1) The author's family is experiencing increased stress due to financial pressures from tuition costs for her and her sister's college education and her brother's interest in travel baseball, exacerbated by her father recently losing his job. 2) The stress increased further with the unexpected death of the author's grandfather shortly before her father was laid off, leaving the family struggling financially without his income. 3) Coping mechanisms like staying positive, sharing appreciation at dinner, and dedicating time to reading have helped the family manage stress so far but the circumstances have created an extreme crisis level of stress in their household.

1. Danielle Hannah
FACS 150
Written Assignment 1
“Stress in the Family”
In today’s economy, it is becoming more common for both the father and the mother to
hold full time positions in order to pay bills and live a somewhat respectable life. Our society has
taken a beating when it comes to salaries, layoffs, and unemployment rates. All of these
indicators of bad economic times can be considered stressors. Based on my knowledge, stress is
how the body reacts to a stressor, normative or non-normative. When it comes to stress, my
family has always held a low level of stress pretty much our entire life, until now.
Being a fulltime college student, I am only able to work a part time job, so I rely on my
parents for financial help. Tuition costs have gone up and my financial aid has helped
tremendously for me to pay my way through college, without gettings in massive debt. My mom
has always been a stay at home mom who takes care of the household chores, paying bills and
raising the children. Nevertheless, my parents have always been able to live well on my fathers
income. I have a sister who attends Colgate Univeristy in Hamilton, New York. Her tuition is
close to $60,000 every year. Thankfully, she got a partial scholarship to play softball for her
school. Financial stress was lifted off my parents shoulders went they got the news that her
school would pay for her partial tuition. She is planning on graduating this semseter, so that will
be one less thing my parents have to worry about.
With my sister at an expensive college, and myself attending Sacramento State for the
past three years, my parents were somewhat pleased to hear my oldest brother wasn’t planning
on attending college. However, my youngest brother had grown a fond interest in baseball and
was hoping to play travel ball, which is expensive as well. This additional finance only added to
the stress my parents have been facing the last four years. In the upcoming summer, my parents

2. will have to pay not only for my brothers uniforms and gear for him to play travel ball, but
they’ll have to pay for entrance fees, traveling costs, private pitching lessons, and anything else
unexpected that might come up. As a younger child, I was always able to compete in the sport I
loved, which is gymnastics, and it was very costly. My parents only felt it fair to support my
little brother and help him achieve his goals by allowing him to play travel ball. One day it
should pay off; he will be trying out for the USA National Team this summer and will hopefully
make the 12 man roster for the 14 and under division. I’ve always admired my families attitude
towards life and the way a child should be raised, mainly because they weren’t raised the same
way we were.
My parents never had the opportunity to go to college because neither one of their parents
wanted to fork out the money to pay for tuition. So, settling for job just to make ends meat is
what they had to do. For most of their early years, they were flat broke and trying to raise three
babies. Since then, my dad worked his way up the corporate ladder and has changed his life and
my family’s life aronud. However, my father was recently laid off and our family is in a rut
trying to figure out how we’re going to make provide for ouselves and keep our house. This
event will definitely add to the stress of our already stressful household. Being optimistic about
our situation has helped us keep our stress level even. I suggested a few tips to keep the stress
from building up and breaking apart our family. We try and say one positive thing about our day
everyday at dinner. We also take the time to read for a few hours a week; this helps us take our
mind off of the everyday life we’re living. Just when I thought things were getting better, a crisis
situation arose.
Every household experiences a death in the family, and family death just so happens to be
one of the leading causes of household stress. With my father being laid off, my mother not

3. working, my brother wanting to continue his travel ball, and two daughters in college full time,
this could not have come at a worse time. My grandfather was diagnosed with ALS, also know
as Lou Gehrig’s disease, in 2008. His health was becoming poor very fast, and the disease was
taking over all of his motor funtions. Before we knew it, he was gone. My grandpa passed away
shortly before my dad lost his job with the company he’d been with for 13 years. The level of
stress in our household went from somewhat major, to an extreme crisis.