I just read an article published online yesterday and due to appear in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Family Issues. It reports a new study showing that college students, ages 18 to 21, almost all of them living away from home at a private religious college and a state university, pay a steep price for their parents’ arguments back home. What price? Depression if they feel frightened...
Got alerted to some interesting new research from the University of Illinois today, thanks to HealthDay. Between the ages of 4 1/2 and 6 1/2, your kids are learning to focus and persist at frustrating tasks. If they learn well, school is a lot easier. So is the rest of life, in my experience. Depressed fathers tend to withdraw. If they are depressed when their kids are this age, the kids have a...
Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America just came out. Lots of interesting findings about our ever-increasing average age of first marriage. The central point is the “Great Crossover,” which happened in 2000. Since 1970, the median age at which a woman has her first child has been slowly increasing. (See Figure 9.) I was 18 then and half of all the women the...
Let me tell you what my answer to this question was. I believed it was too much to ask. I was married to a good man and a great father, but I felt angry, overworked, stressed out all the time. It definitely felt like too much to ask. I would do whatever it took to make it easier on our son. I even used my experience with unhappily married parents to convince myself divorce was the better of his...
The wrong way to stay married for the kids. Sleep in separate rooms, keep separate schedules, date other people, stay angry at each other, refer to each other around the kids as “your mother” and “your father.” This is not staying married. It’s just staying. You and your kids deserve better. But divorce is not the only alternative. The right way to stay married for...
