Blog 8

As I stated in class this week, my experience comes from the one-sidedness of being a woman. In spite of this, I connected to the beginning of the chapter from observing my brother’s behaviors my entire life. I divulged in a previous class that my father was primarily my parent (even though my mother took care of my brother, Luke, and I for the majority of the week, my dad focused all of his love and attention on me) and he tended to neglect my brother. Growing up, I was coddled, spoiled (which with his meager income meant getting pieces of candy from Weis), and shown affection that my brother never saw. My mom explained to me that my dad did not have love from his own father, so he did what he knew: he perpetuated a poor father-son relationship and cultivated a new, loving father-daughter relationship. This, to me, goes along with Corey and Corey’s (2010) idea of “father hunger” (pg. 238) where a growing male needs to find comfort in masculine-related activities that do not rely on a present father figure. Unfortunately, to my brother these were the destructive, life-threatening activities that were outline in “The Price Men Pay. . .” (pg. 236) section of the chapter. (Side note: my brother has healed into a fully-functioning, loving adult).

                I thought it was interesting in Kim and McKenry’s (2002) article when they claimed that being married correlated negatively with depression, but they only controlled for a few extraneous variables. If their idea that marriage fights depression because it gives people a sense of purpose (pg. 886), why wouldn’t they look at outside variables like job satisfaction or volunteer work? I think that if someone has no sense of purpose in life, depression could be countered by purposeful things including marriage or a trip to Haiti to work with orphans.

                Another interesting posit on the part of Kim and McKenry (2002) was that the better psychological wellbeing of married people is the idea that they come in contact with less stress and feel less stressed about things that don’t go as planned (pg. 888). I have never been married, so I don’t want to make too many assumptions on what it’s like to be married, but I am wondering if this stress-concept occurs because married life is often portrayed in the media (TV shows, movies) so married couple have some sort of idea about what their obstacles will be in life while single people are more able to fly by the seat of their pants and encounter a wider variety of stressors.

Corey, G. & Corey, M. S. (2010). Managing Stress. In Brooks/Cole (9th edition), I Never Knew I Had a Choice (132-169). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning.

Kim, H.K., & McKenry, P.C. (2002). The relationship between marriage and psychological well-being. Journal of Family Issues, 23(8), 885-911.