Say Thank You, Thumper

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February 18, 2013
Communication Tips, Relationship Research
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gratitude researchEveryone knows healthy relationships require effective communication, but are all communication strategies equal? Take Thumper’s well-worn advice for instance: “If you can’t say something nice don’t say nuthin’ at all.”

On the surface, the principle seems sound. But if this tactic hasn’t been working for you lately, you may find it comforting to know you’re not alone. With all due respect to Bambi’s flop-eared friend, several studies have piled up over the years suggesting that silence may not really be the best solution to communication problems.

In fact, say researchers, “avoidant” strategies (such as saying “nuthin’ at all”) actually reduce intimacy and erect barriers to resolving conflict: they are every bit as destructive to relationships as yelling and name-calling. That said, saying something nice still beats both alternatives—especially when “something nice” includes expressing gratitude.

Most of us would have no trouble understanding why expressing gratitude to our partner strengthens his or her investment in the relationship, but in 2010, researcher Nathaniel Lambert and his colleagues found that it also increases the strength of our own sense of personal investment in the relationship. The simple exercise of finding as few as five things to express gratitude about each week may be the simplest and most effective first step toward bringing couples and families closer together.

What if you can find nothing to be grateful for? Is that the time to invoke the cliché and “say nothing at all?” Not so, say researchers. We need to find constructive ways to talk about the issues that bother us. Neglecting positive strategies could potentially be as detrimental to relationship quality as falling into destructive strategies, which include the use of inflammatory or emotional language, accusations, yelling or criticism.

Unfortunately, the prevailing attitude seems to be anti-gratitude, says Robert Emmons, a UC Davis professor who has focused on gratitude since 1998. His 2007 book Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier explored the benefits and societal barriers to making the most of this important emotion.

“Outside of happiness, gratitude’s benefits are rarely discussed these days,” he wrote. “Indeed, in contemporary American society, we’ve come to overlook, dismiss or even disparage the significance of gratitude as a virtue.” As a result, he says, “We have become entitled, resentful, ungrateful and forgetful.”

Nevertheless, the research on gratitude continues to underscore its importance. Not only are grateful couples happier in their relationships, Berkeley researchers reiterated on February 5th, but levels of gratitude felt by partners can even predict who will break up and who will still be together months down the road.

Worse, the literature suggests that people who have a hard time finding reasons for gratitude may also find themselves with impaired psychological as well as physical health.  Among its physical health benefits, gratitude strengthens the immune system and lowers blood pressure, says Emmons. It supports mental health by blocking negative emotions, such as envy, resentment, regret. There’s even evidence, he writes, that “gratitude can reduce the frequency and duration of episodes of depression.”

If your relationship is already suffering from lack of gratitude, please do yourself a huge favor and read “Love, Honor, and Thank” by researchers Jess Alberts and Angela Threthewey. And I promise you won’t regret following that up with “Why Gratitude is Good,” by Emmons himself.

Gratitude, like Thumper’s greens, is a “special treat,” fortifying our relationships with vital nutrients. A daily dose of thankfulness may not make for “long ears and great big feet,” but it protects us from attitudes that poison our communication and threaten our personal well-being. Fortunately, no matter how long we have been suffering from a gratitude deficiency, it’s never too late to add it to our family’s daily diet.

When the Fight over Gun Control Comes Home

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January 20, 2013
In the News, Violence
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family fightsToday’s guest post was written by Dr. Ruth Nemzoff, Resident Scholar at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center:

Talking about guns is even more difficult than talking about sex these days. The two issues have much in common. The generations may certainly have very different views on the subject, but even the partners may disagree. Both topics are infused with passion and irrationality. Both have extreme consequences unless practiced safely. Both guns and sex are so politicized that it feels like there’s little room for compromise. Abortion or life . . . more armed guards or restrictions on guns. The truth is, most of us can agree that protections are needed in both cases. Yet we are so polarized by the rhetoric that we are terrified to begin the discussion with our loved ones for fear of a conflagration.

