"The Secrets of Happy Families" by Bruce Feiler
Date Finished: Sept 06, 2023
Pages: 320
How strongly I recommend it: 8/10
Published in 2013 by William Morrow Paperbacks
Find it at Amazon
The founding editor of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly, suggested this book in a podcast conversation while he was promoting his latest book, “Excellent Advice for Living.” As a man with a budding family I realized many of the questions I have aren’t obvious. At what age do we potty train? How do I discipline my 2 year old? I found this book profoundly helpful, much like Emily Oster’s book “Cribsheet” was helpful during my wife’s first pregnancy.
My Notes:
What do happy families do right and how can the rest of us learn to make our families happier?
Agile development is a system of group dynamics in which workers are organized into small teams, each team huddles briefly every morning, and the team convenes for a loner gathering at week's end to critique how it's functioning. In the workplace, these gatherings are called "review and retrospective"; in the home, the Starrs called them "family meetings."
Almost everyone feels completely overwhelmed by the pace and pressures of daily life, and that exhaustion is exacting an enormous toll on family wellbeing. ... And if parents feel harried, it trickles down to their children. Studies have shown that parental stress weakens children's brains, depletes their immune systems, and increases their risk of obesity, mental illness, diabetes, allergies, even tooth decay.
"Everything is a phase," he says, "even the good parts." Just when kids start sleeping, they stop napping; just when they start walking, they begin throwing tantrums; just when they get used to soccer, they add piano lessons; just when they start putting themselves to bed, they begin having homework and needing their parents' help again; just when they get the hang of taking tests, along comes texting, dating, and online hazing.
SELF-DIRECTED MORNING CHECKLIST (for kids)
Take vitamins or medicine
Eat breakfast
Shower or wash face and neck
Take care of your hair
Do morning chores
Brush your teeth (two minutes)
Backpack, shoes, and socks
David beamed, then added, "You can't overestimate the satisfaction a person gets by doing this." He made a check mark in the air. "Even in the workplace, adults love it. And with kids, it's heaven."
But if the morning list transformed one of the biggest pain points in their lives, the bigger challenge came when they implemented another agile practice. [The Weekly Review]
The centerpiece of the program is a weekly review session built on the principle of "inspect and adapt." Three questions... modified:
What things went well in our family this week?
What things could we improve in our family?
What things will you commit to working on this week?
Two years later, we were still holding these family meetings every Sunday evening. Linda began to count them among her most-treasured moments as a mom.
THE AGILE FAMILY MANIFESTO
The word agile entered the business lexicon on February 13, 2001. [Jeff Sutherland]
One takeaway I got from agile is that whenever I see friends with checklists—chores, schedules, allowance—I ask whether the adults or the kids are doing the checking off. Invariably it's the adults. The science suggests there's a better way. To achieve maximum benefits, have the children do the scoring.
You have your job; you work on that. You have your garden, your hobbies, you work on those. Your family requires just as much work, if not more. The most important thing agile taught me is that you have to make a commitment to always keep working to improve your family. That's what no one believes until they start doing it themselves."
The comprehensive survey done on this topic, a University of Michigan report that examined how American children spend their time between 1981 and 1997, discovered that the amount of time children spent eating meals at home was the single biggest predictor of better academic achievement and fewer behavioral problems. Mealtime was more influential than time spent in school, studying, attending religious services, or playing sports.
Laurie David, in her book, gathered a number of inventive ideas to rethink the ritual:
Can't have dinner together every night? Aim for once a week.
Aren’t home from work early enough? Gather everyone together at 8:00 p.m. for desert, a bedtime snack, or just a chat about the day.
Weekdays too busy? Aim for weekends.
Don't have time to cook? Try Leftover Mondays, Chinese Takeout Tuesdays, or breakfast for dinner.
They developed a measure called the "Do You Know?" scale that asked children to answer twenty questions, including:
Do you know where your grandparents grew up?
Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school?
Do you know where your parents met?
Do you know of an illness or something really terrible that happened in your family?
