When I was serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I became aware of the fact that my family was not like other families. This was surprising news to me because I felt like most families were alike, especially in a close-knit church community.

                Let me tell you how I first become aware of this. As a missionary, you are paired with a companion and you are expected to be together always. ALWAYS. I am talking about that I couldn’t even walk down an aisle of the store without her being by my side or go to the bathroom without her standing right outside the door. Yeah, you could say that we were attached at the hip, but when you are with someone 24/7 for at least three months, you notice things that you would think are abnormal, strange, or downright rude! Such as the fact that she gets angry at you anytime you don’t take off your shoes as you enter the house or leaving dishes in the sink more than one meal after using them is unacceptable, or she get offended when you try to serve her. Naturally, I felt like I had entered an alternate universe and it took quite bit of time, and effort to change my perception on her weird behavior, but as soon as I did everything was back to normal.

                This week I learned a lot about family systems, roles, and rules, which gave light to what was happening on my mission. My companion was trying to be rude or bossy, she was just simply following her family system which consists of the rules and the roles.

                According to the Family Systems Theory by Murray Bowen, each family has rules and roles. Most of them go unnoticed because they are engraved in our families. They are just a part of us. Take my companion for example, her family has a rule that you take off your shoes every time you go into the house. Something so simple that she probably would have never recognized it as her own family rule, if I hadn’t broken it. Another example is children having to say, “yes sir” or “no ma’am”. How did they learn this? Obviously by breaking the rule! Their parents correct them and tell them to address them as ma’am or sir, and they don’t try to break the rule again. Think about it. What are some of your own family rules? How did you know it was a family rule? It is good to know what your family rules are and how you learned. Once you understand your own family rules, you will begin to notice that other families have rules as well.

                Another important thing to be aware of is the roles each person plays in their family. I am not talking about the role of older sister, or father, or younger brother, though those are important, I am talking more about the role of family clown, the black sheep, the hyper child, the emotional one, the motherly one, etc. Though they may never be brought into the light in our individual family units, each one of us carries one of these roles. Roles give our family structure and assurance that we are needed, and wanted, but they can immensely affect us. For example, a family member who is the family clown might have an off day, where they aren’t feeling so funny, but there is still an expectation that they need to fulfill their role. This can cause quite a bit of anxiety for that family member. Some may even get depressed when they feel that they are not fulfilling our family roles, therefore roles can be a double edge sword. We need to be aware of our role and our the roles that we put on our family members

                As I was learning this, I began to compare family systems to immune systems. They rely on roles and structure to keep the family heathy. Like an immune system, the family system will protect itself from any disturbance by reestablishing the rules and roles. This is my companion was so frustrated with me and I with her, because we had frustrated each other’s family systems. Naturally, we wanted to correct the wrong, even though never of us were in the wrong. Quite interesting!

                I invite each of you to look at your family systems and find out your rules and roles, and comment below about the things you observe. I would love to see your many different rules and roles!

I remember, in High School, the topic of family size was once brought up over school lunch. It started with the simple question of “How many children do you want to have when you get married”. Most of the responses were no higher than four, and they were met with many nods of agreement. When it was my turn to answer, I confidently said “six or seven”. The table went silent and everyone stared at me. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and asked, “what?” All the sudden the whole table roar with comment such as, “Girl, that is way too many kids! How would you even provide for them?” as well as “How are you going to give them all the attention that they need?” and “that is more like a preschool than a family”. Slowly, I felt my desire to have so many kids diminish until I found myself agreeing with my friends and I didn’t think about it again, until this past Thursday.  

I am taking a family relations class and my professor talked about the fertility rate and how it is affecting our future. Now, I am wondering if desiring a big family isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Let me explain.

Currently, the fertility rate for the USA is 1.76, which is interpreted to mean that each woman is having about 1.76 children in their lifetime. The birth rate had dropped significantly since the baby boom, in which 78.3 million children were born! Now, you are probably wondering what is the big deal. Well, it turns out that the fertility rate affects quite a few things. Economy

• Economies

Economies heavily depend on human capital, or in other words, people with “skills to pay the bills”. They depend on children growing up to be workers, spenders, and investors. This is how economies grow or shrink, so what would happen if the population were to suddenly decrease in the next few years. We are looking at our economy becoming unstable, but not only that. We are also looking at an increase of the work load within our jobs, but not an increase of pay. Why? Because the job of three people will now have to be done by one person, since there will not be enough people to fill the positions. We may even be looking at longer work hours. What a pain!

• Retirement and retirement funds

You can kiss your golden year goodbye, because you will still have to work well past the retirement age. Because of the low fertility rate, there will be no young workers to take you place let alone to fund your social security trust fund. Don’t believe me? Think about this example.  When the baby boom happened, there were 41.6 workers to support every retired adult. Now there is 2.9 workers for every retiree and it is predicted to drop down to two by 2030. People are going to be forced to work and retire later in their lives, it is inevitable.

• Relatives

With the increasing trend of smaller families, we are starting to see more and more kids going through out life without cousins, uncles, or aunts. We were given an example of a young boy who both his parents where single children. Therefore, he had no aunts or uncles which meant he had no cousins in his life. He also barely knew his grandparents because he was born when his parents were older. It is quite a lonely life and studies have shown that it can even be a dangerous life. Those who do not have as many intimate relationships are more susceptible to develop depression, anxiety, and other psychological disorders which have been known to lead to suicide or self-harming behaviors. On the other hand, studies have shown that children with relations fair better with psychological disorders. There was one study conducted that showed that even just having sisters in the household increased the chances that there would be a better chance of psychological health within the household, but more and more children are being raised without siblings.

Those were just a few of the points that I found the most interesting. There are quite a few other that I would love to share with you if you reach out to me or leave a comment, but the point is to have a stable population and to not suffer in the future, we need at least a fertility rate of 2.1. Who would have thought that having babies might be the thing that keeps the world going spinning?

First off my name is Sofia. I am the oldest of four siblings and we come from mixed culture family. My dad is from Peru and my mom is from Utah. I fondly call our family “The Family Lab” because of our interesting mix and how it affected our development. It is very much an experiment every single day and leaves me asking the question, “which part of me is going to respond to this situation? My Peruvian side or my american side”? It keeps my life quite interesting but I wouldn’t have it any other way!

I am 21 years old and currently attending BYU-Idaho. I hope to become a Marriage and Family Therapist for minority groups, especially those of the Latin culture. I am minoring in Spanish, therefore I will be posting both in English and Spanish.

I am so excited to be embarking on this journey! I hope you will comment and share this blog with those whom you think could benefit. Stay tuned!

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton