SHAPING YOUR FAMILY’S FUTURE


3 • MAKING A MARRIAGE


A study from the University of Texas at Austin found that when it comes to assessing their parents’ marriage, adults tend to fall into one of three categories:


SECURE ADULTS are able to offer a balanced, believable assessment of their parents’ marriage.


DISMISSING ADULTS tend to minimize or discount the negative effects of childhood


experiences, either by saying they can’t recall some childhood events or by idealizing their parents.


PREOCCUPIED ADULTS are unable or unwilling to talk about negative childhood experiences and instead change the subject or talk about their family of origin in vague generalities.


Researchers used these categories to assess the effects of having children on couples’ marriages. They found that both dismissing adults and preoccupied adults paid less attention to their marriages once they became parents. The dismissing adults seemed to continue to deny the importance of childhood experiences and often denied problems in their own marriages as well. The preoccupied adults, on the other hand, initially put more work into their


marriages once children arrived. These couples reportedly feared that their relationship would suffer. Behind the scenes, it became apparent that unresolved issues from their childhood really drove the preoccupied adults to this extra effort. Eventually the preoccupied adults decreased the amount of work they put into their marriages because the work didn’t accomplish the goal of relieving their fears. For more about this, click the button to listen to Mark's story. As you have probably guessed, the secure adults fared best in this


study, though not for the reasons you might expect. The secure adults didn’t necessarily all have ideal childhoods or positive models of marriage. In fact, the study found that the key to making a relatively smooth transition to parenting was for the adults involved to have a realistic understanding of their parents’ marriage, regardless of how good or bad that marriage was. For more about this, click the button to listen to Shanti's story.


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Listen to Mark’s story


Listen to Shanti's story


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