Parents and grandparents may differ on their philosophies about gun control. One may think that having more guns equals more safety, while the other may think that getting all the guns off the street is the only way to reduce gun violence. They may not be able to talk about their differences without, well, taking out a gun. Families would do well to begin the discussion by focusing on the desire to keep the kids safe. Just as sex education begins at home, so does gun control.

If grandparents want to reassure their adult children, they can check their closets and drawers to make sure they have locked up all their guns. They can put the ammunition in a separate place and then tell their adult children they have made these safety precautions. Parents who own guns can reassure the grandparents by doing the same. No matter how you may feel about gun control, we all know that guns must be kept out of reach of children and all safety precautions must be observed.

Whether or not you support the President’s gun control proposals, every gun owner has an obligation to help prevent gun violence.

By Ruth Nemzoff, Ed.D., speaker and author of  Don’t Bite Your Tongue: How to Foster Rewarding Relationships with Your Adult Children and Don’t Roll Your Eyes: Making In-Laws Into Family.  Dr. Nemzoff is a Resident Scholar at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center.

For more from Dr. Nemzoff, see:

In-Laws: A Gift or a Curse?

True Love Comes with In-Laws

Parent Talk: Ruth Nemzoff on Relationships between Parents and Adult Children

Roots of Violence: What Does Kill People?

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December 26, 2012
Abuse and Violence
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tolerating violenceAlmost immediately after the Newtown school shooting, before anyone had a chance to grieve the losses, the finger-pointing began. Finger-pointing is not simply one of America’s favorite pastimes, it’s also a prerequisite to our favorite team sport: politics. After all, you’re not going to paint your body in the team colors until there’s a game scheduled; and the game can’t go on without an arena, an opponent and a game plan. In this case, the arena was school violence, and the opponent was obviously going to be the Liberals (if you were a Conservatives fan) or the Conservatives (if you were a Liberals fan). The finger-pointing is necessary to define the game plan and put the ball into play.

A slew of options was entered into the play book: the teams would be able to comfortably dig their cleats into the ground over any given line of scrimmage. They could fight over gun control,  mental health programs, or media violence, for instance. The fans, well-versed in their team’s best strategies, were already calling the plays—even before the start of the game—you could hear them in the stands:

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people!”
“There’s no evidence that violent video games cause violence!”
“The Constitution protects my right to bear arms!”
“The Constitution protects the media’s right to free speech!”
“The shooter was mentally ill, he should have been put away!”
“I’d like to see them try to take away my guns!”
“I’d like to see them try to take away my video games!”
“I’d like to see them try to excuse him on the basis of mental illness!”

If you were an out-of-town visitor and didn’t happen to have a team to root for, you might find yourself in the position of being able to take a mental step back (a tactic that research has shown to be an effective tool for decision-making). You might marvel at the fierce team loyalty that kept one side of the stadium almost completely red and the other side blue. You might wonder where you should sit; and whether you might end up with beer down your back if you did.

Because you wouldn’t be busy shouting the team cheers, you might even have time to reflect that there was a little bit of truth, a little bit of misconception and even a little bit of paranoia in each of the calls being yelled from the stands. You might think to yourself that there’s a whole lot of room between reasonable regulation for guns and taking them all away.  A whole lot of room between acknowledging that some video games go much too far, and advocating media censorship. You might even find room between advocating for mental health intervention and assuming that mentally ill means “excused” or conversely, that mentally ill means “violent.” Black-and-white is easy for the human brain; considering an array of factors together—not so easy. We want to be told there is one simple cause so we only need to consider one simple solution. We are so uncomfortable  when things become complex!

It’s interesting that researchers actually know more about the roots of violence than you would suspect from watching media pundits arguing about it. Clearly, they don’t know everything. But they have learned that one of the most important influences on violence in a society is the extent to which people in that society view violence as normal, or acceptable. Children’s first clues to this are picked up at home, of course. They learn from the behavior of their parents and from the attitudes that come across in what parents say and how they say it. But even if parents do their best, children still pick up on the prevailing attitudes in their neighborhood, in their schools, and in the media.

