It was a typical argument in a typical marriage. What
started as a difference of opinion escalated after several minutes into
strong feelings and raised voices. "I can't even remember what Frank
and I were discussing," says Jeri Forestieri of New Tripoli,
Pennsylvania. But neither of them will forget what happened next. As the
decibel level increased, their 7-year-old daughter, Tess, quietly picked
up her 1-year-old brother, carried him into another room, and closed the
door behind them. "Frank and I just stopped in our tracks,"
Forestieri recalls. "We instantly forgot whatever it was we were
fighting about and followed Tess to apologize."
What the Forestieris' young daughter taught them in one poignant,
symbolic gesture is what researchers have long suspected and are now
confirming: The emotional well-being of everyone in a family is directly
tied to the quality of the parents' relationship. Make a happy marriage a
high priority, and the payoff for your children is huge as well. But when
you and your partner aren't getting along, you're not the only ones who
feel like walking out of the room and shutting the door. It doesn't matter
whether you have no-holds-barred blowups or give each other the silent
treatment, says E. Mark Cummings, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the
University of Notre Dame and coauthor of Children and Marital Conflict:
The Impact of Family Dispute and Resolution. "Kids pick up on the
emotional as well as the verbal they know what's going on."
The Kid-Conflict Connection
Even the very youngest of children can pick up on the subtleties of happy
and unhappy marriages. A study of 50 couples with 3-month-old infants
found that the babies of unhappy marriages showed a markedly lower
capacity for joy, concentration, and self-soothing than babies whose
parents had thriving relationships. These couples had been part of an
ongoing study by John Gottman, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the
University of Washington and author of The Relationship Cure, and
he knew they were already struggling. "They were increasingly
avoiding each other there was a lot of emotional
withdrawal," he says. "When they tried to discuss a conflict,
they became critical and defensive, and sometimes contemptuous."
And when he videotaped these parents playing with their babies, he
found that the couples weren't in sync, either: They weren't smiling or
including each other much in the interaction. Though they weren't fighting
right then, their babies' physiological reaction an accelerated
heart rate nonetheless reflected the quality of the marriage.
In another study, Gottman's research team took hourly urine samples of
63 preschoolers over a 24-hour period. The 3- and 4-year-olds who were
being raised in homes with what Gottman characterizes as "great
marital hostility" had markedly higher levels of stress hormones than
those children whose parents' marriages were stable.
The health consequences of this extreme kind of stress may not be known
until these kids reach middle age, but the behavioral ramifications are
already clear, Gottman says. His study followed the children through age
15, and the kids of the troubled marriages had a significantly higher
incidence of truancy, depression, peer rejection, low school achievement,
and behavior problems especially aggression.
Conversely, says Pamela Jordan, Ph.D., coauthor of Becoming Parents:
How to Strengthen Your Marriage as Your Family Grows, the children of
happily married couples are, well, happier. They have more advanced social
skills, do better in school, aren't as likely to succumb to depression
during stressful times, and act out less.
Cummings is now in the early stages of researching the impact of good
marriages, and his initial findings suggest that the better coping skills
found in these kids are the result of what he calls their "enhanced
emotional security." When children grow up in a home that feels safe
instead of tense, they're better able to cope with life's smaller
disappointments. They also tend to approach the world in a much more
positive way.
Emotional Money in the Bank
Many couples believe that putting their marriage first means putting the
kids second. When their children are young, parents may be too emotionally
tied to the baby to disappear for long weekends together or too strapped
to go out for a candlelit dinner. As their kids get a little older,
though, they may feel they can get away and reap the benefits.
"When our first child turned two, we went to St. Barts and
rediscovered everything that had made us best friends and lovers in the
first place," says Forestieri. "After that trip, we found a
sitter and began to go out to dinner a couple of times a month."
But it's not just the bells and whistles of romance weekend
getaways, expensive gifts, all-night lovemaking that make a
marriage happy. Satisfied couples, says Gottman, are constantly putting
"emotional money in the bank." That is, they work to create an
environment that nurtures the relationship. This trust-building, says
Gottman, "allows them to have a more gentle approach to conflict.
They can repair the relationship when things aren't going well."
So how do you get that kind of currency in the bank? Develop a culture
of appreciation. Take time each day to thank each other for small favors.
This is one facet of a happy marriage in which my husband truly shines.
Haywood never fails to thank me for making dinner. If it's his turn to
cook, he thanks me for loading the dishwasher. He genuinely appreciates
even the most unremarkable tasks I do for our family.
And create small rituals of connection. Eat dinner together every night
without the television on, even if it's just a frozen pizza. Give each
other a six-second kiss when leaving or coming back together. Hug each
other before drifting off to sleep. These rituals can help the marriage
withstand the stresses that come up so often.
"I often send my husband notes on his pager or call to say I'm
looking forward to our evening together. It doesn't take a lot of effort,
but I know it's in the back of his mind all day," says Suzanne
Dannenmueller, a mother of two in Paducah, KY.
It's All in the Teamwork
Too often, couples founder when fathers feel edged out by what they see as
their wives' greater physical involvement and competence with the baby.
