this may seem impossible, if you are all striving to do the lords will then you can reach a consensus. Since you are all seeking the lords will, the will should all be the same.

By conducting family counsels in this manner you teach your children how to be leaders. Families feel unified and individuals feel important and like they have a  say. By using this pattern to make rules are more likely to follow. This can be also be a strong bonding time within the family unit.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

It may seem like a mystery how two people can go through the same stressful event and yet come out from it completely different! This mystery is actually not the mysterious at all though. One way this phenomena was explained was by what's called as the ABCX model. A stands for Actual event. B stands for Both resources and responses and C stands for Cognitions which equal X, which stands for total eXperience.

You can understand this better through an example. Lets say two couples suffer through the death of a child. The actual event would be the death of a child. Now lets look at both  recourses and responses. Lets say one couple is new to the area, they don't know anyone and they respond by closing them selves off to the community and each other. Lets say the other couple though has a strong role in the community, The respond by reach out for support and during the funeral the whole community comes to support and bring food and flowers to the mourning couple. Then there is cognition. Lets say the first couple view this as the worst thing that could ever happen, they are mad at God for allowing such a thing to occur, maybe they are mad at each other for not trying harder to keep the baby alive. Maybe the other couple use it as an opportunity to come closer to their other children, maybe they look forward with hope of seeing their child in the next life. They may possibly view it as sad and yet use it to have meaning full discussions with each other that unifies them. As you can probably imagine both of these couples probably ended up having a very different total experiences.

Challenges will always be hard but hard doesn't  need to mean bad in fact much of how life goes depends on our attitude and how we face these seemingly impossible heartaches. I love the Chinese symbol for the word crisis. It is made by combining the symbol of Danger and opportunity. Every challenge in our life can either be a danger to everything we know or it can be an opportunity to grow and become better. With in our families it is inevitable that we will come face to face with a crisis and it can either tear our families apart or bring us together.  Much of this choice is ours, how we choose our cognition and responses and how we use our resources will effect the outcome of our challenges.

Loyalty at the Core

At the core of marriage there must be certain aspects such as, love, trust, loyalty and many more. These aspects are often entwined with each other. For example when you are loyal to someone they are more likely to trust and rely on you. Loyalty is very key to a marriage but by having infidelity you are destroying your personal loyalty towards your spouse. I think there are very few cases though where people go into a marriage thinking they will break their fidelity. This is exactly what I want to talk about is how to prevent infidelity, especially emotional infidelity which I believe to be even more common and less known.

An emotional affair is often a trap that's becoming easier and easier for people to fall into. With text messages and social media it is easier today then ever to talk to people privately. Emotional affairs  can come in a range of ways from simply confiding in another, besides your spouse or a professional set aside to help marriages, to talking about intimate topics with another and/or sexting things with another.

Most emotional affairs start off very innocently. Imagine you have had a life time best friend of the opposite gender. There is nothing initially bad about that, however, lets say you start confiding in them on what to do about something regarding your marriage. You then start comparing your spouse to your friend. Mabey you feel like you can talk to your friend better then your spouse. Pretty soon you are in an emotional affair. You also often see this when spouses add old relationships as friends on social media.  Your friend may message you complaining about their relationship and to help them out to try to relate and you complain about yours. Pretty soon you are confiding in each other. You may start to remember how wonderful it was and compare it to what you have now.

Even talking to family members would be wise not to do. Most the time when you confined with a family member that persons view of your spouse will change, even once you have forgiven them and moved on. People often believe that infidelity can only happen with the opposite sex but even confiding and getting emotionally attached to those of your same sex can be dangerous.

When you have problems with in your marriage the best thing you can do is talk to your spouse about it. Statistics have shown that when one spouse reaches out to others for marriage help the marriage is ironically more likely to end in divorce. If you do have to talk to someone for help it is best to go to a professional who is set apart to help marriages and who isn't a family member.

Happiest day to the sadddest day of your life

Many dream of the day when they will find their true love. They picture their wedding as the happiest day of their life. Little do they probably consider though how significant that day and the events leading up to it can be, compared  to the rest of their lives. I want to address this and how these first decisions coming up to marriage can either greatly bless or hurt your marriage.

The first step to the marriage adventure is the day you are proposed to. Some would say how you are proposed to isn't significant. This simply is not true though.  How you are proposed to sets up a precedent for the rest of your marriage. If he has a planned and formal proposal he will probably put more effort into your marriage then if he asks off hand while you were watching Netflix on the couch. So when a guy proposes it would be wise to take note to how it is done.

Now that you are proposed to the next stage is  engagement. This is a crucial time to get to know each other and bond over wedding plans. So how long should your engagement be? That really depends on you but facts show that you don't want it too long or too short. If your engagement is long you are more likely to fall into sexual relationships before marriage. If your engagement is to short though then you could miss out on essential steps that should take place. One step is planning the wedding. If your engagement is short it makes the planning stressful instead of a bonding time between the couple. You also should have an engagement long enough where you can have full-disclosure conversations.

When planning your wedding it also would be good to make sure this is a couple bonding time. Often the planning of a weeding is between a mother and daughter and maybe the father. It would be wise to make sure the future husband is equally involved in order to let the couple grow closer together.

