To Raise Great Kids, Focus on your Marriage
Why are emotional and health problems on the rise in our children today? For example, the May issue of “Time” magazine noted that the incidence of autism and related disorders in American families used to be about 1 in 10,000. Today, it’s 1 in 150. Some say we’ve simply gotten better at diagnosing it. Other experts link autism to genetics or pollution. However, in Silicon Valley the rate of autistic kids is roughly 1 in 77, and a former senior Microsoft executive noted “an astonishing incidence of autism” among their employees’ children.
SHOOTING OUR KIDS IN THE FOOT
Problems with our kids seem to be on the rise, despite our increasing focus on their well-being. In fact, our preoccupation with our children’s welfare may be doing more harm than good. The American family has become child-focused, instead of marriage-focused, and we’re shooting ourselves (and our children) in the foot. Somewhere along the line, Freud’s theory that “children who receive more attention become healthier adults” became an unquestioned fact, instead of a theory. We have come to believe that the more attention we give our children, the better they’ll turn out.
Where is the evidence supporting more attention for our kids? Has crime, alcoholism or drug use decreased in younger generations? Do our children seem happier than we (or our parents) were? In my role as an Episcopal minister, I have seen a marked increase in the number of “special needs” kids with health, social, and learning problems. Just ask a few teachers about the changes they’ve witnessed in the past ten years.
TO RAISE GREAT KIDS, FOCUS ON YOUR MARRIAGE
What can we do? We can shift our focus from our jobs and our kids back to our marriages. Whether one or both parents are working, we can safely generalize that we’re spending many more hours at work than ever before. When we’re not working, we’re spending more hours shuttling kids to lessons, sports, and specialists than ever before. That means less time with our spouse. There’s no question we’re working harder at our careers and at our parenting than ever before. I’m just wondering if we’re working “smart.” Let’s take a moment to question the assumptions we’ve built our daily schedule on.
RE-ASSESS YOUR PRIORITIES
Where is your time best spent? I invite you to consider the amount of time and anguish it would take to get divorced: rising tensions that lead to a separation, the arguments, lawyers, custody, and dividing the assets (not to mention the impact on the kids). Consider the anxiety and tension that goes into re-marriage and a blended family. It seems that focus on our current marriage would be a very good long-term investment.
Think about the amount of time and worry we put into scheduling, shuttling, diagnosing and treating our kids. Objectively speaking, what kind of results are you getting? Is your child growing up strong and independent, with the skills and confidence to launch her own life? Or is her behavior moody and worrisome, with one (or more) problems that concern you? And here’s the bottom line: if you’re spending more time with your kid than your parents spent on you, is your kid actually turning out better than you did?
BEWARE THE SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY
Now for an outrageous question: which came first, the chicken, or the egg? In other words, did your child first develop the problems that now require your constant attention? Or, did your constant attention to any potential defect blow things out of proportion? Have you inadvertently turned “mole hills into mountains”? I believe in self-fulfilling prophecies. I know this is radical, but I think we’re creating our own worst nightmares by anxiously focusing too much on our kids.
Of course we have the best of intentions. We all want our kids to turn out well, but maybe Freud was wrong. Perhaps less focus on our children will build more independence in them. Maybe more of a marriage-focus will set a better example for our kids to follow in their own relationships.
There is compelling evidence that we neglect our marriages at the expense of our children’s health. At the National Institute of Mental Health, Psychiatrist Murray Bowen made careful observation of the parents of schizophrenics. He described “a striking emotional distance between the parents in all the families. We have called this the ‘emotional divorce’ (1959a).” A couple’s emotional distance corresponded to their child’s psychosis, in that “when either parent becomes more invested in the patient than in the other parent, the psychotic process [in their child] becomes intensified” (1978, p.21). Richard Charles wrote in “The American Journal of Family Therapy” that “Bowen’s theory that parents of schizophrenics were more fused with their offspring than were other parents was also confirmed (Wichstrom & Holte, 1995).”
The good news is that parents can be trained to notice when they’re projecting onto their children, and reverse the process. Bowen noted that “when the parents can maintain a closeness in which they are more invested in each other than either is invested in the patient, then the patients have made rapid gains (Ibid, p.21).
What is true in extreme psychosis like autism or schizophrenia is also true for neuroses and psychosomatic illness. For example, one mother recently told me of the results she had gotten from this shift in priorities. She said, “My son has asthma, and I realized that every time I heard him cough my anxiety would spike. It even got to the point where he was afraid to cough in front of me! Your web site taught me how to notice what was going on in my marriage when my son coughed. When I started thinking about our marriage, I began to spot the times when I overreacted to my son’s cough because I was anxious. When I calmed down about his cough, his symptoms seemed to improve! Now my husband and I argue more, and I may be more anxious about my marriage, but my son is healthier. I don’t mind making THAT trade-off!”
I’m not advocating neglect of our children or ignoring serious symptoms. I’m suggesting that perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. Maybe our kids’ problems are not rooted in genetics, but in their parents’ relationship. I’m advocating a hard look at one’s own role in marriage and parenting.
ANIMALS WEAN THEIR YOUNG; LIKEWISE WITH HUMANS
We human parents need to constantly be reminded that humans are also animals. Just like animals, we need to “wean” our offspring. Eagles push their chicks out of the nest, so they learn to fly. Cows kick their own calves away from their udders, to force them to forage for themselves. We humans used to send our children outside to play, and the neighborhood kids raised each other in valuable social networks that taught us how to get along with others. Unfortunately, now we claim that we cater to children’s needs out of “love” for them. I think sometimes it’s out of love for ourselves. We don’t want to feel uncomfortable, so we give in to their demands. If our marriage is uncomfortable, we prefer to spend time with our kids and focus on their needs. We want to be their friends, not their parents.
Our kids don’t need more friends. They need a parent who’s not afraid to be a parent, and not afraid to be married. If we create a marriage that is a dependable friendship, it serves as a model for our children’s future relationships. The sooner you and I focus on our marriage and leave our kids alone, the better for everyone in the family.
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