Can a society’s tolerance of over-the-top violent video games demonstrate acceptance of violence? Can a society’s glorification of deadly weapons demonstrate acceptance of violence? Can a society’s “kill or be killed” attitude demonstrate acceptance of violence? Can a society’s choice of heroes demonstrate an acceptance of violence? What else can we think of that might give our children and teens the idea that violence really isn’t so bad: that in fact . . . it can be great fun and highly respectable?

Cindy Miller-Perrin, a family violence expert at Pepperdine University, once commented to me in an interview that if we want to solve that form of violence, an important thing needs to happen on the cultural level: “We need to work on being less accepting of the different forms of violence,” she emphasized, “even what we would call ‘normal’ violence within the media and within the family.”

Steven Pinker makes an interesting point that resonates with this idea. Although we often see upticks in violence statistics over the short term, Pinker argues that over the long haul we have actually succeeded in shedding some forms of violence. “What led people to stop sacrificing children, stabbing each other at the dinner table, or burning cats and disemboweling criminals as forms of popular entertainment?” he asks in his abstract for The Better Angels of Our Nature. He credits “the spread of government, literacy, trade, and cosmopolitanism,” and why not? These are influences that have a powerful effect on what we view as culturally acceptable.

There are others, of course. And while Pinker may be right when he suggests violence has declined overall in recent centuries, few of us (if anyone) would say we’re completely satisfied with society’s progress. Unfortunately, it seems highly unlikely we will make any more unless we are willing to take that step back from the fray and become the out-of-towner in the stadium for a moment. Otherwise, there will be no conversations; only yelling and flag-waving, because in the stadium, no one has any intention of giving the other side an inch. It’s all just a take-sides game. And what that means is that even if your team wins tonight, they’ll end up playing the same game all over again next week, next month, next year.

A Time to Mourn

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December 14, 2012
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All over America (and judging from social media—the world), today’s tragedy in Connecticut has been deeply felt. We grieve painfully with the parents, teachers and students of Sandy Hook Elementary School and the wider community of Newtown.

As inadequate as our condolences are, especially to the parents involved, they are offered with all our hearts: we are all diminished by these unspeakably tragic losses.

Pets: More than Man’s Best Friend

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November 13, 2012
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pets and mental healthSometimes I think we underestimate the educational wealth to be gained from our pets. Case in point: If you viewed the world the way your cat does, you’d find it a lot easier to respond to barbs and insults with a casual eyebrow-lift and a wide yawn. You might inadvertently expose your claws as you stretched before rolling over, but it wouldn’t really mean anything beyond extreme boredom.

If you viewed the world the way your dog does, you’d see only the good in people and you’d go into every relationship expecting the best. The question, “What am I, chopped liver?” would mean nothing to you, you LOVE chopped liver. It’s your favorite thing. You’d appreciate all the little things people do for you, and even if they gave you leftovers you’d wag your tail and make them feel as though they’d given you the moon.

You never see a pet Iguana blinking at adversity, and fish don’t waste effort worrying about things that may or may not happen. It’s pretty much “just keep swimming” for them, and “living in a fishbowl” isn’t a reason to have a nervous breakdown.

But apparently, having a pet isn’t just an exercise in uncovering life’s little lessons. According to researchers, animals return very real physical and mental health gifts to their human companions. Hence the focus on Animal Assisted Therapy by psychiatrists, hospitals, therapists and other health professionals.

Does your genetic imprint leave you with an elevated risk for heart attacks? Studies such as one undertaken by Australia’s Baker Medical Research Institute find that having a pet lowers blood pressure and cholesterol levels by a degree equal to that of typically recommended dietary changes.

Suffering from depression? Recovering from surgery or heart attack? Animals can help you return to normal measureably sooner.

Are you close to a child who may be experiencing some form of abuse or neglect in the home? Researchers find that a relationship with a family pet can ameliorate some of the attachment insecurities and other deficiencies such children develop. Even if you can’t introduce a pet into the home, occasional visits with an animal can be helpful, especially when an accompanying adult can explain the right treatment of the pet to the child.

Considering all the benefits to be gained from pet companionship, perhaps there are ways we can repay our four-footed (or no-footed) friends. If nothing comes to mind immediately, you might check out this post by my friend Lisa McGlaun on Life Prints. As Victor Hugo suggested, we may have more to gain from pet relationships than research has yet upturned.

