The Importance of Dating

Everyone has been on those awkward dates before. You go on a date and neither of you can decides on what to do. Once you finally do decide on something to do, neither of you have anything to say to the other. So why go on dates in the first place? What is considered to be an actual date, what is the purpose, and what should you be doing on a date?

First let’s talk about what makes a date a date. To help you remember we will use the ‘Three P’s’. The very first thing that should happen for a date to be date is for it to be ‘Planned.’ Like I said earlier, nothing is more awkward, as well as frustrating, then to go on a date just find out that you aren’t actually doing anything. By having the date planned you are showing the person that you value their time and that you actually appreciate them accepting the offer to go on the date.

The second ‘P’ is for the date to be ‘Paired off’. There is nothing wrong with a group date in fact I personally believe that they are more fun, simply because then you have the opportunity to get to know more people. But having the date paired off is very important because then you know who you have responsibility for.

The last ‘P’ is ‘Paid for.’ Now I am a person that feels guilty whenever someone buys something for me and would rather just pay for myself, but I also see the importance of having the date paid for. By paying for the date, just like pairing off, you are showing that you are taking responsibility for your date.

When going on a date you need to be doing things that help you to get to know that person. Along with that, you should go on a variety of different dates with a variety of different people. The overall purpose of dating is to prepare you for marriage and find what qualities you would like in a future spouse. By limiting your dating to one person you aren’t able to realize qualities that that would be important to you in a future spouse. Going on dates also helps you gain good social skills, build healthy relationships, and over all create healthy habits to carry with you into marriage.

To be more specific, how do the ‘Three P’s’ help with fulfilling your roles in marriage? In “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” we are told that the roles of a husband are to Provide, Preside, and Protect. When a guy plans a date, he is practicing his role to preside. This is because he is taking charge of the date and knows how to be a leader. Paring off also helps with their role of presiding because he is learning how to be responsible for another person, which is also practicing the role of protector. The last one, having the date paid for, helps the man to practice providing for his future family and teaches him to work hard to have the means to provide for that family.

But don’t worry, the roles of the wife and mother are also being practiced while dating. As women, we have the role to nurture. We can practice this on a date by being courteous to our date in showing appreciation for their efforts of putting together the date. Now this doesn’t mean that the roles of providing, or showing interest lie entirely on one gender. In fact, girls can and should ask guys on dates as well. This can prepare us to work together in a relationship and not make it one sided in effort.

By going on wholesome dates, you truly are preparing for marriage. The way you date is actually practice in which you are creating habits that you will take with you into marriage. You can either create good habits or bad ones, so make sure that while you are on a date you are uplifting one another to be the best you can be!

The Divine Roles of Men and Women

We have had it drilled into our minds that we need to have equality, that we are all the same, and that you are wrong to think otherwise. Now when it comes to men and women there are things that we should be equal in, but what we truly need to understand is that equal doesn’t mean the same. Let me explain.

Equality means that you have equal opportunities. We want women to be able to get an education just as much as we want men to. We want women to be respected just as much as men are. But in this fight for equality the world has actually tried to make us the same but have also in a way tried to make women superior to men. But we know this is wrong. We are taught in the church that men and women have distinct divine roles, and should work side by side (be equal). It wasn’t surprising to see that studies done to show differences aligned with what we are taught in The Family: A Proclamation to the World. Studies have shown that even as young kids boys and girls are different. Girls are more likely to do types of play where they are able to be nurturers (play house and be mothers). They are also more likely to go for toys such as dolls and dress up. Boys on the other hand are more likely to do types of play that physical and aggressive. They tend to go more for toys such as guns and action figures.

But how does what they tend to do as children emulate the roles they are meant to take on? Just like how little girls like playing with dolls by taking care of them, women have the role of nurturing. The boys learning to be aggressive and competitive prepares them for the role of taking charge of presiding, providing for, and protecting their family. We need to embrace these different roles that men and women have, because each has something special to offer.

One way that we are diminishing those roles is by making women in the workplace a priority over being a stay at home mom. We have fought so hard to be able to let women get higher education and become scientists, doctors, and engineers, that it is often looked down upon to be a stay at home mom. Somehow in the process of empowering women to ‘be who they want to be’ we have actually degraded them. Since we have the opportunity to go on to be doctors, scientists, and engineers, we are almost expected to strive to be on top. In some ways the world wants women to take on those executive jobs, to prove their equality to men. We need to stop seeing those who choose to be mothers as those that don’t reach their full potential, but rather help people understand that being a stay at home mom by caring and nurturing their children is just as equally important and vital as if they were to take on the job of going to work and providing for the family financially.

