Having a foundation in a home is the most important thing for a home to have. It is something and a home owner never really sees, that being so a home with out one will fall and never stand for long. When thinking about this it reminds me of the move “Monty Python and the Holly Grail”. In the scene we see a king talking to his son about how his family came to be in their castle. The father claims that his fellow man said that there was no way you could build here on this land because it was a swamp. The stubborn king decided to do it anyways. The king then continues saying that his first try sank into the swamp… then continues so I build another one… and that one sank into the swamp. So he built a third one and that one stood strong then was burn down fell over and then sank into the swamp. However the fourth one stood strong. The castle in this story never stood strong tell the failed attempts formed a foundation for the castle to stand strong. In our families we do not want to have to try and build our family four times before we get out true place to stand. It is so important to form a foundation as soon as possible for the family to have strong walls and love in the home.

            Having strong communication is a fundamental to having a strong foundations. Something that I have found being married and having a little one is that things change in the world and situations form new Ideas and feeling towards things. New light is shed on parenthood from research and from personal experience. Child grow and their attitudes change towards different things. I recently found that my son was not being effected by his current punishment technique was not showing the same results as they use to. I noticed this with my wife one day and poorly communicated that we need to change our approach. This then lead into a heated discussion, as we like to call them.  If I was able to follow our established communication skills we would have just had a discussion on the matter rather then a heated one. This really showed how we need to have constant vigilance, as fake professor Moody would put it. This will help us in the future to keep our family strong and to have our foundation hold us up through the storms of life.

            Another part of the foundation that we need to form is one of learning to make decisions as a couple and eventually as a family. My family has a hard time making decisions. We like to mostly put out something that needs to happen and wait for the other to come up with the answer. This is something simple but it relates to the bigger chooses that we have to make. Many times we go about the day and I finish my homework and ask my wife what she wants to do… not really knowing what I want to do. She usually responds with what ever you want to. We end up going back and forth tell one of us makes the choice and we end up going with what ever that choice is. This is really not the best way to do this. We need to work more on trying to make the choice together as a family to create a happier family. This simple example really can lead to problems further in a relationship. One being like where are we going to live, what school are the child going to go to and what are we going to save up for, what home is going to be the one we live in. This decision making is one of the most important things to create in your foundation.

            On a final not I want to point out something very important for everyone to remember, it is easier to create a foundation early on rather then building a home and going back through the foundation and building it up.

           Finding the right person to date and to marry are two very important things in life. Something interesting that a lot of people forget is that there are not seven million people in the world to choose from there is a dating and marriage filter. This filter consists of propinquity, attraction, and commonality.

            I don’t like making a lot of assumptions but I am going to guess a lot of people do not know what the word propinquity means. Now I never knew this was a word but my father taught this concept to me at a young age. At the time by older brother was going on dates with a girl that lived an hour away with out traffic but with traffic it was more like two hours. My Dad told my brothers and I that we need to find a girl geographically desirable. Meaning some one who lives near us, that we don’t want to spend hours driving just to be with the person for 45 minutes. So we need to find someone who is near us so that we can spend more time with them.

            Another strainer in the filter of dating is attraction. Interestingly enough we like people who are attractive to us… no way. However we also find attraction in those that look like us more then don’t. The reason being is we like the familiarity of our own looks rather then some one who doesn’t look like us. This is interesting because the world family comes from the world familiarity.

            The last filter is commonality, which is also the hardest one to find. First, let me tell you commonality is not just having an interest in the same activities but having similar finance options and parenting ideas. Now to find these things out you must get to know the other person. This is were commonality has three subsections. To know someone you need togetherness, time, and talk. Togetherness tends to use activities that you both like and this also shows you how the other acts under certain situations. For example when my mother and father were dating my dad would plan a fun activity… then my mother would throw a wrench in his plans to see how he would act. This helped her to better understand who she was dating. The next part is time. One only starts to know a person after spending three months with them. Research finds that the best marriages that come about are couples that have been dating for one to two years. The last part is talk, talking is so important and really being honest with one another. Talk as much as possible and about as much as possible, my wife and I talked for at least four hours a day seven days a week for about three months before we starting dating. An important note to take is following the RAM model. This goes know, trust, rely, commitment, and then physical touch. The way this works is that a couple should never trust more then they know. Should never rely on the person more then they trust, and so forth. This is the best way to create a relationship with a person.

            I want to leave you all with one finial note of advice that I think every one should be reminded of. That the steps to marriage goes as follows, first date, second courtship, third engagement, then fourth marriage. These four steps are distinct different steps and one should not just slide into each step. Remember these are not for a relationship but for a person. One should date and when that person is ready to be married start a courtship with a person. When you have done that and are ready to be engaged take that step. Finally hit marriage. Do not rush these parts of your life but take your time there is no hurry for any of these part in a person’s life.