“From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger,” he wrote, “all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several at the time. Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls.”

No Escape: When the Bully’s in the Family

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October 26, 2012
Abuse and Violence, In the News
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In honor of October’s status as  National Bullying Prevention Month, dozens of non-profit groups have been working to raise awareness of bullying and how to prevent it. It makes sense that the vast majority of the activities focus on educating parents, teachers and students about school bullying and cyberbullying. These two forms not only interfere with learning and emotional development, but have sometimes even led to suicide as in Amanda Todd’s recent case. Fortunately, many organizations are making important contributions toward teaching children the prosocial behaviors necessary to transform the schoolyard, if not yet the Internet, from a traumatic place into a safe, supportive one.

But what if the bully lives with you? What if it’s a sibling or parent? Worse, what if there are multiple family members who join forces against one family member to the point that there really is no escape from the abusive behavior?

In April 2008, I addressed this topic on another blog, referring to work by psychologist James R. Holmes examining the family influences on bullying. Holmes examined the existing research to tease out factors that contribute to bullying behaviors at school and found that most of them have their origins at home. It’s not really surprising that he found “boys who bullied others as adolescents were more likely in their 30’s to have children who were bullies.” There are certainly genetic components, which include  temperament and intelligence or attention problems. But there are environmental components too, says Holmes. These would include behaviors that occur between parents and children or perhaps between siblings.

The upshot, says Holmes, is that “bullying is associated with families in which people do not treat each other with respect or families in which children are not taught to respect the rights of others.”

Of course, parents can’t teach what they never learned. Holmes points out that the effects of poor family management and discipline can extend back several generations. More than having a parent who bullied, having grandparents who also bullied is an even stronger predictor of bullying for an adolescent.

After first writing about this topic, I found the online responses to be both sad and illuminating. Nearly 100 posts described the personal experiences of people who had been on the receiving end of bullying from family members at home. Sometimes it was the bully who commented, as in this instance:

When I was a child and teen I did act in a bullying way to some of my sisters. Often it was teasing gone too far. Mostly it was a case of intolerance, boredom and abusing my power as the eldest.

Sometimes my sister annoyed me just by her presence. She was often sulky and sullen and humorless. I annoyed her just for entertainment and to get a laugh from other siblings. I didn’t physically hurt her, but I verbally teased and niggled. Sometimes I just gave her hateful looks. Over time it wore her down. My parents didn’t intervene as they thought ‘kids will be kids.’ Plus a lot was done out of their sight.

These days I am a lot more self-aware and feel very badly for the way I behaved.

It’s worth highlighting the reference to the lack of intervention by parents. As you might expect, similar observations were made by many who had been on the receiving end of bullying. Also common were references to the mental health issues bullied siblings now faced as adults. This isn’t surprising considering that childhood is a crucial period of development for the brain and that a healthy and resilient neural structure depends heavily on positive social interaction. As one reader describes it:

My parent’s way of dealing with it [was] to ask me to just ignore it and to ask my other siblings to also just ignore it so that tension within the family is minimized and that we remain a family—this is after they tried to talk to the bullying sister and were met with denial and hostility. It has caused so much hurt and anguish in my life. After 10 years of bearing it, I began to experience panic attacks and nightmares as family events approached . .

Sometimes parents not only fail to intervene, they may also become an active part of the problem, particularly if there are multiple family dysfunctions:

I’ve been bullied all my life by my family. My brother beat me to a pulp every day and my mother took savage pleasure in stopping it by punishing me instead of him. She herself takes her temper out on me frequently. My sisters have now started picking on me online . . .

