Chapter 9 Families

If you wish for a happy life, you should choose your parents carefully.

–– Michael Rutter and colleagues1

‘Consider the following statement: Parents getting on well is one of the most important factors in raising children. Do you agree?’ A British survey posed this question to both teenagers and parents.2 Two thirds of the teenagers agreed with the statement, but only one third of the parents did so. As we shall see, the children were more right than the parents. But how can we improve our family life and the happiness we get from it?

The family is a complicated business. It is the most basic of all human institutions. It exists to provide comfort and joy to adults, and a safe and loving way to bring up children. As Figure 9.1 shows, many key relationships are involved.

  1. There is the relationship between the couple (who may or not have children).
  2. There are the relationships between each parent and child.
  3. There are the the way that children affect their parents’ relationship and the way the parents’ relationship affects the children – the bit which is so often underestimated and yet so crucial.

And there are also the in-laws, grandparents and cousins!

The family

All of these relationships are changing, and patterns of family life have become increasingly varied.

Figure 9.1 The family
Figure 9.1
The family

Family patterns also differ across cultures. In Latin American countries, for example, family ties are still very strong, which helps to explain why these countries are often happier than others at the same income level.11 But everywhere change is afoot. So how in this changing environment can we create better relationships within couples, and better relationships between parents and their children? Let’s start with the couple.

Loving your partner

I was once at a high-powered conference on the causes of happiness, and over coffee an eminent psychologist took me to one side and said, ‘You can list all those things. But the top priority for each of us should be to sustain our feelings for our partner.’

For family conflict is one of the greatest destroyers of happiness both for parents and for children. The parents of course have the possibility of escape – by separation or divorce – and research shows that many couples become happier if they split up. But what is best for the children? This depends on the degree of conflict.12 If the conflict is bad enough, it is best for the children if the parents separate as amicably as possible, with the children having full access to both parents, preferably on an equal basis. However, if the conflict is not severe, it is best for the children if the couple stay together. And it is best for everybody if the family conflict can be reduced.13

But how? Here are two simple psychological approaches which should become widespread in our societies:

  1. If conflict occurs, offer Cognitive Behavioural Couple Therapy. This has a good record of reducing conflict.
  2. To forestall conflict after the birth of any children, offer ante-natal classes on how to sustain the love between the partners.

These two beacons of hope deserve to be better known, so I will describe how they work in some detail.

If the couple fight

If conflict occurs, the key need is to expand the level of positivity in the relationship. The importance of this has been quantified by John Gottman. He has studied the way couples interact and used this to predict the likelihood of subsequent divorce. If there are more negative interactions than positive ones, this predicts divorce with considerable accuracy.14

So how can positivity be achieved? There are now well-evidenced treatments for couples who are unhappy about their relationship – even in cases where there is domestic violence. These treatments ought to be available within any serious health care system.

The best evaluated treatment is Cognitive Behavioural Couple Therapy (CBCT). This has been successfully tested in around two dozen well-controlled trials.15 It usually involves ten weekly sessions between the therapist and the couple. When they begin treatment, all the couples are distressed about their relationship. But typically, six months after completing treatment, 50 per cent of the couples have become satisfied with their relationship and even five years later the proportion who are happy together is still one third – compared with zero before treatment.16 Moreover, when one or both partners start off clinically depressed, 57 per cent of them recover during the ten sessions of treatment.17

So how exactly does it work? The treatment begins with an assessment of the problem, based on one session with the couple and then a separate session with each partner. From then on, all sessions involve both partners, as well as the therapist. First, they have to agree on the nature of the problem, and to set goals for what they each want from a better relationship. The treatment then aims to produce three types of change, in sequence.

The first is in how the couple behave towards each other: how they communicate, how they make decisions, and how they care for each other’s needs. The key to communication is listening. So in couple therapy there are periods when couples explicitly talk one at a time – the other doesn’t interrupt. The therapist acts as an impartial controller of the scene, especially when anger and even violence erupt. Partners are often given homework: for example, to write down their view of the problem, or to schedule a structured conversation between themselves on some difficult issue, at a time when they are both likely to be most receptive.

The next set of changes is in how they understand each other and themselves. Why did you do what you did? What assumptions are you making about how a relationship should be? Finally, emotion trumps all. A partnership only works if people focus on what is good in it. For this to happen, partners can be taught to ‘compartmentalize’ – to tolerate distressing feelings arising from one part of the relationship, without allowing this to poison all that is good. If you want to express your discontents, you are encouraged to put them in a personal journal.