Do you know what went on when you were being born?
Marshall says that children who have the most balance and self-confidence in their lives do so because of what he and Robyn call a strong "intergenerational self." They know they belong to something bigger than themselves.
The more children knew about their family's history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem, and the more successfully they believed their families functioned.
... I set out to assemble a menu of constructive mealtime activities, which I assigned to different days of the week. I dubbed them "The Hunger Games."
Monday: Word of the Day
Teach your kids one new word every meal.
... children with parents in the lowest income bracket hear 616 words in a typical hour, while children from parents at the opposite end hear 2,153 words. That's a gap of eight million words a year. "The difference between knowning three thousand words and knowing fifteen thousand words when you arrive at kindergarten is enormous."
No matter your income level, start by speaking more like yourself to your kids. If anything, you should go out of your way to use words that are unfamiliar to them.
Tuesday: Autobiography Night
A valuable skill parents can give a child requires no special classes, no elaborate equipment, and no expensive tutor. It's the ability to tell a simple story about their lives. Beginning around age five, children develop the tools to describe past events, but these skills must be practice. ... child to recall a memorable experiences... Ask: Who? What? When? Where? Why? These open-ended questions build memory and identity.
As Marshall Duke discovered about children who know their history, the more kids remember about their own families, the more self-esteem and confidence they exhibit. With that in mind, devote a night to having kids tell stories from their own past, their "autobiography" if you will—the day they scored two goals at soccer, the night their mother made those awesome chocolate chip cookies.
Wednesday: Pain Points
One night a week, ask everyone to bring up a "pain point." It could be a child who has to do a school project with someone he doesn't like or Mom who has to take her father to the eye doctor at the same time that a parent-teacher conference is scheduled.
Thursdays: Word Game Night
Thesaurus Thursday. Say a common word—such as run, quickly happy—and have everyone come up with as many alternatives as possible.
It's called "Bad & Good," and the rules are simple. Everyone goes around and says what happened bad to them that day, then everyone goes around and says what happened good. The only mandate: You must have at least one bad and one good every day, and you're not allowed to knock anyone else's answer.
"I heard this TED talk by a guy who spent a decade studying work-life balance," David said. "He concluded most people have either a great family and an average career, or an incredible career and an average family. The only way to have both is to apply the same level of passion and energy to your family as you do to your work. There can be no asymmetry."
Each scientists in attendance had already published a list of the qualities successful families share. ....
Communication.
Encouragement of individuals.
Commitment to the family.
Religiously/spiritual well-being.
Social connectedness.
Adaptability.
appreciativeness.
One of Covey's real innovations was applying a similar process to families. "The goal is to create a clear, compelling vision of what you and your family are all about."
The mission of our family is to create a nurturing place of faith, order, truth, love, happiness, and relaxation, and to provide opportunity for each individual to become responsibly independent, and effectively interdependent, in order to serve worthy purposes in society.
"We know that one of the best ways someone can be happy is to be grateful." David said. "So every. night before the boys go to bed, we pray with them and have them think about what they're grateful for. It's one of hte greatest psychological triggers for having a healthy attitude."
"A core value," he continued, "is something so central you would say, 'Even if it's harmful to us, we would still hold on to this value. Even if we had to pay penalties, even if we had to punish our children for violating it, even if we had to deny them something that would bring them pleasure, we would still hold to it.' That's what you need to keep in mind as you're making your family brand: It will work only if it stands for something."
His core idea is that parents should spend more time identifying and rewarding good behavior instead of endlessly punishing bad behavior.
Creating a family identity is the collective equivalent of imagining your best possible self. It forces you to conceive, construct, then put in a public place a written ideal of what you want your family to be. It may not be for everyone, but for us it was the most revealing and most exciting thing we had found to express our "best possible family."
Part Two: TALK. A LOT.
The takeaway: One of the ways to stop fighting is to stop saying you.
... one gesture, above all, predicted marital tension: eye rolling.
