Wait people theorize families?

         People theorize everything. And something commonly theorized that people don't quite think about are families. A theory is an explanation of something. It is a set of logically related proposals to explain how something happens or works. What I am going to speak on is the different types of theories talked about in Lauer & Lauer and how they relate to families. 

        Systems theory states that the relationship must be looked at and analyzed as a whole. A family therapist stated that humans and families respond at a much more emotional level rather than cognitive. Cognitive meaning the act of knowing. Families respond with feelings. It is a much deeper level than other relationships. We must try to balance out our cognition with emotions for a healthy family development. My family is really good at being patient and caring when someone else is upset or needs advice or anything. 

        Another theory... exchange theory is all about when you owe someone something and the idea of when someone gives something to a person they return the favor. This is a huge part of families and how they work as one. Costs and rewards are a part of families. Things like time and money and patience and wisdom are all things that are given in families. Parents give their children allowances, and lessons to learn, etc. Rewards are given such as again, money as well as gratitude and emotional time and energy. Like when parents want their kids to clean up their room or do chores and in exchange they give them some spending money or video game time. These exchanges are what makes a family, a family. Exchange theory is used is many different ways that involve family. Choosing your partner, choosing a number of kids, and on and on. I know in my family we have a lot of costs and rewards. We get everything done we need to, we get a movie night. We do an extra job or two or get good grades, we get spending money. 

        Symbolic Interation Theory. This theory focuses on the cognitive part of families who are influenced by experiences. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Things change. Minds and opinions change under certain circumstances. An example could be, someone who is about to have a child and finds out its a girl might be disappointed because they wanted a son. But as soon as the baby girl is born... their mind changes almost instantly and they love the baby girl. Another important part of this theory is how people define their relationships. How someone sees another relationship from the outside vs how the people in the relationship defines their own relationship. Like someone may look at a couple who has a very large age gap and think "she's only in it for the money" or "he is a creep" but that couple could really be in love and they define their relationship as healthy and built off of pure love and nothing else. 

        Conflict theory basically states that everyone is different. Theres conflict everywhere. dynamics are built partly off of conflicts. In family situations they look at two things. social class and gender. Class differences with family come into play when we think about advantages and disadvantages with single parents, two heterosexual parents and lqbtq+ parents. As well as families is different economic situations. People who come from families with money vs families who have worked for their money vs family with no money. 

        There is a lot of other theories and questions about families and how they work that we could get into but we can save that for another day. Hope you guys learned something new this week. :)