Essay # 2

Simret Mulugeta
ENG 112Essay # 1   Descriptive Essay

          I miss my childhood questions and answers. Growing up as a little girl everything was colorful, simple, and fun because of my parents. The most interesting part was that I didn't have to worry about not knowing anything because I could just ask and get an answer. While growing up, I learned a lot of things from different people and personal experiences. To begin with, similar to most of us, I gathered most of my childhood information from my parents, especially from my dad. I spent most of my time with my father and he was one of the major sources of my information. As a teacher, my dad usually tried to be influential and informative in being a perfect example in most of my childhood. In addition, since he was a teacher at my elementary school, I gathered information through his friends and coworkers. All in all, I found out most of the things about knowledge or school through him. My mother was my second childhood source of information. As a little girl, I used to run to her and ask many questions, such as, “Where do people go when they die?” or “Why is the sky blue?” and she always had good answers. Also, I found out about the things at home through her. For instance, one time when I asked my mom how come daddy never cooks or cleans, I learned that back home, most man think that women are responsible for cooking and cleaning the house. This information affected me in a negative way, because as a girl I started thinking that it’s unfair for a woman to take care of her home alone.  As I grew up older I started gathering information through friends and people around me. From my closed friends I learned about friendship, relationship, fun, and how to help each other grow in life. Obviously, everyone knows that their friends can affect their life in a way. In my situation some of my past friends tried to influence my decisions and alter my view of the world to turn me into a different person. However, my beliefs about some things and my behavior came back to the facts that I learned from my parents and the good influential people that I knew. All in all, as I grew up older and older, I gathered information from TV shows, movies, online, books, social networks and people around me.

If I want to write a research paper about a particular topic it will be cons of polygamy. Polygamy is having more than one spouse at the same time and usually all spouses know about each other. The reason that I choose this topic is because Polygamy became a significant social and political issue in the United States. For this research paper my primary sources of information is an official website. Website sources of polygamy can be both general and specific. However, since I want to write about cons of polygamy, my primary website source is specific and long. Stephen Biyang Gyimah is the author of “Polygamous Marital Structure and child survivourship in Ghana." In this article he is trying to link polygamous structure with child survivorship in Ghana. According to an analysis of Ghana Demographic and Health Survey data, “from 1998 and 2003, children who are born from polygamous marriages have a greater risk of dying before the age of five than those born from monogamous marriages.” The source appeals more to the author and is mainly used to back the concept of family structure, marital status, and child life expectancy in the African nation. The author is more interested in supporting his points, rather than verifying his facts. Although the facts are most possibly true, it may be very difficult to gather such statistical information to make such a conclusion. Children born into a polygamous family structure may lack the attention and economic situation to ensure the growth and health. Reliable information is extremely important in this case. In order to make such a
conclusion, more samples, and more information needs to be provided. 

My second source of information is from facts on file news services, from Issues & Controversies database. Newspaper articles usually have specific topics and sometimes they can be long or short. The reason I choose this source is because I want to focus on polygamy in the United States. Polygamy has been prohibited in the U.S. by federal law since the late 19th century. A part of my second source is about Thomas Green, who was charged in April 2000 for being married to five women at the same time in the United States.  The reporter states that “the practice of polygamy attracts dangerous citizens with a propensity to commit crimes such as incest, child abuse and statutory rape (sexual intercourse with a minor).” Moreover, he states that since children of plural marriages are often raised in dysfunctional or unstable home environments, they easily face different problems like luck of attention. The source appeals to everyone and it verifies Polygamy`s negative effects on children. In general, even though I expected less information from these two different sources, I received enough and very useful facts for my research paper on polygamy. Both sources are helpful and similar to what I expected, which is spotlight on disadvantages of Polygamy. The first audience that these two sources address is for people who are interested in knowing how polygamy can be affective in a different ways.  Another audience can be people who live in the United States and need to know why polygamous marriage is illegal in the U.S. I hope this evaluation paper becomes an important source of information for other students and readers on the blogger.

                                         Citations

"Polygamy." Issues & Controversies on File: n. page. Issues & Controversies. Facts on File News Services, 15 July 2009. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://www.2facts.com.ezproxy.vccs.edu:2048/article/i0600070>.

Obeng, Stephen. "Polygamous Marital Structure and child survivourship in Ghana." Sept. 2005. Department of Sociology Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario. 12 Feb. 2012 <http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/sociology/popstudies/dp/dp05-13.pdf>.