But eyes aren't the only thing that conveys disrespect: Shifting in your seat, sighing, and stiffening your neck do, too.
Ury's philosophy is based on a five-step process:
Isolate your emotions.
Go to the balcany.
Step to their side.
Don't reject, reframe.
Build them a golden bridge.
He offered a simple way to prevent our emotions from getting in our way. It's called "Go to the balcony... When thing are starting to go wrong in an encounter, imagine the negotiation taking place on a stage," Ury said. "Then allow your mind to go to the balcony overlooking that stage. From there you can see the macro view. From there you can start to calm down. From there you can exert some self-control."
The most important thing is to begin looking at the other side's point of view.
"It sounds easy," he continued, "but it's not. The main thing it requires is listening."
The point is: Negotiation is the stuff of life. We think of it as driving us apart, but if you engage in it correctly, it can actually bring us closer together."
All experts agree that parents do a lame job of talking to their kids about money. A study of over 650 British parents found 43 percent taught their children very little about financial matters.
"Here is five dollars. If you add three vegetables this month, you get to keep it. If you don't, you have to give it back." It worked! People I know have tried the same tactic with raking the leaves or curfews.)
We require our girls to divide their money into four pots:
Spend. They get to keep this cash in their piggy banks and spend it on whatever they choose, but we also require them to use their own money when buying gifts for us on our birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, etc.
Save. I keep this money in an envelope in my office.
Give away. Linda, who works in philanthropy, takes charge of this and every few months brings the girls to donorschoose.org to pick their favorite charitable project to support.
Share. We also created a collective account for us to spend together as a family, usually on vacation. On our first joint shopping expedition, to a craft store in Santa Fe, Linda coached the girls on an important life skill: buying something that looked expensive but wasn't. Part of financial responsibility, she told them, is being a savvy shopper.
"For me it's about values. It's about wanting to have these conversations with my children. Do we really want to buy that air softener? Do we really need to go out to dinner tonight? It's about forcing conversations."
"So it's not really about financial literacy at all," I said. "It's about fatherhood." [Trott: Warren Buffett called him "the only banker I trust."]
Show them the money. Trott said most parents have an instinctive reluctance to be honest with their kids about money—how it's made, lost, invested, and spent. He said that 80 percent of college students have never had a conversation with their parents about managing money. Trott advises his clients to fling open the doors to the vault.
"I tell my clients that forcing their kids to have financial iteracy is one of the most important things they can do.
Trott agreed. "The most successful adults I know were all involved in business at a young age," he said. "All of them. Warren believes it's the secret to success. Your kid has to be involved in business.
Jay Zagorsky, a researcher at Ohio State, tracked the financial status of 9,055 married and unmarried people over fifteen years, beginning in their twenties. Those who remained single had a slow but gradual growth in wealth, accumulating an average of $11,000 over that period. Those who got married (and stayed so for ten years) gained an average of $43,000. Over a lifetime, getting married doubles a person's wealth, the study concluded, while getting divorced cuts a person's wealth by three-quarters.
"I think what you're trying to do in a family is create responsible, self-reliant, creative people," he said. "Self-reliant, meaning they can take care of themselves. Responsible, meaning they're accountable for their own actions. And creative, meaning they come up with their own dreams and set out to achieve them. Having money is not the destination in any of these cases, but it is a means to those ends."
The reason siblings fight so often is because they take each other for granted, and that's the same reason they fight when they grow up.
She believes the conflicts between siblings when they are youngsters don't have to affect their long-term bond; it's absolutely possible to be close when you're grown. What matters is having enough fun together to balance out the bad. This "net-positive" is what predicts good relations as adults.
Numerous studies have shown that children who live with both biological parents have their first sexual experience later than those who do not. In addition, how warm parents are to their children, and how attached those children feel to their parents, all delay the onset of sex.
The landmark Add Health study of ninety thousand adolescents showed that girls who have a close relationship with their fathers were more likely to delay sexual activity. Dad-involvement also produced greater confidence in daughters and sons, increased sociability, and more self-assurance. Father-absence had a host of negative side effects, from premature menarche in girls (the technical term for first period) to increased aggression in boys.