As Elder Christofferson, an apostle for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, once said in general conference, “In Blurring feminine and masculine differences, we lose the distinct, complementary gifts of women and men that together produce a greater whole.” In other words we need both male and female to reach our full potential. We were made to better one another through our different roles. Neither one is more important than the other, and as we see each of our roles as important then we are truly equal.

        

The Love of a Parent

All good parents want what is best for their children and do what they think is in their child’s best interest. The ultimate example of this being our Heavenly Father. He gives us commandments to help us learn, grow, and become like Him so that we can return to live with Him after this life. Many people struggle with His commandments because they may seem restrictive, or hard, but in the end our Heavenly Father knows us best, and those commandments were given out of love to protect us from unnecessary harm.

            There are many other examples of parents who make sacrifices to have their children’s lives be the best that they can be. An example from the scriptures is Lehi leading his family into the wilderness to get to the promised land. Lehi was leading his family away from destruction because he knew that the promised land would keep them safe so that his family could prosper. In our day, many parents are trying to lead their family to another land to give their children better opportunities. They are trying to lead their families to a new location so that they can receive a better education, climb the social ladder, and just have a better life in general. But how can these challenges affect the family as a whole? What challenges does that family face as they leave what they know to go to another area, or even another country?

            There are many families in today’s world that are trying to leave their countries and come to the United States, but what they may not plan for is all the changes their family will go through in the process. When Lehi’s family left Jerusalem, his family, specifically his children, had a very hard time. Laman and Lemuel had a very hard time adjusting from living in a home with an inheritance, to a tent in the wilderness with nothing to their name. Just like Lehi’s family, many who try and make the journey to a better life in America, often have to leave everything that they have behind. Many of the fathers had good paying jobs where they could provide for their families. The mothers were able to stay home and provide love and support to their husband and children. What they don’t realize, is that in making the change for their children to be ahead in life, many of the family roles change.

There are so many families in Mexico that decide they are going to make the journey to America. They want their kids to be able to get an education and learn English so that they can return to Mexico and be able to receive much higher paying jobs due to being bilingual. They take the journey for a better life, but in most cases the whole family doesn’t all come at the same time. Many fathers leave first to set things up for their families but find themselves in very low paying jobs. While trying to earn the money to bring their family to where they are, the family structure itself is already changing. First of all, the father isn’t a part of their lives as much as they used to be, and with the father not making very much money, the mother turns to working as well. Where does this leave the kids? The relationships they once had with their families start to deteriorate. They aren’t able to have those strong family ties because neither the father nor the mother is in the home to help strengthen and encourage them.

Once the father has finally earned enough money to bring his family to where he is, it has often been many years. The children in these families go through so much. When they are able to be reunited, they have to rebuild family ties and learn how to adjust to a new culture. They miss their friends and family back home and now struggle with school because it is in a language they don’t understand. In this new culture they have to learn how people expect them to act, and during all of this, try and make new friends. In addition, they still don’t have a family to go back to, because both of their parents are out of the home working to provide for their family. 

With all of these costs it almost seems too high to be worth it. But just like Lehi, they often do this because they feel it is best for their family. In the end, their children often do get a better education, higher paying jobs, and are able to move up in the world to be able to have a better life. To these parents, their sacrifice of leaving what they know behind is totally worth it!

Becoming One as a Family

There are many theories surrounding marriage and or family. Each try to explain the phenomenon (happenings whether big or small) that go on within the family or marriage. By recognizing what is going on, we are better able to handle the situation at hand. When we are able to do this, we are not only able to better understand each other, but our relationships are strengthened! While talking about different theories this past week, there were two main concepts that I found to be most important; the importance of boundaries and roles within the family, as well as how best to deal with differences in marriage and become one.

In marriage there is always conflict, so how can we take those differences so that you can grow closer together over farther apart? As a society we have become so individualized that we tend to want to think only of ourselves, and focus on our side of the story, but in marriage you need to become one. When there is a disagreement, a husband and wife need to turn to each other vs friends or family. This is not to say you can’t turn for help when needed, but if you need help you really should be turning to each other as a couple rather than as an individual. This strengthens your ‘oneness’ as a husband and wife vs drawing you farther apart.

