The Family System

            What do you think of when you hear the word system? The first thing that comes to my mind is my Dad, telling me how to load a dishwasher. “There’s a system, he said as he looked down at my haphazardly attempt to place every dirty dish into our overstuffed, over worked dishwasher.  He removed the dishes, saying “If you place so many dishes in here, the soapy water won’t be able to do its job properly because the dishes are blocking the way. He reloaded the dishwasher, and told me that if he hadn’t of helped me, I would have had to clean the dishes all over again. Webster dictionary defines system as a “group of related parts that move or work together.” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/system). Just like our weary dishwasher, it had many parts that worked together to clean up our dirty dishes.

            A family system is made up of parts you have mother, father, son, and daughter. In such systems people learn the basic things of life. Just as the washer’s system was made to clean dishes, the family system was made to create people who are loving, hard-working individuals, who can help move the world forward. The mother and father are the leaders within the family, they teach their children how to make good decisions that will eventually allow the child to live by themselves and later create their own family systems. This is the golden standard, a mom and dad who love each other and do their best to work as a team. These golden standard parents love their children and they do all they can to help their children learn for themselves and how to be successful individuals.

             I know that not all systems are created equal. Divorce, abuse, death, and other things contribute to family systems. The family is made up of parts and each part affects each other. That is why the word “system” is used to describe the family. If the mom is not around you’ll usually see the dad or a child step up and take on responsibilities that would normally rest upon the shoulders of the mother. When systems are dysfunctional or parts are missing, it can still work but the end results may be different.

            We talked about this idea in class, we read papers and discussed possible outcomes for the different families. As I review this post, I realize that I haven’t touched on those things. I’ve had so many thoughts on what we’ve been studying that I wasn’t sure what to write. Mostly I felt the importance to share that families need to work together in order to be successful. I feel no matter your situation you an eventually create a family that learns and loves together.

            

This week's lesson: The Replacement Generation

The classroom on Thursday was buzzing. We were a group, trying to understand a concept our teacher had placed in front of us. The subject, “The Replacement Population” Hands were being raised, questions were asked, all the while it felt like a living, breathing subject we were prodding and observing. Each of us trying to understand how it worked and why it mattered. I was trying to take it all in, because later I knew I would have to sit down and write about my understanding of population growth and why having children matters.

Personally, I’m glad that my parents decided to have children. I am number seven of eight children, all eight of us come from the same mother and father. I’ve often thought where I would be if my parents had stopped at three or even six. What would have become of my siblings if my parents had only one? Would we have been assigned to different families or would someone in heaven say, “I guess you’re stuck here.”

While studying about population this week, I realized that our personal decisions really do affect everyone around us. One main part of my study came from a documentary called “The New Economic Reality: Demographic Winter” here’s the link if you’d like to take a look for yourself, https://www.byutv.org/show/5e819b00-5e99-4bf4-931e-c154d3c2dc8d/new-economic-reality-demographic-winter  In this documentary they take a look at several things, including; the baby boom, a book called “Population Bomb” by Bob Urlick and the average number of children born to American women each year. There are more things they talk about in this documentary but their main goal is to inform the public that in order us to succeed as a society in the future, and by that, I mean economically, politically, socially, we need to have enough people in our replacement generation. For that to happen there needs to be at least 2.13 children born to every parent.  

A big hindrance to people having more children came from the book I mentioned earlier called “Population Bomb” by Bob Urlick. He predicted that by the year 1968, the world would have exceeded its resources and within the 1970s there would have been massive starvation because of over-population. Bob is interviewed in the documentary and he compared having five children to robbing a bank because, as he said, “you’re denying others, resources that I think, they have a right to have.” (Bob Urlick, The New Economic Reality: Demographic Winter, 6:30) I can see his point that it’s unethical for parents to have more than maybe one child because you’re taking resources that could be used for someone else, yet there’s a problem with his study. Not only have none of his predictions come true, he underestimated the amount of resources that the planet has to offer. This doesn’t mean that I think we should do whatever we want because our planet has an unlimited amount of resources and it doesn’t matter what choices we make. No, our choices matter, and there are consequences to each decision we make, but if we were to think of the population as a conveyer belt and as generations pass away do we have enough people on earth to replace the previous generation?

There’s a lot of responsibility on parents not just to have children, but to raise those children to become individuals who are hardworking, diligent, honest, good people, who will be able to carry out the responsibilities that will be placed before them. We don’t just need parents who will have more children, we need parents who are willing to teach them how to think for themselves how to make correct decisions. In an odd way, I’ve come back to the classroom, where the teacher and the student can come together and learn important principles.

It matters to me that my parents decided to have more than one child. Not only because I don’t know where I would be if they just had one, but because I would have missed out on the experiences that I had within my family. I wouldn’t have learned what it meant to be number seven of such a group. My family has its problems and I didn’t always like being part of such a large group, but it was my classroom, and I wouldn’t trade the lessons I learned from that particular classroom for anything. 

 Most of my family are in this picture, since this picture was taken we've had one marriage and five births. 

 A picture of me with all four of my sisters. Can you tell who was the pain? 

                      When my sister came to visit from South Carolina

A picture of six of us siblings from this past summer, two are missing from this picture.

Let's hear it for the girl: A quick introduction about myself and what I will be writing in this Blog

Who is Sophie Draper?

She’s a college student. An individual who loves Jesus Christ, her family, movies, and breakfast burritos. She served a mission in Twin Falls Idaho and has been a fan of the state ever since. Sophie believes families and homes should be places of safety and peace. That is why she is taking a class to learn more about families and the ways you can help them to succeed. 

Now, I will step away from speaking in 3rd person and explain what you can expect as you read this blog. 

This blog will be a journal of my thoughts/opinions of what I learn in the Family 106 course. It will include different goals, stories, connections and other things that I feel are important to note. I welcome your comments and I’m excited to see what this class holds in store for me.