McFadden was outraged by this. "How can we give our daughters confidence in their bodies if we can't even name the parts of their body?" she said. "When my daughter had a diaper rash, I would say, 'Is your labia sore?' or 'Do you want some cream on your vulva?' I didn't say, 'Does your hee-ha hurt?'
"We are so afraid of saying the wrong thing." she continued.... "To me this is about language: Nose. Lamp. Chair. Nipple. We don't change the name of people's ears, their scalp, their fingernails. Why change their genitalia?"
Don't laugh or giggle, even if the question is cute. Your child shouldn't be made to feel ashamed for her curiosity.
Be brief. Your four-year-old doesn't need to know the details of intercourse.
See if your child wants or needs to know more. Follow up with, "Does that answer your question?"
McFadden said these responses told her that it's important to start talking about menstruation when girls are in their latency period, around seven or eight. "We do it backward," she said. "We wait until they're teenagers, when they withdraw from us, then we try to talk to them. If you start when they're younger, they're still sponges and happy to learn."
"The things to understand," Brady said, "is it's no longer 'The Talk." It's a series of talks. It's a conversation. There's one when you're one age, another when you're older. You have to get over this idea it's one and you're done. When you're a kid, this stuff comes up every day!"
First periods are often accompanied by ignorance, crying, trauma, they said. But they also mentioned something I'd never heard before : jubilation. That's what McFadden had told me is how successful families handle this.
"I was incredibly excited," Brady said. "My mother had promised I could get my ears pierced. She took me out to dinner with my great-aunt to this fancy restaurant. I got a cappuccino...."
A study in England found that men who have three or more orgasms a week are 50 percent less likely to die from heart disease. Researchers in Australia discovered that frequent ejaculation reduces the risk of prostate cancer. And scientists in Belfast tracked a thousand middle-aged men for a decade, and those who reported the highest frequency of orgasm enjoyed a death rate half that of the laggards. Unzip, men, your life depends on it!
In an elegant study, behavioral scientist Robyn Dawes examined marital satisfaction and devised a simple, undeniable formula: Marital happiness = the frequency of lovemaking - the frequency of quarreling.
.... tip sheet for sex in long-term relationships.
Where: Curse the bed. It has failure written all over it. Find other surfaces in the house.
When: Break the tyranny of 11:00 P.M.
Be spontaneous. Cancel lunch with a friend and meet in the middle of the day. Wake up early before the kids get up. Anything that feels a little transgressive.
Talk Dirty. Set up private e-mail accounts where you can send each other secret messages.
Have sex with the lights on or with your eyes open. Try to see "behind the eyes" of your partner.
Be selfish. First take care of yourself, then take care of your partner.
Moan. Researchers have highlighted the importance of "female copulatory vocalization."
The biggest single risk factor for divorce is getting married before you turn twenty-four; the biggest predictor of marital success is graduating from college. In her book For Better, Tara Parker-Pope showed that the ten-year divorce rate for female college graduates married in the 1990s was a mere 16 percent.
Dr. Chapman calls these different styles of expressing and receiving affection "the five love languages."
Words of affirmation. Using compliments and expressions of appreciation, like "You are the best husband in the world" or "I admire your optimism."
Gifts. Bringing flowers, leaving love notes, or buying tokens of affection.
Acts of service. Doing something for your partner you know he or she would like you to do, like washing dishes, walking the dog, or changing diapers.
Quality time. Giving your partner your undivided attention by turning off the television, sharing a meal, or taking a walk.
Physical touch. Holding hands, putting your arm around your partner, or tussling your partner's hair.
What matters is the number of friends you have in your religious community. Ten is the magic number; if you have that many, you'll be happier. Religious people, in other words, are happier because they feel connected to a community of like-minded people.
First, joy. Shelly Gable, of the University of California, has highlighted the importance of taking joy in your partner's success.
