Vast Majority of Americans Still Believe in the Family

A flood tide of divorces, experiments in communal living and single parenthood – is old-fashioned marriage dying on the vine? Not so, says a noted counselor – and in this exclusive interview he explains why.

Q. With the divorce rate climbing as fast as it is, is the American family going to survive in years ahead?

A. Certainly it is. There is nothing else to replace it as an emotional center of people’s lives, or as the transmitter of culture, or for raising children.

What is happening now is that it is adapting to changes in society, just as it has in the past. With the industrial revolution and urbanization, the extended family – which included grandparents and other near relatives – changed and became the nuclear family of parents and children exclusively. Now new social and economic realities are emerging, and this requires new adaptations by the family.

Q. Are you worried by the high rate of divorce today?

A. I don’t see it as pathological. It can’t be described as deviant when so many Americans are getting divorces. I see it as an indication that people are searching for things in life. And if, at particular period in a marriage, they do not find the possibility of moving into a new and satisfying relationship, they search for what they want in a different marriage.

If you look at the higher rate of divorce, you also have to look at the high rate of remarriage by divorced people. In other words, when one nuclear family breaks up on them, they set up another such family. They still believe in it and so do the vast majority of American people.

You see, nobody has a substitute for carrying out the essential functions of a family.

Q. Why do people get divorces? Are money problems the cause?

A. Divorce is never really something that occurs spontaneously or without a history. It occurs on the basis of a chronic dissatisfaction not being attended to.

We know of families which live for quite a long time with chronic unhappiness. Nonetheless there is no divorce. Then, in a moment of crisis, the divorce occurs over some immediate issue.

Q. Why do marriages fail?

A. Largely because family life calls for adaptations as a family develops, and some couples do not change when their own situation changes.

Q. Does that make divorce inevitable?

A. No, but it means that both partners feel the disequilibrium and search for a new relationship. Quite often the search will be for a new partner. But it can also take the form of change in the current relationship and a renewed commitment to the present marriage – something I consider to be necessary in the development of a marriage.

The family has different needs at different times: when children arrive, when mothers go to work, when children leave the family; when there is serious illness, prolonged unemployment or the family moves to a new location. Then relationships have to be redefined.

At such points, there needs to be a renewal of commitment – a psychological renewal. At different periods in family organization, husband and wife should tell each other, “At this point we need to change in order to continue meeting each other’s needs.” For those who cannot make this adaptation, many will turn to divorce.

Q. Are divorce rates likely to maintain a high level for some time to come?

A. I think so. I see serial monogamy – divorce and remarriage – as likely to increase, not only because of stresses caused by mobility and other external factors but because of women’s new position in society and changes in attitude toward divorce. Social constraints 50 years ago tended to discourage divorce even in cases of families racked by chronic strife and antagonisms.

Q. Will the “women’s liberation” movement be helpful or harmful to the family as a whole as time goes on?

A. I think it is a part of the evolution of our society and is a logical development not only from the legal and economic points of view but also from the psychological point of view. It’s increasing our awareness of sexual discrimination which is an essential element in many cases of dysfunctional marriages.

Of course, “women’s lib” also means a changed relationship between men and women and complicates that relationship, but I think it does so in a positive way.

Q. How does divorce affect the children?

A. This gets into a major concern of mine. Divorce need not be a hardship on children. In some cases it alleviates the stresses caused by constant conflict between parents.

Nonetheless, the rise in divorces means we are creating a new social network of children with multiple parents, and in that situation children may find themselves the sufferers.

Divorce and remarriage are within the realm of normal crises. In these moments of normal crises, people go through strain. But children, who have fewer defenses and depend more upon the adults for security, may feel more strain.

Sometimes in the conflict between divorcing parents, children are used as Ping Pong balls, flying back and forth between the parents. Or children can play the parents against each other in the transition created by divorce.

Furthermore, adults who divorce and remarry are searching consciously for a better way of growing and being happy. But the children are carried along in these processes without choice. A child does not say to the parent “Marry” or “Divorce”. Children are carried along without being participants in the decisions, so they are confused and mystified – and this is the real source of their danger. Then, when one or both parents remarry, there is another transition and another crisis. Suppose a divorced man meets a woman he wants to marry. He needs not only to establish emotional contact and intimacy with her, but he also needs to become a father to the children of her previous marriage, whom he doesn’t know. At the same time he has to maintain a good parental relationship with his own children by a previous marriage.

This is a very complex network with many built-in problems, and we have not created systems of support to help remarrying persons.

Q. What do you think might help children and parents m this situation?

A. In some societies – the Scandinavian countries I think – the process of separation and divorce involves counseling of parents to help them deal with the crisis and its impact on children.

Here in America, however, people come to clinics after a pathologic situation already has developed. We need to develop some institutional systems of support to help parents provide support to their children – a new parental function as children are subjected to a more complex kind of family organization. It could be incorporated into institutions such as family services or child-guidance clinics, but parents need to be able to avail themselves of counseling without waiting for a pathologic situation to develop.

Q. Can schools help educate young people to a realistic view of marriage? A. Nobody can really teach “marriage” as a subject. Children learn how to encounter other people essentially through their experiences in their families and by observing their parents, brothers and sisters. They find in the family also a model for what marriage is. But good schools encourage the establishment of contact and mutual respect among peers, and this is certainly relevant to the young person’s view of marriage.

Q. Broadly, how do you evaluate the young people of today in their attitudes toward marriage compared with those, say, of 20 or 25 years ago?

A. I think there is a difference. It seems as if young people now are experimenting more in intimate relationships among themselves before marriage, apparently in a search for a relationship that enhances continuity and growth.

An interesting thing is the number of young people who live together for a while, then marry. If s not just another era of loose living but a search for strong relationships. I would say it is considerably more realistic than the attitudes of the younger persons who want to marry at the age of 17 or 18 for romantic reasons.

Q. How will the tendency of many young people now to marry at a somewhat later age affect family life?

A. I think it is a good thing.

The process of establishing a meaningful relationship is always a difficult one. It requires work, mutual respect, accommodation and maturity, but it can lay the foundations for a lasting and adaptive marriage.

I find it very interesting that the word “crisis” in Chinese is composed by combining two ideographs – one meaning “danger” and the other “opportunity”. This is something to remember about the family. As it passes from one period to another, there will be crises. They can point to danger – a breakup of the family – or they can become an opportunity to adapt the family to new challenges and satisfactions.