It can be tempting to blame the victims in these cases. Certainly, many of Amanda Todd’s tormentors continued to lash out at her for “weakness” even after her death. Almost like predatory animals, we tend to pounce on the fragile, blaming them for succumbing to their circumstances. It’s not only that the weak are easy prey, but seeing weakness in others can also make us feel uncomfortable. If there can be chinks in someone else’s armor, perhaps that means we are vulnerable to finding chinks in our own. This is not a conscious thought, of course. When spoken aloud it often comes out in terms such as, “I’ve had family issues, but I came through them fine. Why can’t that person?” Rather than seeing ourselves as fortunate that we had optimum circumstances to develop resilience, we see our resilience as something we’ve managed to work up on our own, and therefore everybody else can too if they’d just grab hold of their bootstraps with both hands. This is a misconception that all too easily gets in the way of our compassion for others whose circumstances are different.

That said, resilience can be strengthened: The really good news is that we aren’t stuck forever with the vulnerabilities we carry with us out of childhood. Research is zeroing in on influences that can promote resilience and is finding that supportive relationships are key to this process. In other words, the weak need the strong to give them a compassionate hand up rather than kicking them off the ladder.

The anti-bullying programs that have been leveraged over National Bullying Prevention Month have gone far in raising awareness of bullying behaviors in schools. Amanda Todd’s tragic death this month has made us all keenly aware of the issue of bullying behaviors online. The way forward in both of these venues, it would seem, is to raise awareness of bullying behaviors where they first take root: Home, sweet home.

On In-Laws and Outlaws

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September 6, 2012
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in-law-relationships
An old joke asks, “What’s the difference between in-laws and outlaws?” Of course the answer is, “Outlaws are wanted.” (Ooh.) My apologies to the London borough of Barnet, I understand that their Council outlawed mother-in-law jokes a couple of years ago, although I’m unclear as to whether jokes about other in-laws are still allowed. In my case it’s a moot point, I hasten to assert that I have been singularly lucky-in-law.

As a side note, Dictionary.com actually has a definition for “mother-out-law.” Apparently it’s the designated term for the mother of an ex-spouse. Of course, despite the West’s notoriously high divorce rate, there’s not much incentive to tell jokes about mother-out-laws—after all, out of sight, out of mind.

Certainly there’s a reason why mother-in-law jokes are so common, although to be strictly accurate it isn’t only mothers-in-law who may be perceived as “outlaws” within the family. When you think about it, most of us qualify as in-laws in one way or another. But whether we’re a parent-in-law, sibling-in-law, or even an aunt-, uncle- or cousin-in-law—we each have much to gain from reading Don’t Roll Your Eyes: Making In-Laws into Family, the latest book by Brandeis University resident scholar Ruth Nemzoff.

Why are these particular relationships so challenging? Naturally I asked this very question in a recent interview with Nemzoff.

“We become an in-law by a decision made by someone else,” she pointed out. “The younger generation makes the choice of partner, but they have no say in all the relatives who come along with their mate.” Nor do the relatives. Suddenly there are all kinds of new relationships among people who are likely to come from very different backgrounds. “They have little idea which buttons they can push, what happens when they push one, and which buttons the new person will push in them,” she explains. “They have not survived disagreements and arguments. In-laws do not share a common history. They are virtual strangers.”

Obviously, this sets the stage for a whole slew of potential pitfalls. Fortunately, Nemzoff has done her research and offers a glimpse into the real-life experiences of those who have ridden bareback over the badlands and survived to tell the tale.

The common denominator in most in-law issues? A lack of flexibility in the face of unmet expectations.

“I wish I could end this book with simple, easy-to-follow lessons to instantly improve your connections with your in-laws,” Nemzoff writes. But of course, she acknowledges, “that would be unrealistic.” Nevertheless she does offer 10 points that may not be easy but have the potential to transform all relationships—not just those defined by law:

  1. Reframe thoughts with a positive view. You have control over how you interpret events and actions.
  2. Deal with what you have, not what you want. Make what you have work for you.
  3. Put a statute of limitations on slights. We can’t change the past, only the present.
  4. Listen instead of judging. Use differences of opinion as an opportunity to learn.
  5. Take the long view. Situations change over time and with alterations in life stages.
  6. Be forgiving. Don’t sweat the “small” stuff and don’t impose your sacred cows on others.
  7. Be creative. Look for things that connect you to your in-laws rather than divide you.
  8. Call upon your more mature self. To make peace we must be peaceful.
  9. Remember that we are all new to this game. And don’t underestimate the capacity for change.
  10. Be curious. It’s the first step to compassion, understanding and forgiveness.

