It is interesting how each family member has role in the family. Some people may be a care giver where others might be good listeners. Some people are natural peacemakers where others might tease and try to make life interesting. Either way whatever your role is in your family, you make a difference by being a part of it. Imagine that everyone was standing in a circle holding hands. If one person is missing from the circle there is a huge gap and the others can’t support themselves as easily during difficult times. Everyone plays an important role in their family.

            With that same example, with everyone holding hands, imagine that the circle was complete without any gaps. If one person were to lean backwards because they were under stress as if they had a bad day everyone in the circle is affected by them. The rest of the circle supports the person with stress to keep them from falling over or out of the circle. Families share some of the stress that we feel in our everyday lives. The person leaning backwards can realize that they are under stress but sometimes they don’t realize that the rest of the circle is their support and that they are under stress as well. Once the person lets go of some of the stress the family is able to go back to where they were before.

            Sometimes a family member isn’t able to remove the stress and the rest of the family has to adjust and adapt to new roles in the family in order to keep the circle together.

We may have to take on roles that we didn’t necessarily want or know how to do. Sometimes we can feel under so much stress that the family is pulled in two different directions and is barely holding itself together. Overtime it can be really tiring and unhealthy to hold onto so much stress. It is good to be able to learn how much stress you can take on.

            One of the best ways is to set boundaries. Imagine that there are three houses in a row that are almost identical. The first house you see has a tall steel wall with an iron gate and a small peep hole to see what is on the other side. In this first example the person is completely closed off to everyone else in the world. They hardly go out and talk to others. They don’t have a lot of friends because they are worried that if they would talk to anyone they would have to let them inside the gate and they couldn’t get them to leave.

The second house has a few fence posts around the yard but no wire or anything to keep people out, the front door is wide open and you can tell that there have been people cutting through the corners of the grass. In this house they let anyone in who wants to. The front door is always open and they always have a pie or some treat sitting on the counter for anyone who wants to come. These people tend to be really tired and are constantly giving and receive nothing in return.

The third house has a nice yard with a white picket fence around it. It is very welcoming but you can see that you shouldn’t hop the fence. The people that love here are super friendly and love meeting new people but don’t let people cross the line into their home having a protection.

The first person might live with anxiety and be so worried about other people that they can’t relax. The second person can feel that others are taking advantage of them. They could also feel that they are constantly helping others but when they need help with something there is no one around to listen. Out of these three examples the last one would have better and longer lasting relationships with others. They are friendly to others but know where their boundaries are.

What would life be like if you didn’t have your family? Family is an important part of life. They can give you emotional support when you are having a bad day, your parents and siblings can teach you different life skills, they can help you to feel more secure, and help to keep you company. I couldn’t imagine a life without my family. They are my closest friends. They have helped me to overcome so many things in life and to lift me up when I didn’t complete my goals.

In the movie The Giver, it kind of depicts what it would be like without family relationships. When children are born in the movie they don’t live with their birth parents. They are assigned to live with two strangers in a different home. In the beginning of the movie they are content living together mostly because they don’t realize that there is something missing from their family relationship. As the movie goes on the main character Jonas is taught what is missing. One day after a lesson about feelings with his instructor, the Giver, he went home and asked his parents if they loved him. His parents didn’t know how to react. Jonas had felt what love is and loved his parents but they didn’t know how to love him back. It wasn’t a feeling that they were used to. It would be sad to live in a world surrounded by people who don’t know the feeling of love. In the movie they were missing something but in our world the standards on the family are changing and starting to diminish.

It’s sad to see that the views on the family today aren’t the same as they used to be. There are many factors that might play into that. A few of them could be that the average age people get married has increased, less people are getting married, more people live together before they get married, and the child bearing age has increased. Although these may seem like small things, they can have a big impact on the family.

Although it may not seem like it, in the past 50 years the marrying age has almost doubled. In 1960 the average marrying age was around 21 and now the average age has increased to 29. It is good to wait to get married to the right person but at the same time waiting can cause problems later on. If you wait until you are in your 30’s there are more problems that can occur during pregnancies and also the amount of kids that you can have has decreased. Fertility rate is the number of kids a woman has in a lifetime. Studies have shown that if the fertility rate falls below 2.13 the world population will start decreasing. The current fertility rate is 2.5. That number has also decreased by almost double in the last 50 years.

Another study I found also shows that almost half of Americans don’t ever get married. 51% of Americans either start living together without being married or decide to live alone. There was a study done a few years ago that showed that two thirds of all people who live together before marriage end up getting a divorce later in life. There could be many factors that contribute to this. Sometimes people who didn’t live together before they married still end up getting a divorce. Even with that in mind 24% of all married people and 62% of remarried people end up getting a divorce which can have a huge impact on the family.