Going through these steps can transform a relationship. But ultimately of course the message is the same as it is throughout this book:

So what about infidelity? Can a relationship survive that? Often it can, especially with the right help.18 This involves much longer therapy, usually for six months or more; and both partners must want the relationship to survive. The first step is to confront the pain of the existing situation – to absorb it and to help the grieving process. The next phase is to understand why it happened – why the partner was unfaithful. This should cover both the state of the relationship before the infidelity happened, and the whole background and assumptions of the unfaithful partner. Finally, the stage is reached to move forward – to discuss how the unfaithful partner can make amends and how the injured partner can forgive. Forgiveness here involves a better understanding of the partner – less anger, more compassion and a willingness not to punish.

In some relationships, there is physical violence. In fact, about 12 per cent of all partnered men and women in the USA engage in physical aggression, with more extreme violence usually coming from the men.19 There can also be psychological violence (with or without physical conflict), including extreme withdrawal, denigration or dominance. Intimate partner violence is a major source of unhappiness in every society. It often reflects poor upbringing and chauvinist attitudes which surely need to change at the societal level.20 But when it does happen, there is a form of CBCT that may be able to provide some help.21 It focuses specifically on

Couples are typically seen together for fifteen hours in total. But if one partner is a real batterer or if fights continue, the violent partner has to be seen alone. The results of the treatment are usually a reduction in violence and improved satisfaction with the relationship. But equally, if violence continues, the victim needs continued support and the offender needs to be prosecuted.

You might say that couple therapy is simply the wisdom of the ages. Much of it is, but it is arranged so skilfully that people actually accept it and implement it. To deliver basic couple therapy, a therapist who has already had CBT training needs only an intensive one-week course, followed by a year of supervised casework. We should be training thousands of these therapists, since much of the counselling provided today does little more than help people to split up amicably. That is important if the split is inevitable, but we can also do much better at preventing the split.

Preventing family conflict

Ideally we would prevent conflict in the first place. The first major conflict in a relationship often comes when a baby arrives. At that point, most loving couples become less loving: ‘satisfaction with the relationship’ declines. But this is not inevitable, and it can often be prevented if couples are offered good ante- and post-natal courses that cover not just physical childcare but also the emotional care of the child and of each other. Ideally these courses are free, or nearly so.

In the 1980s Carolyn and Phil Cowan of the University of California at Berkeley developed the following programme. Couples expecting a first child met regularly with three other expectant couples, as well as with a married couple who were psychologically trained and who led the discussion. The meetings ran every week for three months before the birth and for three months after the birth (with all the babies present). The discussion covered essential topics such as how the couple viewed each other; how they talked to each other and solved problems; who did which chores at home; how they planned to bring up the child; which grandparents or relatives would be involved; and how their own childhood experiences influenced their own ideas about parenting.

When the Cowans introduced this intervention as a randomized control trial, the results over the following five years were striking. The couples who had received the extra support remained nearly as satisfied with their relationship as before their child was born. By comparison, the parents who were not given the support became increasingly dissatisfied with their relationship.22

In another of the Cowans’ programmes, the focus is on how to involve fathers more fully in parenting. In a trial the parents were divided into two groups. In one group both members of the couple came to the meetings; in the other group, only the fathers came. But it was only when the parents came together as a couple that their satisfaction with their own relationship was sustained.23 The conclusion has to be that couples function best when they discuss their problems together – rather than trying to sort them out on their own.

There are many other programmes for preventing conflict within couples.24 One of the best is Family Foundations, which involves only eight meetings with the parents (four before the birth and four after). In a randomized trial these parents were followed up three years after taking the programme. Compared with the control group, these parents were less stressed and more cooperative together (by 6 percentage points), and their boys were better behaved and happier (by 26 percentage points).25 Such programmes should be universally available at little or no cost to the parents. The savings in heartache and social disruption can be massive.

Loving your children

In addition to loving each other, how should parents bring up their children? The basic principles are no longer controversial. First, there must be at least one adult who gives the child their unconditional love. If this happens, most children will automatically form a bond of trust (or secure attachment) to the adult(s), which will provide them with a lasting platform of security throughout their life.26

This security will be tested by the ups and downs of life, but children should not be artificially protected against minor setbacks.27 They need to develop resilience – the habit of taking a setback as a challenge. This quality can only be developed through learning acceptance and a good philosophy of life.

Next, children need boundaries. They need parents who are authoritative and make the boundaries clear – parents who are loving but firm.28 Children should always be listened to, but three-year-old children do not need to be asked what they want to eat. Parents must stand clearly for certain norms of behaviour. It is only when children are in their teens that parents should want to be on an equal level (of friendship) with their children.