As I hinted earlier, I have some pretty spectacular in-laws, and it doesn’t stop with the siblings. In fact, one treasured in-law is a cousin whose nearest common ancestor with my husband lived in the 1600s. We are Facebook friends and I’ve come to count on a daily dose of his sense of humor, even though he lives more than 3,000 miles away. Another of my many treasured in-laws is well known to readers of Aunt Psych. My brother is the one who brought her into the family, but she is definitely a keeper.

Could we find things to clash over if we tried? Certainly, who couldn’t? But as Nemzoff underscores repeatedly, getting along with in-laws—or anyone—is a choice. “Families that get along do so in part because they decide to get along,” she says. “By envisioning and emphasizing the positive, we train ourselves and others to accept the best we have to offer.”

On Feminists, Attachment Parents, Tiger Moms and Wise French Mothers. Oh, and Dads.

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May 2, 2012
Mind and Brain, Parenting
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attachment fatheringAs May begins and Mother’s Day approaches, the American brain is primed to think of all things Mom and Motherhood. And so it is that the New York Times finds it opportune to ask, “Has women’s obsession with being the perfect mother destroyed feminism? In particular, has the trend of ‘attachment parenting’ been bad for working moms?”  Weighing in on the debate are experts and authors across the parenting spectrum, from attachment-parenting guru Mayim Bialik (Beyond the Sling) to Pamela Druckerman, whose discovery of wisdom in the parenting approach of the French inspired her to write Bringing up Bébé.

Rest assured, you will not often trip over ideological debates on Mom Psych.The focus here is on research rather than opinion; and debates tend to be opinion on steroids. But any excuse to bring up a good study will serve, and the NYT debate does open the door to a few interesting bits of research.

My favorite bit  has to do with how our brains work in debate mode. Psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman would tell you that your political preferences go a long way toward determining what arguments you’re willing to buy into. Not necessarily because you’ve weighed the issues, but because your brain is good at jumping to emotional conclusions about what it likes or doesn’t like— pretty much at first sight. Fortunately, if you can be persuaded to consider the evidence, it’s just possible you might override the initial emotional response. But, says Kahneman, the brain’s analytical mode (what he calls System 2) is “more of an apologist for the emotions of System 1 than a critic of those emotions—an endorser rather than an enforcer. Its search for information and arguments is mostly constrained to information that is consistent with existing beliefs.” The brain, Kahneman explains, does not really like to examine where its beliefs come from or whether that source is reliable. It only wants to preserve them at all costs.

One of our unconscious but brilliant strategies for preserving them is to argue with “straw men” instead of the real opinions of other people. We unwittingly remold our opponent’s perspective into the most extreme version possible so it will be easier to knock down without requiring too much thought. After all, it takes effort to get inside another person’s head and accurately make sense of the contents, so we do what comes naturally: We make something up. You may have a straw-man habit  if people regularly interrupt you with, “That’s not what I’m saying.” We may even make up the entire premise on which our straw argument stands. These tendencies can clearly be seen in the NYT attachment parenting debate, and if we are honest with ourselves as we read through it, we may notice them in our own reactions too.

The first thing that may bother you is the debate question itself. It seems extreme to suggest that feminism has been destroyed, and the idea that attachment parenting might be responsible reflects a misunderstanding of the parenting style. As PhD in Parenting blogger Annie Urban points out, “It’s About Parenting, Not ‘Mothering.” Urban takes on French author Elisabeth Badinter’s assertion that this form of parenting enslaves women, and notes that there are enough responsibilities associated with childcare to keep men and women equally busy if dads will man up. Badinter says that in her country, at least, they don’t. Well, wise up, French dads, there’s a whole slew of research that says if they are lucky enough to have two parents, kids need both of them. That means dads too. You can say “I’ll do the cooking and you do the laundry,” but you can’t say “I’ll do the gardening and you do the kids.” Children are full-fledged family members who need to be emotionally connected to both parents equally. And connection is only possible when there is involvement.

