Why is Studying the Family so Difficult?

This week in class we talked about researching the family and why the are the way they are. Why do some families seem more successful than others, or why is this family happier than that family? The bottom line is this: no two families are the same, and what you see on the outside is not always what’s on the inside. In the Disney movie Aladdin, it quotes “Never be fooled by what you see on the outside because on the inside it's often a different story.” People only let you see what they want you to see. If they don’t want people to know their fighting with their spouse, or that their kids are a hand full, they won’t let you see that. They will put up the “big happy family” act and pretend in public that everything is fine. This is one reason that it is so hard to study the family. Unless you put hidden cameras in someone’s house, you’re never going to know what its truly like to live there. We also have to take into consideration why someone is the way the are. What has happened in their life to make them this way? Was there a traumatic event in their life, or was that the way they were raised? All things to consider when questioning why people do certain things.

Research is an important thing to do. People do research every day. They can come across thousands of articles on different subjects and the authors perspective on that subject. The hard part then is figuring out what is true and what is false. In class we discussed the APA (American Psychological Association) brief on same sex marriage. This brief quoted that “"Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents.” Upon reading this brief you find out that it has some pretty significant design flaws, which make it difficult to be confident in many of the researcher's reported findings. It has a table in the article that list a few of the “experiments” or studies that were conducted. A lot of them had very small groups and no comparison groups at all. Without comparing the gay/lesbian groups to a group of heterosexuals, you don’t really know the differences with raising children between the two groups. This alone I feel like discredits the author. He just put out what he wanted people to hear, not necessarily the accurate findings. This proves that its important when researching to look at all the data and find as much information as possible. It’s not enough to read an article and take it as face value, you have really look at the information given and see if you agree with it. Also find more than one article and compare what their saying. If they’re both saying different things, you may need to read a third article and see if that one agrees with one of the previous articles you read.

You also need to take into consideration that “It would be unethical to carry out many experiments on human beings to see if we can control their experiences, thoughts, feelings, behaviors and choices” (How Science Works, and How We Can Know What is True). The people being studied are people who feel like they want to/can make a difference and aren’t always the “typical family.” They again will only let you see what they want you to see. It's hard for people to let others see them vulnerable or who they truly are because they don’t want people to judge them. We as a society are so concerned with how others see us that we are only going to volunteer to be a part of a study if we feel like we are doing it the “right way” and have nothing to worry about doing “wrong”

I want to end with a quote by Marge Kennedy about family “In truth a family is what you make it. It is made strong, not by number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love you show to one another, and by the hopes for the future you have as individuals and as a unit."