Feeling unnecessary, these dads may withdraw, putting into play a
marriage-busting domino effect. When the father becomes emotionally and
physically unavailable, the exhausted mother feels abandoned and
resentful. These are perfect conditions for conflict, so it's not
surprising that 70 percent of mothers report a precipitous drop in marital
satisfaction after a first child is born, according to Gottman.
The other 30 percent have husbands who are fully involved in the
transformation to parenthood. If fathers are part of the team, says
Gottman, "if they make the change from a 'me' to a 'we' orientation,
then the marriage gets closer rather than distant."
So whether it's spending the afternoon feeding and snuggling with the
baby or getting their toddler dressed in the mornings, dads need to pitch
in. And just as key, mothers must make a conscious effort to include their
mates more in the day-to-day responsibilities of parenting and try to
resist the impulse to criticize the way they do things. "Different
doesn't mean wrong," says Elisa Morgan, coauthor of When Husband
& Wife Become Mom and Dad. "We need to make room for each
other's styles of parenting."
The benefits of this we're-wearing-the-same-team-jersey approach extend
to kids too. As the mother of three boys, I've learned that when my sons
clear the table as my husband loads the dishwasher, the family is getting
more than a tidy kitchen: My kids are getting a father who can interact
with them on many more levels than he would just during a game of
after-dinner catch, and my future daughters-in-law will get husbands who
understand what a fifty-fifty marriage really looks like.
Talk, Talk, Talk
One of the fastest routes to marital harmony is to keep current with each
other. Which means finding a way somehow, somewhere to
talk about the big and small stuff that's going on in your lives. Moe
Hill, a father of three in Nashville, says that he and his wife, Jess, do
"a lot of talking. And if we ever go a whole day without having a
real conversation, it feels as if something important is somehow
missing."
Sometimes finding time to talk freely takes creativity. You may have to
put the cranky baby in her car seat and drive around the block several
dozen times while you chat in the front seat or pop in a Barney video on
Saturday morning and let your preschooler veg out while you linger over
coffee. Sometimes you just have to stay up late: After Christine and David
Laikind of Troy, MI, get 8-year-old Chloe into bed at around nine o'clock,
"it's not unusual," Christine says, "for us to turn off the
TV and sit on the couch and talk until midnight."
What's Fighting Got to Do With It?
Of course, no matter how much a couple tries to stay connected, spats are
inevitable. When kids come along, there are more issues to fight about and
more day-to-day stress to complicate them. It's the intensity of the
disagreement and how you deal with it that matters. To avoid the kind of
yelling, blaming, name-calling fight that does real damage to both your
marriage and your children, says Jordan, you need some ground rules.
For starters, that means agreeing to disagree. "Parents aren't
always going to see things the same way," says Cummings, "but
from a child's point of view, what matters is whether his parents are
relatively amicable about it." Disagreements that happen in the
context of a generally peaceful relationship aren't upsetting to the
child. Even if there's no resolution on the specific topic of conflict,
there's resolution within the relationship, and that's reassuring to kids.
And pick your time and place. "If you're having a heated
discussion," says Jordan, "you need to stop and say, 'You know
what? We aren't getting anywhere with this.'" Then make a plan for
continuing the conversation at a better time when you've calmed
down, the pasta's not boiling over, and, certainly, the kids aren't
staring at you fearfully from across the table.
You may also be able to defuse your anger simply by stopping and
listening. Often during arguments we get so upset that we aren't able to
hear what the other person is saying; we're just waiting for a break in
our spouse's monologue so we can deliver our own. Instead, take turns
giving your viewpoints in brief sound bites. After one person makes a
point, the other one repeats it. Truly hearing your partner's point of
view may pave the way for a compromise.
At the times when you do have an argument that gets out of control in
front of the kids, make sure they see or know about a happy resolution.
Not only are any fears put to rest, says Cummings, but the kids will learn
some lessons about apologizing.
Christine and David Laikind have noticed that their daughter gets very
quiet when they quarrel. "But when it's over, we tell Chloe that we
just had a disagreement and we're okay," explains Christine.
"Then she asks for a group hug, and we're all okay."
While parenthood can be exhausting and stressful, under the right
conditions it can also bring a couple closer together. And it can bring
the marriage to a level of intimacy it never would have reached otherwise.
"I never knew the level of patience my husband had until he became a
father," says Jeri Forestieri.
The real trick: achieving those conditions for intimacy, and then
working to keep them in place. As tough as it is to take time to nourish
your relationship, it's dangerously short-sighted not to do so.
"There's a pervasive attitude in society that says if your life
doesn't revolve around your children, you're selfish," says Jordan.
"But the truth is, the best way to be a terrific parent is to love
your partner."
How To Keep Little Gripes From Becoming Big
Ones
If you find yourself blowing your stack because your husband left the
milk out on the kitchen counter again, it may be a tip-off that you
desperately need some quality couple time. "People are often
surprised at how angry they can get about things that appear to be very
trivial," says professor and author John Gottman, Ph.D. He calls
this condition "negative sentiment override," a sign that your
marriage has been put on the back burner for too long. When you aren't
really connecting with each other, you may wind up with a chip on your
shoulder, hypervigilant for slights. In other words, it's not just the
milk.
A good remedy: Schedule a date night, pronto.