Second, forgiveness. "In human relationships, none of us is perfect," Dr. Chapman said. "We all hurt people we love the most from time to time. And if we don't deal with that, it's a barrier between us and the other person."
From the home to the workplace, scholars have shown that apologies deepen empathy, stabilize crises, and improve long-lasting relationships.
One of them "takes the fight out of the night," he said... "I guarantee it will change your life forever. Honey, what you're saying makes a lot of sense. You say that, you are no longer her enemy. You are her friend who understands her."
Perhaps the signature statement of this worldview came from English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who in 1651 wrote that life in its natural state was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
So what are these grandmothers actually doing? They're teaching children core social skills like how to cooperate, how to be compassionate, how to be considerate... When grandparents are involved, the study found, the children are more social, more involved in school, and more likely to show concern for others. Also, as lead scientist Jeremey Yorgason said, parents take the lead in disciplining negative behavior, leaving grandparents free to encourage positive behaviors.
"There's a lot of research that predicts how well teenagers do if there's an adult in their life, aside from their parents, who is crazy about them," she said. "I think questions like 'Did you do your homework?' 'Did you get a report card?' 'Are you being responsible?' help to show you care."
Nearly half of all nagging involves chores and errands, she found; a quarter involves asking someone to do (or not do) something; the others involve requests to contact someone. Women accounted for two-thirds of all nags.
As soon as we hear something critical, our brain is designed to do something. We either fight back or flee. "But that's exactly the wrong thing to do with your mother-in-law," he said.
If, like our girls, your kids sleep together in one room, you can use area rugs, individual reading lamps, or personalized pillows to give each kid control over their own half.
Whether you're confronting your sibling about her addiction, trying to help your spouse get over a bad day, or soothing an adolescent through a breakup, atmospherics matter. The lower the light, the more loving the conversation is likely to be.
Gosling says people place photos around the house for what he calls "social snacking," bite-size encounters that soften the pain of separation. Eighty-five percent of adults have photographs of loved ones on their desks, in their wallets, or on their cell phones.
Games make us happy because we work towards goals. By mastering obstacles, we feel a sense of accomplishment. With that success, our bodies release a wave of chemicals, from adrenaline to dopamine, that makes us feel exhilarated and resilient. The effects are even more powerful when we play those games in groups. By achieving goals with others, our bodies generate additional chemicals, including oxytocin, the so-called cuddle drug, that deepen our connection to those we're playing with.
Far more important to the success of your trip, or any other aspect of family life, is to worry less about eliminating the negatives and focus more on maximizing the positives. One easy way to do that: put away your phone, get down on your kids' level, and play.
Sports is a relatively new phenomenon for families to deal with. Until the late 1800s, religion was the dominant force in most children's lives and working alongside parents was the main activity. Team sports really began with the rise of industrial society as an attempt to provide organized recreation to an increasingly urbanized population. Teddy Roosevelt, a childhood asthmatic who found meaning in boxing, pushed sports as a way for boys to avoid becoming "sissies," a term coined at the time to reflect the fear that city life was making boys weak. Roosevelt's support of athletics was followed by the growth of playgrounds, phys ed, the YMCA, and Little League, as well as the modern Olympic Games. Sports was becoming a central part of childhood.
The National Alliance for Youth Sports reports that 15 percent of games involve a confrontation between parents and coaches, parents and officials, or parents and other parents.
A study of thirteen-year-old skiers found that athletes who feared their parents' "disappointment or disapproval" performed worse in competition, while those who saw their parents as "supportive and positive" performed better.
Parents have to know they are not a talent scout. If you're driving their preadolescent kid to excel in a particular sport, odds are that kid will drop out before they even have the chances to get good. The most important thing for children under twelve is to enjoy the game. Nothing more.
I asked, "So what should parents do?"
"Shut up and cheer!" they said in unison.
Thompson divided his recommendations into three phases: before the game, during, and after it's over.
