Family and happiness Brandon Ruth English 112

Family can be defined in many different ways and mean many different things to different people. In the 19th century family was defined by two parents and kids (mother and father). Now families in the 21st century can be defined in many different ways. Some families have two mothers or two fathers. Some kids are being raised by siblings, grandparents, sometimes other relatives. The question to be answered today is are families happier now than they were back in the days. First let us define happiness or happy. Happy is an emotion that comes from within a person; that can be altered by your circumstances, genetic or intentionally.
Family and happiness is two of the most powerful elements one needs to be successful in life. Family and happiness shapes and mode us into our individuality that defines us as good citizens of America. Without the two working hand and hand life struggles becomes unbearable at times. Family is not always defined as a parent and child but, can be defined as a group of people that love each other with no restraints.
In other words circumstance is defined as different situations that one may go through whether it be good or bad that cannot be control by one’s ability. For example divorce is a division in a family structure that leave one or more parties involved in an unhappy situation that can ultimately leave the family unhappy. Now a days, it seems so often that divorce has become a normality thing to this society. Furthermore, genetic can be relations to, caused by or controlled by (you’ve been born with and cannot be changed due to blood relations). Another example would be if a person with red hair doesn’t have the red hair gene, while a person with brown hair has the brown hair gene. Instead, all people have genes for hair color, and different versions of these genes dictate whether someone would be a redhead or brunette. While intentionally is done in a way that is planned or intended. For example if you left a job that provided you with accommodation, housing that comes with a job is known as ties accommodation, it’s particularly like farming. But, if you leave a job that came with housing and, as a result, end up with nowhere to live, you planned that or considered it intentionally and now your homeless.
In a recent article (What Determines Happiness?) “Happiness is a concept, the meaning of which everybody knows but the definition of which nobody can give “(H. M Jones, cited in Myers & Diener, 1995). “A number of psychologists, however, have tried to define happiness as a broader experience of fulfillment not necessary restricted to mere material well-being, Sonja Lyubomirsky (2001, p. 239) succinctly summarizes happiness as a state of mind that “includes the experience of joy, commitment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good meaningful and worthwhile. Several economist in recent years have also started identifying happiness with a broader index of subjective well-being (Frank, 1997, 2005; Layard, 2005).
What makes a happy family? There are many important factors that makes a family happy. One is nurturing and attachment a child’s early experience of being nurtured and developing a bond with a caring adult affects all aspects of behavior and development. When parents and children have a strong relationships with one another, it causes the child to develop a trust that their parents will provide like protection, love, support, acceptance, and positive guidance. A second one is parental resilience, and for those who don’t know what resilience is it’s the ability to handle everyday stressors and to be able to recover from occasional crises. People or parents who are emotionally resilience have a positive attitude or outlook overall, they strategically solve problems and are less likely to direct their anger or frustration on their children. Another one is knowledge of parenting and child development, discipline and order is very important in both more effective and more nurturing, when a parent know how to set and enforce limits/rules and encourage appropriate behavior based on the child’s growth and level of development. And finally love, which is a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend. Love is an experience, it has no opposite and is the union and connection of all things. Love has room for all things at all times, such as judgment, weakness, disappointment, as well as for joy, compassion and peace.
Next, according to (Rossarin Soottipong Gray, Aphichat Chamratrithirong and Pramote Prasatkul) “Family structures all over the world, however, have changed due to demographic and socioeconomic changes. Populations are aging rapidly in developing countries, particularly those in United States (Kinsella and Phillips 2005), population aging results in more years of shared lives among generations and heightens the importance of grandparents and other fulfilling family functions”. The transitional family means that the family continues to share strong bonds of collective welfare and unity even though core members are distributed in two or more nation’s states (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002).
What family and happiness means to me? To me, family means a lot more than a relative by blood or marriage. It means the people who accept you no matter who you are where there’s no hatred or judgment. The love of a family should be unconditional, and everyone should try their best to provide all they can emotionally, socially and financially. Family are the people that everyone deserves to feel secure, and comfortable with even if they aren’t lucky enough to have that. I think a family is the most important thing in a person’s life. A family enlarges their children and educates them. I think first education begins in a family because if a child doesn’t learn anything from his or her family, then he or she wouldn’t be successful as others who learned something from their family. Happiness to me is being able to smile every day, and being with your love ones. My happiness is seeing my parents happy. My parents have been together for a very long time and seeing them happy makes me happy. I am so happy at times that I have a shoulder to lean on when days are going bad for me, they have given me love, support, care and financial stability that I need. Most of the happiness we experience comes from love. Everyone in this world has the right to happiness, however I don’t think we should seek our happiness by all means. I don’t think we should be selfish in order to get what we want. Happiness also to me is complete love and understanding of the being that you are, and the soul that you have. You cannot force happiness; it has to come naturally. Just be yourself and let love and happiness flow into your life.
According to the article (Social Factors Explaining Family and Children Subjective Happiness) “Family relationships (Ellonen et al. 2008) were probed by asking how easy it is for the participant to talk about his/her happiness to the following persons: father, mother, stepfather, stepmother, grandparents, brother or stepbrother, and sister or stepsister. Social relationships are not just correlates of happiness but they are necessary for the happiness. In several studies, children’s and adolescents well-being in the terms of life satisfaction and happiness has been shown to be tightly related to social relationships. At the age of twelve, satisfaction with family happiness is more closely associated with overall satisfaction than satisfaction with friends (Huebner 1991). Especially closeness to parents (Holder and Coleman 2009; Rask et al. 2003) and authoritative parenting style (Furnham and Cheng 2000; Petito and Cummins 2009) have linked to high levels of happiness among children adolescents”.
To change the topic, what I found that was interesting is that in the documentary (Happy 2012) there was a man with a poor family, they only ate rice and salt, but what stood out to me was that the man in his family were still happy. According to movie “(Happy)”, happy can help family situations, build relationships, and make people money. 50% of happiness are through your genetics, 10% is through your circumstance and 40% is intentional. People who have a regular study flow are happier than people who don’t. Study shows that people does really well when things are going wrong or bad. A key factor of having family happiness is being able to overcome adversity more quickly and accepting all parts of your life and the past is a part of healing, also most happy people study shows all have close relationships with family and friends.
As a final point happiness and family are the most powerful elements that can help you succeed in life. Happiness and family can be defined in many different things you can’t place it inside a box because it’s so much you can say about the topic. Happiness, it is what we all search for, the one thing that every person on this earth has in common ignoring the fact of our race, skin, or color. Family and happiness is the thing we strive for that’s leads us to be successful. Remember one essential standard for living is being able to be happy. In order to be truly happy you need to be able to understand that everything is good. Happiness is all of the good that someone experiences combined into one emotion.