By Rachel Buddeberg 

The Greater Good magazine presented a panel on "The 21st Century Family" at UC Berkeley on October 17th featuring Stephanie Coontz, Philip and Carolyn Cowan, Joshua Coleman, and Jeremy Adam Smith. In his opening remarks, panel moderator Smith pointed out that the current dominant story about families is woven around the rising divorce rate and the decreasing number of traditional families. Combined with social movements and the rise in non-traditional families, these demographic changes lead doomsayers to conclude that the end of marriage is near. The panelists demonstrated that this view is missing reality: marriage and the family are changing. Smith asked the panelists to discuss what trade-offs are involved with these changes in families.

Stephanie Coontz, a marriage historian, argued that an interpersonal revolution has occurred over the past 35 years. Evolving gender and parental roles and new inter-generational and work-life balance expectations have resulted in new family terrain: We are forging new paths toward new horizons, always anxious about making wrong turns. The revolution was initiated by changes in the role of marriage. For thousands of years, marriage was simply a financial arrangement made by parents and the state. Only about 150 years ago, the idea that marital partners should love and respect each other started to influence marriages. The most dramatic changes in marriage occurred in the last 30 years after illegitimacy was no longer institutionalized. Together with the abandonment of states' need to define "marital duties," in the 1980s, this created the structural conditions that enabled the changed roles. Social policy is still out of synch with these changes. One of the most dramatic consequences is that children lost access to community support and their economic dependence on their parents has been extended well into their 20s and 30s. Consequently, parents spend more time and money on children. Parents need to prepare kids to succeed in an economic environment in which 20% of the population earns 50% of the income - an unprecedented proportion. Coontz ended her talk emphasizing that we need to help people understand the problems we face as families lie in the social situation rather than with individuals.

Philip Cowan, head of the Schoolchildren and Their Families Project at UC Berkeley, presented the implications of the changes outlined by Coontz together with his wife Carolyn. Today's families face an environment in which values and expectations are changing but there are no new role models and little, if any, government support. Fathers are more involved in the family and couples are more egalitarian.  Parents still come home tired after a long work-day and use their evenings to spend quality time with the children. There is no time left for themselves or for their relationship. Philip Cowan argues that the parent’s relationship is equally important as the relationship with their children. Consequently we need to look at the personal distress created by the new roles and increase community involvement in raising children.

Carolyn Cowan presented findings from three research studies regarding stabilizing families. She emphasized that family development models tend to focus on the children's development without addressing the couple relationship. The studies incorporated couples’ groups that were designed to help couples become the parents and partners they want to be. The first study looked at couples in the last three months of pregnancy and the first three months after the birth of the first child. The second study worked with parents whose children were transitioning to elementary school. The third project extended these studies to low income families, also studying the impact on child abuse. The goal was to foster positive father involvement with their children. The hypothesis was that father involvement decreased over time because of increasing distance between the parents. In all three studies, marital satisfaction remained stable amongst couples in the groups, even several years after the couples’ groups ended, whereas control groups’ satisfaction declined. Cowan concluded that when parents get help with issues they are facing, we end up with stronger couples, better parents, and successful children.

The final speaker was Joshua Coleman, a counselor in private practice. He argued that these are exciting and tough times: We can tailor relationships to our needs and develop them based on our personal preferences, however, this is very difficult and there are no guidelines. Coleman found that successful couples have a relationship among equals: Each partner is devoted 100% to their own and their partner's well-being. Successful couples also have the capacity to express empathy and realize that each family member faces a separate reality, interpreted from our own perspective and baggage. Successful couples are aware of the effects of the family of origin on their relationship and they have regular date nights. Coleman then emphasized recent changes in parenting attitudes. He states that we used to think of children as tough and describes the current attitude as "hot-house parenting," in which children who are perceived as fragile and needy are attended to. At the same time, though, our expectations of children have changed. The autocratic parent expected respect and fear. Today's democratic parents expect love and admiration from children who are viewed as individuals. Thus, who is in charge in the family has become less defined and more of a gray area. 

Rachel A. Buddeberg lives happily single in the Bay area where she’s exploring opportunities to change careers so that she can help eliminate singlism.