Lets back up for a moment though and talk about money starting with the ring. How much your ring costs can greatly effect marital satisfaction later. Statistic show how every 100$ over 2,000 spent on the ring decreases marital satisfaction. The same idea goes for the wedding. Cheaper weddings increase marital satisfaction. A good saying to go by is more guests not more money. A wedding isn't about showing off for others but instead having them celebrate your union and the creation of a new family. This even goes for the honey moon, how cheaper honey moons tend to have better marital satisfaction then expensive ones.

So how come this is so? Spending big sums of money can start a relationship off on a stressful start. If the man pays for the ring he can start the couple off in serious debt. Normally these sums of money are paid three different ways. One, the couple waits and have a longer engagement. Two, the parents pay for it. Or three, the couple pays.

First, what if you wait as a couple and push off the marriage so you can pay for it.
 Like I mentioned earlier the longer you wait the easier it is to cohabitate. Cohabitating has shown to increase divorce rates and decrease marital satisfaction.

Second the parents could pay. This can lead to problems because the parents may feel like they made an investment and hence have certain rights. For example they may feel a right to plan the wedding as they see fit or they expect the couple to visit them on holidays. Also since they feel they invested into the marriage they might get unhealthily involved in the marriage to make it last.

Third the couples may pay. Like I mentioned earlier this starts the couple off in debt. Debt has proven to add great stress and rifts in marriage. The couple may have to work more to pay it off and hence spend less time together. It also has proven to make a couple less likely to desire to start a family.

Your marriage can be the happiest day of your life and lead to some of the happiest lives.  If not done right though it can  start a couple off on the wrong track. You should have a formal proposal, you should have an appropriate length engagement, and you should be careful how much you spend. This process can be a strengthening time for a couple, and hence it would be smart to do it right.

Ties that will last

Love is an art and building healthy lasting relationships is even more so. To begin to understand love though lets look at the different kinds of love. First there is Storge which is the kind of affection one finds between parent and child. There is also Agape which is charity such as the pure love of Christ. These two types of love are unconditional. The next one is Eros  which is a sexual or physical romantic love and the last one is Philia which is love between friends and brotherly love.

When getting into a relationship many fall into a Eros love. It takes more then just that though to build a lasting love. You need to have the charity of Agape love and many would argue you need the love of Storge and Philia too. When building towards a lasting relationships there are steps you should take and you shouldn't move to the next step till you feel like you have completed the one before it. The steps goes as follows, know, trust, rely, commit, touch.

The first is know, you get to know someone by adding together talk, together, and time. You need to be able to talk to each other and disclose. You need to hang out together. Go on dates, see them in different settings. This way you get to know how they act and not just their favorite color. The last part is time. It normally takes about 3 months for habits to show up and you get to see a persons true self.

Once you know a person you can start to put trust in them. Once a person has proven to be trustworthy then you can rely on them to fill your needs.

Next is commit. Simply put, no, you shouldn't commit to anyone that you don't know and can't trust and rely on. This sounds obvious when stated but so often we see people get into exclusive relationships with people they hardly know, let alone can trust and rely on.

The last part is touch. This part normally gets out of whack. So often couples skip to a stage where they trust and snuggle with someone before they even truly know them. This is simply not healthy though. Physical touch by nature, even  just simple hugs, can really make a bond between people. You see this if you go on long trips with people you don't know. By the end of the trip after sitting by someone for a long time even if you don't talk much you feel closer to them by the end.This is why touch should be last. By having touch in your relationship you will feel closer to the person and hence are more likely to trust and rely on them with out truly knowing them first.

In the end most of it comes back to knowing someone. If you want to have a good relationship you need to truly get to know the person first. You need to see them in multiple situations. This way you know before hand what you are inviting into your life before you commit to it.

Equal does not mean the same!

Many would have you believe that girls and boys act unalike mostly based on their environment. Many believe that since boys and girls are treated dissimilar they grow up different. Much research shows though that a lot of these differences actually has to do with biology and hence the contrast between boy and girls is more innate.

 Such contrasting differences can even be seen from birth. Many babies, who are to young to fully understand their surroundings, act differently to situation. Even evolutionally this would make sense that we fit into certain categories. Woman have to put all their energy into making a baby, because of this, man evolved to be more protective in order to protect his wife during this venerable time when she is creating. He also will then need to protect her and their child when they are both weak from the birthing process.  biologically men have more grey matter in there brain which allows more storage and processing. Woman have more white matter which allows them to make up to 5 times faster connections between the emotional and verbal part of their brains. This explains why woman tend to be more comfortable talking about their feelings. Another way to see sex traits contrast through biology is actually by looking at people who don't fit the mold.  CAH girls find themselves to be very tom boy, they tend to be rougher and not as nurturing, they also aren't as comfortable with feelings. So how does this prove that traits are biological? Well CAH girls are actually exposed to more testosterone while they are in the uteral. So yes some people aren't as feminine or masculine but that also can be contributed to biology not just purely environment. Society has tried to make boys and girls more equal and it has simply not worked. Toy companies have made dolls for boys and video games for girls but they simple do not get the same attention as their other more stereotypical boy girl toys. 

Men and woman in general are different and that's ok. It is how God designed us. We are born with different traits that make us who we are. By bringing these traits together in marriage we complete each other and make a more perfect whole.