Family Relations

An imposing question indeed! Why do people get married? What is this mad unnatural desire that humans have to get married when no other animals in nature are looking for their soulmate? " In fact, I think the whole concept of marriage is unnatural. I mean look at pigs. Let's take a second here and look at pigs. Okay, pigs don't mate for life. I mean a pig can have like a hundred sexual partners in a lifetime, and that's just an ordinary pig, not even a pig that's good at sports! " ― Chandler Bing (Friends) Well, it seems like a perfectly valid argument. Marriage seems to change everything in a relationship, doesn't it? All of a sudden the man becomes boring and the woman starts nagging. The man takes up a higher paying job to support the family and works late, while the woman feels no need to look pretty anymore and starts putting on some weight. And then the kids come into the picture and it all gets even worse. They yell, they scream, they complai...

There is a mythology in our culture that love just happens. As a result, the depressed often sit around passively waiting for someone to love them. But love doesn't work that way. To get love and keep the love you have to go out and be active and learn a variety of specific skills. Most of us get our ideas of love from popular culture. We come to believe that love is something that sweeps us off our feet. But the pop-culture idea of love consists of unrealistic images created for entertainment, which is one reason so many of us are set up to be depressed. It's part of our national vulnerability, like eating junk food, constantly stimulated by images of instant gratification. We think it is love when it's simply distraction and infatuation. Love is a force of nature. However much we may want to, we can not command, demand, or take away love, any more than we can command the moon and the stars and the wind and the rain to come and go according to our whims. We may hav...

Gender roles are defined by the socio-cultural norms of any society. In most of the societies, the family systems are based on the gender roles and it is the pre-designed gender roles that help members of the family to run the family with bound responsibilities. Any disturbance in the gender role aspect may affect the smooth functioning of the easy-going of any family. But today, modern life has very much changed the family structure and the gender roles have been diverting from the traditional responsibilities and path of performance. In fact, the gap between different genders has already melted down, creating an all equal society and more equalized families. Today, there are no monarchs in families and no bout-to-obey members in families. All live together, taking decisions together, expressing opinions openly, criticizing and encouraging mutually and yet being independent and responsible. The society-defined gender roles may crash with the modern roles of family members and man...

Diversity is a familiar topic in many college psychology classes. Race, gender, sexual orientation, LGBTQ issues, ethnicity, and disability fall under the heading of diversity. Yet one topic, social class, is often overlooked or even avoided in classroom discussions of diversity. One reason for avoiding discussing social class is likely to be the fact that many American students assume they fall into the ill-defined social category known as “middle class.” In many cases, students are loath to identify themselves as “upper middle class” or “working class.” Being middle class is not risky; you pass as everyman—or everywoman. And many Americans still hold onto the idea that they live in a “classless” society. They—we—don’t. Social class is all around us, but in higher education generally and in the field of psychology specifically, with few exceptions , we—faculty members and students alike-avoid the topic. In the minds of many, social class is defined by income: To wit, higher i...