Jan/Feb 2008

the Zen of Science

Functional family?
Read no further.

By MARC RINGEL, MD

And you’re still reading. As is nearly everyone who turned to this article. Are you from a functional family? Are your children? Do you know anyone whose family is completely functional? Do we even know what it means?

I can trace strains of dysfunction through four generations of my wife’s and my families, ranging from outright paranoia through alcoholism, depression and mild compulsive tendencies. Every bit of craziness has had its effect within and across generations, most directly, of course, on members of each immediate family.

You may remember “Bradshaw on the Family,” an excellent public television series featuring John Bradshaw, a psychology lecturer. The opening credits were backed by a video of a mobile that dangled silhouettes of people of all ages. That image made the obvious point that if you perturb any one member of a family unit everybody else is affected. Even when one person has the good fortune to be lifted into a higher orbit, the system must stabilize at a new equilibrium, which sometimes throws other family members into uncomfortable new emotional spaces.

My wife and I have done a pretty good job as parents, I think. Certainly, we’ve avoided some of the errors that our own parents made. We’ve gone by the maxim that it’s generally better to be the sort of parent you wish you’d had, rather than to be the parent you think you ought to be. If I’d been the parent I thought I should have been, I’d have been too strict, based on the image of child rearing that I brought to adulthood from my family of origin. Thanks to the influence of my wife, I was much more the easygoing father I wished I’d had. Nevertheless, my spouse and I are finding out now, at the hands of our adult children, where we messed up in raising them. It hurts.

What’s a parent to do? Keep on doing your best and don’t take it personally. As another wise friend with adult children told me, “When my kids complain about my parenting, I explain that they didn’t come with instructions.” I’m still working on the not taking it personally part.

There is nothing so precious to me as my family. I daresay most parents and most children (except during their teenage years) would declare the same. Study after study has shown that children from intact, loving families have a better shot at happiness as adults, that their children will have happier children, and so on all the way to the horizon. That’s why we owe it, not just to ourselves, but to the generations that will follow us, to be as mentally healthy as we can be.

The work, Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, by Austrian psychoanalyst, Alice Miller, is one of the most important books I’ve ever read. Miller illustrates how the hurts that are inflicted on children by their parents get transformed in adulthood into their own dysfunctional parenting style. Children raised in hopes of fulfilling their parents’ emotional needs grow up to be emotionally needy parents who now mould their own kids to take care of them. And so it goes, generation after generation. Miller’s book For Your Own Good - an examination of trans-generational transmission of dysfunction from a societal point of view - is also well worth reading. She takes on the heavily paternalistic traditional Germanic family, drawing strong connections between that style of child rearing and susceptibility to fascist politics.

I once wrote a newspaper column about family function in which I announced I was going to choose my kids’ spouses. I explained that neither money nor class would be a decisive factor (nor, of course, would looks). The relationship between a prospective spouse’s parents would be the number-one criterion. My theory was that a young person who comes from a family where Mom and Dad enjoy a good relationship would have a nice mental picture of a happy marriage (or long-term committed relationship) to bring to his or her relationship with my precious child.

That piece enraged one of my friends. At the time, she was in an unhappy marriage and incensed at the thought that I might forbid my teenagers from marrying her teenagers. Though neither of us had the slightest chance of influencing our children’s choices of partners, it was the principle that mattered to my friend.

I’m ready, a decade and a half after I wrote it, to take back what I said. Not that it isn’t true - it’s just that it doesn’t matter, not in this society. Since free choice is likely to be the case for as far into the future as we can see, the best we can do to foster our kids’ long-term happiness is to teach them by example how to live well with the partners they select. It’s back to the concept that a good marriage between parents provides a useful model for the children when they grow up and pair up.

Another important book, Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix, grapples with the issue of living well with one’s choice of spouse. Hendrix says we tend to choose for life partners people who will allow us to replay the powerful scenes of our childhood. Agonizing though it may be, we settle for living out hurtful but familiar dramas rather than pressing on into the strange and unfamiliar land of function and clear communication. If we ever recognize that we’re doing this dysfunctional dance, it’s often not until we’re years into an unhappy relationship. Whenever that realization does come, awareness is the first step toward healing.

Hendrix goes on to say the reasons we choose a mate - and the agonies to which marriage subjects us - are precisely what make marriage the best chance most of us have to attain true happiness. By forcing us to replay the dramas of our families of origin, matrimony can provide the opportunity to redirect the deeply ingrained knee-jerk emotional reactions that have brought us misery our whole lives, clearing the way for a truly loving, committed relationship. Meditative practice, because of the multiplier effect it has on consciousness and compassion, is a great enhancer in the process of emotional healing, Hendrix says.

I’ll bet you’re wondering why I chose this particular moment to write all this stuff about families and dysfunction and marriage and children. I’m not telling. Let me just say that right now I’m challenged, changing and, on balance, happy. I know my wife loves me, and I’m pretty sure most of the time that my kids do too. That’s not bad for a fellow who’ll never get an invitation to the Children of Functional Families Convention.

Marc Ringel, MD, is a family practitioner and writer based in Greeley, Colorado.