This week we talked about working mothers and fathers. Men started leaving the home for work in the 1800’s during the Industrial Revolution. Women did the same thing during WWII. Work and family life used to be the same thing and you would do it with everyone if your family. Now they are two separate lives. After 1949 we haven’t seen women flood back home and out of the work force. We see the opposite. Women are still flooding the workforce today. Women now take up 60% of the workforce. We also read an article called "Does a full time mother swap her mind for a mop?" It was a really interesting article that made me feel better about wanting to be a stay at home mom. It explained all the benefits of being a stay at home mom.

This week we talked about power struggles in relationships. I learned that there is a difference between conflict and power. Conflict can bring us closer when both people are trying to work something out together. When you have power over someone you have influence rather than control over them. There are different types of power. The first is coercive. This is when you are avoiding pain. The next is reward. This type of power is used when you are wanting something. The next is legitimate power. This is when you have a right to ask and a duty to respond. The fourth is expert power. This is when you have the power because of your knowledge and expertise. The fifth is referent power. You exhort this type of power when you desire to please your spouse. The last is informational power. It is when what your spouse wants is in your best interest.

This week we talked about how to deal with a family crisis. A crisis is when something occurs and that necessitates a change. There are different types of adjustments that come about.  We start out at a level with the pre stressor.  During the crisis that drops and then there are three outcomes, you are either level with the way you were before the crisis, lower than before, or higher than before.  The best outcome is the last one, becoming closer together because of a certain crisis. Hill came up with the ABC-X model. The A stands for the actual event or stressor, the B stands for both responses and resources or how we deal with it, and the C stands for cognition or the way we are thinking. Put those all together and you get the total eXperience.  Looking back at crises my family has gone through, using this model, I can see where we didn't handle things in the best way possible.  It also brought back a lot of memories and it was hard to relive them.  We don't get to decide the initial event, but we do get to decide our actions and outcomes. This will influence future events.