            There is a some talk out there on weather or not masculinity is important for today’s society. Some say that because we no longer live in stone ages and mid evil times we have no need for this attitude anymore. G. Steinham says “we badly need to raise our boys more like our girls. The American Psychological association says that “Toxic masculinity is the source of many problems”. While I can agree sort of with the APA only because they say many problems are sourced by toxic masculinity. Which I can agree with that a lot of problems that we deal with are because of men needing to be more masculine then the others with in the others. However I feel the need to point out that many problems are also solved by masculinity and are needed to be solved by this manly trait. Such as protection and intimidation. A lot of problems are prevented by the shear fact that they can intimidate others. Protection is another part of it, we have police, national guard, army, air force and so on. These are all things that really need masculinity and help so many people in our nation. The way that I think that the APA should change their statement to “toxic masculinity is the source of many problems and protective masculinity solves many problems.

            As for what G. Steinham says I completely disagree and will end up causing more problems. We cannot raise our children the same way other wise there are certain traits that society will be missing. I have a son and at first we raised him with no expectations however his actions are very male in the fact that he likes to make messes and crash his toys rather then care for them. Males are just different then females and we should not try and raise it out of boys. What needs to be done is boys need to be raised in a way that they can control and use their masculinity in a good way. Just like how a pit-bull can be raised as a mean and vicious dog or under the right care a bit-bull can be a sweet and loving dog that would not hurt a fly. This shows me that really it is how one is raised.

            There are a lot of other reasons that there needs to be men raised as men because men bring different perspectives into the world rather then just one perspective. Men think about things more mathematically and straight forward while women think more emotionally then men do. This combined can bring in wonderful solutions that we no thought of if we only did one rather then the other. This gives family such a strong foundation because of the way that the opposite genders think. This works out really well for me and my wife because we both work on plans, solutions, and problems together and we can create a great think tank this way because we bring in out thoughts share them and come up with the best solution for our family or what ever is going on at the time. If we were both to just think mathematically or emotionally then we wouldn’t have the best results. During my life I heard a wise person says once that God our father loves diversity. We see it in all things, the trees, fish, dogs, and the different landmasses on the earth. If we were truly made to only be one kind of people then God would have made it that way. However we as people have males, females, and all different races, and languages. As we meld these things together we bring out our true potential as children of our Heavenly Father.

Socio economic status deals with a lot and can factor into our lives more then what we think especially when talking about our families. This status can really shape how are family acts and thinks.  Some of the things involved in one’s socio economic status are income, location, education, occupation, family name, clothing, manner, appearance, and lifestyle. I have seen how this really plays a part in my life and in the lives of those that I see around me. For example, I am the youngest in my family and I have two older brothers. As I went through school teachers would recognize me as being the little brother of my two older brothers. They expected me to act in certain ways and my socio economic status was predetermined what my teachers thought of me. The other time that I saw a huge impact on a family or on just every family that lived in this area was when I visited Toxey Alabama. Toxey is on the west side of Alabama and north of Mobile. The problem with Toxey is that the education system and job opportunity is very, limited. The other problem is that just for most families to survive they need to be on some sort of fell fair. This leads the children to see that this is how life is lived and that there is nothing else left. They come to this constant struggle in the fact that they cannot go anywhere and that the family is trapped. There is no leaving because their socio economic status is so low. That even if they were to graduate high school the education that they get does not prepare them for college and they would need to get full ride scholar ships to go to college cause the families there are so poor. When in other words if we looked at a family that has success that has been well educated and has the money to send kids to college the story becomes much different and that allows them to build and grow in their socio economic status.

Now walking away from the socio economic status I am going to talk more on family rules. Recently I had a very eye opening discussion on Hispanic families coming over to America and how the family has to deal with so much change just for the chance to have a better life for the parents and the children. A Hispanic family that lives in Mexico has, in my thoughts, a great way of living life. They are close to their extended family and help each other when there is need for the family to help. The father works hard and is good at his job and brings in the money. While the mother takes care of the children, and the kids are able to look up to their parents and learn from them. They have their grandparents to help when needed and the aunts and uncles of the family are able to spend time and be there for the family. However, when the family makes the decision to send the father over to the United States they have an interesting shift in roles. When the father leaves the mother has to take up a job and the aunts and uncles take more of a role of the parents for their nieces and nephews. This brings new thoughts to the kids like why did dad leave us and brings them closer to the aunt and uncle. Things get more complicated for the family when years pass by and the family can finally join the father over in America. The kids show resentment to the father for leaving and not being there and the family has just fallen off their rhythm over the years that he has been gone. The roles fall apart and the family is no longer as functional has they use to be. This is a really short version of the problem that families can face but one can see how this could change how families work and can fall short when the roles change for long periods of time.