Before the Game
Be driven, don't drive. Don't push sports on your kid; wait for them to push you. As Thompson summed it up, "It's hard for a child to be driven when he's been driven all the time by his parents."
During the Game
No verbs. "Our advice is to cheer, but don't give directions," Thompson said. "You can say 'good pass,' but you can't say 'pass it to her.' You can say 'nice shot,' but you can't say 'shoot.'"
After the Game
Thompson's way of expressing this is "No PGA. No postgame analysis." Ask you child for three things they remember about the game, then tell them three things you remember. If your kid mentions something negative, respond with what Thompson calls a You're the kind of person who statement.
ESPN's headquarters are located on a former garbage dump in a backwoods Connecticut town that used to be known as "Mum City" because it was a leader in chrysanthemum production. Today it's the epicenter of American sports, a Hogwarts for guys. Half of all Americans age twelve to sixty-four spend time on an ESPN platform every week, including two-thirds of men ages eighteen to thirty-four, who spend an average of one hour a day. "Oprah is to women as ESPN is to men," Tom Shales, the Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic, told me.
Josh Elliot, an anchor, believes that in many families sports provide a common language between generations.
"People wonder why guys in the military have such a strong bond," McCarthy told me earlier. "It's because they suffer together, and they do things as a group they could never do as individuals.
Goruck is part of the booming business of extreme bonding recreational activities that include other races with names like Tough Mudder, Muddy Buddy, Beach Palooze, and Warrior Dash. Collectively, these companies bring in more than $250 million a year.
My dear children, I cannot leave you each a fortune in dollars and cents. If you love me and revere my memory, give heed to the following advice: Love one another. Be forgiving one toward another. Bear with each other's shortcomings. Be always willing to give way or meet the other [person] more than halfway. Be kind and courteous to outsiders. Make you each a copy of this last advice and read it once a year.—H.F. Mellenbruch, Fairview, Kansas
That is perhaps the biggest lesson for all of us in real families. Conflict happens every day. Mishaps occur. But the microgesture of reconciliation—the hug, the pat on the back, the little object laid out on the bed, or the note tucked into the bag—goes a long way.
The big takeaway from all this research: We are not individuals forced to live against our will in groups. We are inherently social beings. Our lives are shaped by our ability to cooperate and coexist with those around us. We function most effectively in teams, networks, or groups.
The best way to keep up with the ever-changing nature of our times, he said, is to follow what he called "perhaps the only surefire winning formula for success": S.A.V., or screw around vigorously.
Talk. A Lot
Most healthy families talk a lot. From mealtime to long car rides, from disputes between spouses to showdowns among siblings, from money to sex, a key ingredient of successful families is the ability to communicate effectively. As the girls on the Connecticut swim team told me regarding the birds and the bees, "It's no longer 'The Talk.' It's a series of talks. It's a conversation." The credo could apply to nearly every aspect of family life.
Duke showed that the more children know about their parents and grandparents, especially their successes and failures, the more they are able to overcome setbacks. The navy, I learned, uses a similar technique of connecting newcomers with the storied lives of their predecessors.
Jonathan Haidt summed up the importance of storytelling in The Happiness Hypothesis. Feeling good about yourself involves stitching experiences into a forward-moving, hopeful narrative.
Simply put, if you want a happier family, spend time crafting, refining, and retelling the story of your family's positive moments and your ability to bounce back from the difficult ones.
Go Out and Play
Finally, don't just make adjustments and tell stories. Make fun.
Playing games. Taking vacations. Having get-togethers. Inventing goofy traditions. Cooking. Swimming. Hiking. Singing Dad's favorite song that makes everyone's eye roll..."Happiness consists in activity," ...
In the notebooks he kept for War and Peace and Anna Karenina, he [Tolstoy] referenced several times a French proverb, "Happy people have no history." That notion, that happy people don't have a story and unhappy people do, became the inspiration for the opening line of Anna Karenina: "All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy its own way."
What's the secret to being a happy family? Try.
For more… find it at Amazon.