Parents should be hugely appreciative of their children, but not in a way that constantly compares them with others – ‘you are the greatest’. We do not want to produce narcissists. If we do, those around them will suffer and the narcissists themselves will, in most cases, get their come-uppance.29

Children should be mainly praised for effort rather than for achievement. Parents naturally love their children to succeed relative to others, but if children see this, they can easily assume their parents will love them more the more successful they are. This reinforces their competitive instinct and often results in feelings of emptiness and misery. Not all can succeed against others. Instead, we need a new concept of success, where we succeed if we use our talents to create as much happiness as we can in the world.

Finally, parents should not feel guilty if their children have problems. Once they have had a second child, most parents realize that every child is different. They differ in their genes.30 And, in any case, guilt is not a constructive emotion. What children want is love, understanding and care.

Should both parents work?

But who is actually going to do the childcare? And should both parents work? Over the last century, the biggest changes in the world have been the reduction in poverty and disease, and the totally changed role of women. In nineteenth-century families there was an extreme division of labour – with most men working for pay and most mothers working at home (rearing children and caring for the family).31 Today, women have fewer children, and most women go out to work unless their child is very young. Similarly, men do more of the housework and childcare – but still not generally an equal share on the whole (in Britain eighteen hours a week, compared with thirty-six hours a week for women).32 The division of labour is changing.

So is it all right for the children if their mothers go out to work? This has been studied repeatedly using naturalistic data on birth cohorts, and there are two general findings.

  1. In the first year of the child’s life, it is better for the child (emotionally and intellectually) if the mother spends more time at home.33 So there is a strong case for generous parental leave.34
  2. After the first year, there is no evidence that, on average, children suffer emotionally or intellectually if their mother spends more time at work. Some individual children may suffer, but in general mothers should relax. If they want a career, the children will usually do fine, especially if working makes their mother happier. To make this possible, there needs to be an effective system of childcare.

But family life is still crucial. Even if the parents work full-time, it is incredibly important that families eat regular meals together. This sharing of experience is one of the surest routes to a happy family life.35 Each child also needs some quality time with each parent. But what if a child plays up, and you are at your wits’ end about what to do?

Children out of control

In 1982 Carolyn Webster-Stratton set up her parenting clinic at the University of Washington in Seattle. Since then she has pioneered the world’s most successful treatment for bad behaviour in young children.36 She does not treat the children directly, but instead she trains their parents – in a programme known as the Incredible Years. In the programme, a group of say ten parents meet with a therapist for two and a half hours a week, over a period of twelve weeks. The typical session begins with a videotape of a parent and child, illustrating which approaches work and which don’t.37

Webster-Stratton’s basic principle is that you get children to behave by appreciating them as much as possible, rather than by making them feel bad. Thus, the early stages of her course teach parents to praise their children as often as possible whenever they do something good. Parents should play with their children, but leave the children to take the initiative at every step. Only later does the course address the setting of boundaries – and finally the issue of consequences. To minimize the sense of grievance, the consequences should be immediate and clearly linked to what has just happened. And the punishment should usually be small, like a five-minute time-out in your room.

Incredible Years illustrates a major theme of this book: we should ‘drive out evil with good’. The course has been immensely successful, as shown by numerous controlled trials.38 In one of these, the children’s parents had been trained when the children were aged three to seven and behaving badly. The children were then followed up around ten years later. Compared with the controls, 80 per cent fewer had a diagnosis of serious conduct disorder.39

Because of its success, the course has spread worldwide through the ‘cascade system’. Mental-health workers can be trained to deliver the course in a three-day training workshop, followed by supervised casework for at least a year. With more training, the trainers can train more trainees and so on. Worldwide there are now 60,000 parent trainers who have been educated in this system. Of course, if children are really difficult they have to be seen and treated directly by a therapist – often with a parent there as well.40 But with a mixture of psychological insight, scientific method and shrewd organization, Carolyn Webster-Stratton has set an example that can be followed more widely, as we struggle to create happier families and a better world.41

Conclusions

The family is the cradle of society. It forms the young, and brings joy and comfort to their parents. But things can easily go wrong – between parents and children, and between the parents themselves. However, modern psychology offers real hope that we can repair these breaches and prevent many of them from happening in the first place.

However, no family operates in a vacuum. All are based in some local community. So how can communities increase our happiness?

“I’d more impressed with your hundreds of hours of community service if it weren’t court ordered.”