As the debate continues, a veritable army of straw soldiers floods the battlefield. Attachment parenting is portrayed as a rigid system requiring mothers and children to spend all their time together” leaving none of the wise, French-parenting “distance” that would enable children to build “autonomy and resilience.” Of course, there certainly may be some in the attachment parenting fringe who can be described in these terms, but practiced with balance it is not about mothers and children spending all their time together. Nor is it about rigid co-sleeping rules, ignoring tantrums, extreme dietary restrictions, or any of the other straw man erected by those who don’t understand its basis. In fact, there is so much room for individual style within the attachment parenting “movement” (if it is to be so-called) that its families are like snowflakes: no two are exactly alike. What ties them together is one fundamental aim: to create a strong emotional bond that will encourage the development of children’s autonomy and capacity for resilience.

This is where the next bit of research comes in to clarify how children develop these important characteristics. We’ll go to the original source and you may be surprised  that it won’t be pediatrician William Sears, who perhaps deserves the credit for establishing “attachment parenting” as a movement.  It’s true he did lay down a long list of recommendations for achieving attachment, but Sears was merely interpreting the research, albeit through his own useful observations as a pediatrician. Attachment research actually began with psychologists John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth and has since been taken over by neuroscientists, who have expanded on the initial theory. What the research shows is that the areas of the brain that support autonomy and resilience are sculpted and strengthened by emotional attunement with caretakers. It isn’t distance that performs this miracle. It’s connection. Sure, children need age-appropriate practice in exercising autonomy and resilience. But they need a secure base of connection to work from.

Of course, every good parent aims for this connection (which may make everyone an attachment parent to some degree). But another funny thing about the human brain is that it loves simple categorizations and it also loves the tangible chemical high it gets from being able to categorize itself as “capable” and everyone else as “incapable.” And so we classify as wackos all feminists, tiger moms, wise French parents, and attachment adherents and refuse to see ourselves in any of them. Whereas if we could see them—as well as ourselves—without polarized lenses, we just might be surprised to find that we have much more in common than we might think.

Critical Thinking is Not for Cocktail Parties

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April 20, 2012
Communication Tips, Mind and Brain
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critical thinkingI’m still learning not to talk about books at cocktail parties. At this point I haven’t figured out what you are supposed to talk about at them . . . but at least it’s finally beginning to dawn on me that people don’t go to cocktail parties to have their thoughts challenged. People go to parties so they can relax and have a good time, and when people are relaxed they don’t like to think too much. There’s actually research to back that up.  (I don’t mind mentioning that here, since I don’t have a glass in my hand and I’m not standing around next to a plate of hors d’oeuvres.)

In any case, I learn best from actual mistakes, so I try to make them as often as possible, which is why I brought up Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking Fast and Slow, while at a friend’s cocktail party in January. My close friends know that the Nobel Prize-winning researcher’s 2011 book is my latest favorite—and has been for about six months now—but at this party I managed to bring it up among five or six people who hadn’t heard me mention it yet. “I found it eye-opening,” I told them enthusiastically. “I hadn’t been aware of a few of the biases he writes about, but now I’m starting to catch them in myself at all kinds of odd moments!”

“I don’t believe in biases,” the tall, elegant blonde next to me responded immediately. This had the effect of rendering me momentarily speechless. But only for the three seconds it took to frame the first question that came to mind: “But what about all the research?” I hazarded. She didn’t believe in research either. “Well, how do you form your opinions?” I asked, truly curious.

“Experience.” she said.  She explained that she didn’t trust researchers or their studies, and that experience and good common sense were enough for her. The idea that people have biases is—in her opinion—nothing but a liberal political tool, and she has enough good common sense not to believe in them because her own experience clearly shows her she doesn’t have any. (Biases, I think she meant. Not common sense).

That’s when (after opening and closing my mouth a couple of times and probably looking a bit fish-like doing so) I mumbled something about needing to refill my drink and wandered off.

Which brings me back to my latest favorite book again.

“Many people,” says Kahneman, “are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions. They apparently find cognitive effort at least mildly unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible.”

