This week in our Family Relations class I learned a lot about research, and that was eye-opening for me. I thought it was interesting how we learned how we need to be cautious of the research that we find. We need to be cautious because a lot of research does not portray 100% accuracy because it may be bias.
Furthermore, I really enjoyed reading the the first chapter in our book, "Marriage and Family: The Quest for Intimacy." I learned a lot of insights. One of the things that I found very insightful while reading was about the changing patterns in intimate relationships. In many ways, these changing patters are very alarming and will affect us as a nation greatly, in my opinion. Some of the changing patterns that they mentioned in the text book were (1) premartial sex is occurring more frequently among younger teenagers, (2) the amount of births to unmarried women are increasing, (3) the amount of Americans living alone is increasing, (4) cohabitation is increasing, (5) people are delaying marriage to later years of their lives, (6) birth rates are declining, (7) the average household size is declining, (8) the amount of employed mothers is increasing (especially among women who have children under six years of age) and, (9) the divorce rate is increasing. All of these changing patters will greatly affect our nation, especially in the generations to come. That is where we see the aftermath of these changing patterns if these patterns continue to rise.