Family Trends and Research

Hello everybody, this week I’m going to talk about the importance of good research and family trends. In a case study done by the APA it talked about whether children born to heterosexual parents have an advantage compared to children raised in homes with homosexual parents. Throughout the whole study it had problems with small sample sizes, convenience samples, comparison samples, and a few questions that had little or nothing to do with the purpose of the study in the first place. For example, a study about issues and coping compared single mothers to homosexual parents. Over the past few years, it has already been proven that single mothers or fathers' children have a harder time in school and more mental health problems than that of  children that are raised in a home with two parents. Another example is a study about the self-esteem of adolescent children. In this there are only 18 heterosexual couples and 18 homosexual couples being compared. This isn't a good sample size because 36 people isn't enough to generalize for a big group of people in the population. One more example is of a study about mothers' psychological health. This doesn't even focus on the children, which is the purpose of the study. This taught me that I should always check my sources for valid research before I start basing claims off of them.

Another topic I am going to be discussing is about recent trends in families over the past few decades. In an article called "Marriage and Family in America: Needs, Myths, and Dreams' ', it talks about many concerning trends professionals have been noticing over the last few years. Something fascinating that I noticed was about delaying marriage. It talks about how between the years of the 1950s and the 1970s most women got married at 20.5 years of age, and 22.5 years for men. Since then the age has increased dramatically. In the year 2020 the age for men was 30.5 years and 28.1 for women. Some main reasons for this have been the fear of divorce has increased, people wanting to "live" before they settle down, sexual relations happen more frequently outside of marriage, and so much more. In fact over the past few years I have heard many people tell me about how they have fears of getting married and having families. Reasons such as,"I don't want to divorce and end up like my parents'', "I don't want to have to stop my career to raise a family", and "I don't want to "settle down" until I have lived a little". One major cause for the increase of disinterest in getting married and settling down is social media. All over we see these posts of single adults traveling the world, becoming very successful, and being able to do whatever they want. Then there are those movies, shows, posts, and all other kinds of media portraying that having families and being married is the worst thing that can happen to you. But that isn't the case. Most families I know are still able to do all those things that the media has told us we can't. For example, I know of many parents who have still been able to pursue their careers while being married and raising kids. My family and my friend's families are still able to travel and try new things, and an extra bonus is that if we get lonely we have built in friends that we will have forever. I know this isn't the case with most people, but I know that families are something that we shouldn't be scared of but something we look forward to.