He then obligingly points out some of the ways our thinking lets us down when we’re chugging along on intuition, or System 1, as he calls it. System 1, explains Kahneman, operates silently and automatically in the background, providing impressions, impulses, intuitions and instant conclusions about what we hear and see. When you’ve got that peaceful, easy feeling—like when you’re chatting about nothing in particular at a cocktail party—you know System 1 is at the helm. As long as you’re in a state of “cognitive ease,” your thinking will be fairly superficial because of the relaxed vigilance of System 2, which is the more effortful, analytic thinking mode.

Interestingly, just as cognitive ease increases a good mood, a good mood increases cognitive ease. In other words, says Kahneman, “A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors.”

This is because System 1 will jump to its conclusions on the basis of the relatively scanty information it is processing automatically and unless (or until) a sense of cognitive strain mobilizes System 2, the intuitive answers supplied by System 1 will hold sway. “Remember,” says Kahneman, “that System 2 is lazy and that mental effort is aversive.”

Of course, he could be making all of this up. But my personal experience and common sense are enough to tell me he’s probably right.

Hmmm. I wonder what Daniel Kahneman talks about at cocktail parties?

Bringing it All Back Home: How Outside Stress Affects Family Relationships

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June 4, 2009
Work-Life Balance
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stress effectsIt will come as no surprise to anyone who keeps up with psychology research that much of who we are and what we do goes back to the quality of our family relationships. Positive, supportive family relationships contribute to our well-being in countless ways—while negative, abusive ones can be deadly.

Of course, most of us don’t tend to analyze what we do from the viewpoint of our own family history—we just want to give our children the best possible environment for their physical and emotional development because we love them. They’re an extension of us, we’re invested in their future. It just happens to be a bonus for society that when we focus on meeting the needs of our children, the wider community and future generations reap benefits too.

But it isn’t always easy  to carve out the necessary quality family time in our busy Western society. Increasingly, families need two wage-earners just supply the “basics.” School, extracurricular activities and other obligations also encroach on down time. How do these daily stressors affect familes? This was the question explored by Rena Repetti and her colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, in a peer reviewed study published in the April 2009 issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science.

“The family is popularly imagined as a stable haven, a place where individuals come together to recuperate from the ups and downs of the outside world,” wrote the researchers. “But the family has ups and downs of its own; it is a dynamic system, not impermeable to outside influences but porous and continually in flux. For example, parents’ job schedules and children’s homework shape family time, activities, and routines. Other effects of work and school on the family are less overt.”

Certainly, as the researchers explain, people often continue to react to a stressful event long after it has occurred and may find themselves nursing too many work wounds at home as a result. How does the fallout affect family relationships?

“We have found that, following more stressful days at work, spouses and parents adjust their social behavior at home in two ways.” write the UCLA researchers. “One common pattern is an overall reduction in social engagement and expression of emotion.” Mothers as well as fathers withdrew emotionally and disengaged socially from their children after stressful or exceptionally demanding work days. Spouses “were more distracted and less responsive” toward one another. Children also showed lingering reactions to school stress. Both elementary-school-age children and teens initiated more conflict with other family members after a day filled with academic problems or difficulties with peers.

“A second short-term response to job stress resembles the stereotypic image of an agitated employee kicking his dog after an argument with his boss,” says the report. This plays out as “an increase in irritability and displays of anger with both spouse and children.” Ripetti and her colleagues note that this second pattern is most likely to occur in people who have a history of psychological distress.

How harmful is all this take-home stress in the long run? It depends. If the short-term effects are allowed to build up over time, there may be more lasting effects. Especially within families with high levels of conflict, or where one or more family members have a history of depression and anxiety.

We do know from other studies that family support and parental engagement are crucial to the well-being of children, so if our coping style in reaction to stress at work involves withdrawing from our families at home, it can’t be good over the long haul. As difficult as it may be to push ourselves out of our comfort zone, resilience experts suggest that connecting, rather than withdrawing, is our best bet for handling stress. Rapetti’s research is fascinating and important in several respects: but perhaps the most important thing parents can take home from this study is a new awareness of what they may be bringing home to their children at the end of their work day.