A lesson that I think our Heavenly Father taught us about life, is how there is a point in life that we need to move on, or in other words to change our roles. Just like Heavenly Father sent us to earth, away from Him so that we could learn and grow, it is important that once you get married, you learn to define your own rules and take on the new roles. There are many roles we take on in different settings, but the most important roles we could ever take on, is the one as husband/wife and father/mother. These roles need to be above any other role we take on in life, even the roles as son/daughter or brother/sister. Husband and wife need to be one as they take on their role as parents. Doing this will not only strengthen the marriage, but enforce the rules and boundaries they decide to set for their family.

Rules/ boundaries are very important things to have in a family because of the structure that it gives. Boundaries make it so you know what is expected of you, and help the family to function well together. There are three main types of boundaries. The first are closed boundaries. These boundaries are where you don’t let any outside influence into your family. In the case of closed boundaries, you are very closed off from the world and extremely private. The next are open boundaries. This is where there is no determination on where to draw the line. In open boundaries you are typically very interactive with the outside environment. In other words, you let just about any outside influence into your family. Those two boundaries are to the extreme, and aren’t healthy for your family as a whole. The last boundary is clear boundaries. This is the healthiest of boundaries and is the middle ground between the two extreme boundaries. Clear boundaries help children know what is allowed and what isn’t. This gives structure to the family without being closed off from the world, and still allows for learning and growth. To me this emulates how we are given commandments. They aren't there to keep us from doing things that in this world are considered fun or cool, but are there to keep us safe!

To summarize, marriages are healthiest when you try and work out your differences together. As you do, you will be able to strengthen each other and then be able to strengthen your family. We need to follow our Heavenly Father’s example to us and set healthy boundaries for our families to follow so that they can be safe.

The Great and Spacious Building

While doing Come Follow Me this week, I couldn't help but make connections to what we learn from Lehi's vision of the tree of life and how it associates to the world today. To be more specific, how the great and spacious building could be all of the lies we are told in our society and how if you don't agree with those views you are ‘mocked’ to the point of feeling ashamed for believing what you do. The example that I want to focus on right now is how having children, specifically more than one or two, is frowned upon. It has become so normal to want only one child, or even none at all. And how people don’t realize the importance of the family.

          Did you know that here in the U.S. fertility rates are at an all time low? There are many factors that go into this. The first is what people call the demographic revolution. What that is, is the fact that people are choosing material things in life to give them happiness over children and families. It is found that as economies become richer and prosper materially, that people choose to not have children.

         Another cause of decline in fertility rates is the fact that there is a change in the roles for women. Now there was a lot of good that came from women’s rights. Women were able to vote and seen as equals. They were able to gain an education, and be empowered to realize that they have potential and worth, but as women sought education, many choose to pursue a career over marriage and families. This causes problems later in life when they decide to seek marriage and family later in life, because as women get older, they are less likely to conceive and be able to have a healthy pregnancy. The world is telling us that we need to focus on our career and that choosing to get married and raise a family is stifling our growth as a person and not rising to our full potential and gratification that a successful career can give. We get so caught up in ourselves, that we don’t stop to think about others.

The biggest reason that we have a decline in fertility however, is because of how the world is trying to change marriage and family norms. Many people don’t realize all of the good that having a strong family can have. In fact, there is more economic growth in countries where there are more traditional families (families where the mother and father are married and living together in the home). Other nations are realizing the effect that low fertility rates have on their countries and are now offering cash incentives to families willing to have children. Italy offers $15,000 per child, Japan $5,000, and Russia is offering $9,000 plus $140 per month and part of the woman’s pay if she stays in the home to raise the children.

Many of the goals that we want as a nation start with the family. We want strong women with good educations? Well girls who are in stable intact families are less likely to have a teen pregnancy and will be more likely to succeed in their education. But it isn’t just girls. Children as a whole are less likely to be into drugs and alcohol, are less likely to be abused, have depression, or need therapy, and are more likely to seek higher education. This is because the family is the place where we are taught how to trust and cooperate with others, learn our moral principles and our conscience is laid.

People don’t realize the importance of intact families and the impact of not having children will have on our countries. We need to strive for marriage and family because it helps the nation to grow economically. The more children we have as a nation, the more we will be able to learn from each other and solve world problems. And to ensure that those children are able to excel to their full potential, we need strong intact families that can be the support system we need to succeed in life!