Too Close?

Remember when you were a teenager and your parents meddled in your crap? Maybe they still do. Maybe you're the parent who does the meddling. Either way, as teenagers we were adamant that we could do it all on our own, and the parental involvement was a little too close for comfort. So can there be a too close? Is there such a thing as too much involvement?

The answer is no... and yes. As far as being involved in children's lives, studies show us that there can never be too much involvement. Close families are good, and when parents are involved in their children's lives, they do better in school, and are less likely to participate in risk-taking behaviors. Awesome right?

Well, where it gets kind of sketchy is in a principle called distance regulation. Families can be placed on a two different spectrums - one of cohesion (closeness), and one of adaptability. While the principle of too much cohesion sounds like an ideal, it has its break downs. The cohesion scale can be seen as a scale of "respect of individuality." Being high on the scale, represents a desire for every individual to conform to a certain standard, low on the scale represents a lack of family identity, or a group of people who come together out of habit or necessity, but contain no family rituals or structure. Adaptability is a similar scale that spans from chaos to rigidity. The detriment in these two factors lies at the extremes. 

Parents should set age appropriate boundaries and limitations for their children - with the emphasis on the age appropriate. As children grow their individual skills and talents should be celebrated and integrated into the family to make it stronger as a whole. Their ability to make choices should also be exercised with careful guidance and support, as letting them rule themselves and providing too much flexibility also has negative impacts. 

While being involved in children's lives is extremely important, along with the creation of family identity, celebrating and nurturing their individual strengths is equally as important for creating socially functioning individuals. 

Kids of Divorced Parents

Some social scientists call our generation the "Divorce Echo." As Americans, not one of us can say that we don't know anyone who has ever been divorced, or whose parent's were divorced. Because of the boom of divorces in the 80's, we've grown up seeing it all around us. And the chances that you, the reader of this article's parents have been divorced, are pretty high. But what does that say for your future? For your marriage potential? Or your relationship success? You've probably heard that children of divorced parents are fighting and uphill battle when it comes to marriage, they're twice as likely to divorce as people with intact families. 

What these rumors boil down to are bad statistics. Originally when all of this data was published, we did see that, on average, these kids were having less success in marriages. However, when we had a second to think about it we thought "That's not right." Sure enough, when we went back to look at it, we had what was called a bimodal distribution. Let me show you.

So what we have here is a two humped camel. I should note that this is not the data regarding marital success of children of divorced parents. I stole this from Google Images and therefore have no idea what data set this represents. However, it is a great representation for proving my point. If you look in the middle there you'll see two words "median" and "mean." Think back to 7th grade math and somewhere in the recesses of your mind you may remember than median simply means "middle" and mean is another word of "average." So! With a bimodal distribution you actually have two averages, but since collected data doesn't actually look like that there graph and actually looks more like this 

It's hard to tell what's going on sometimes. Anyway, back to the point. Since we have two averages, it means we have two major groups: one with really low risk of divorce, and one with really high risk of divorce. But when we average them, we get this really low number like the mean in our bimodal distribution above, which causes some problems. 

So what this means for children with divorced parent is that they have a choice. The high risk group are individuals who have decided that there is no other option. They have chosen to become a statistic. The low risk group on the other hand, saw their parents' marriage and decided that they wanted better, and their marriages have either been comparable in quality to those who came from intact families, or in a lot of cases, even exceeded them. 

I love this study because it shows us that we can choose our destiny. Statistics give us a great understanding of behaviors that increase or decrease our chances of an outcome and then have the opportunity to use the gift of choice to determine our own fate. 

Is religion harmful for our children?

In today's society we are more prone to moral relativism than we are to see behaviors as "right" and "wrong." We're generally willing to admit as parents that we want our children to have some type of moral code - no one wants their 16 year old having sex, stealing or doing drugs - but more often than not, it's nor related to religious conviction. This is a change from 60 years ago. We now see a shift in perspective where individuals see religion as restrictive, and even damaging. Many believe that those with stark religious values rebel more frequently and more drastically than those that were raised without it.

When we look at the research we find that while there is some truth to this, it's really found in only extreme cases. For the most part, we find that families who participate regularly in religious services, and utilize this as a unifying element of their family unit, reap some pretty great benefits. However, the trend that we do see is the difference between proclaiming or affiliating with a religion, and devotion and worship to a religion. 

Adolescents who are actively involved in a religious community (attending weekly meetings, and other activities during the week) exhibit better academic performance and prosocial behaviors, along with lower elves of sexual activity and drug and alcohol use. The National Study of Youth and Religion (NYSR) followed a group of religiously devoted youth - sampled throughout the country and made up of several different religions - and they found that these adolescents showed the highest quality of parent-child relationships in every area. This means they had higher levels of honesty, acceptance, understanding, feeling loved by and close to their parents, and an overall better relationship. In their findings they concluded that the practice of religion as a family seemed to create a strong connection within the family relationship.

Several studies have also shown that utilizing religion as a coercive or disciplining element in the family, as well as accepting it as a method of exclusion or elitism can have negative effects. In fact, most of the statistics would agree that it's better for children to be without religion, than to have it as a coercive and controlling influence in their lives. However, the data also agrees that as parents focus on their own personal religious behaviors - prayer, study of religious materials and scriptures, etc. - they are more likely to feel close to their children, provide warm and caring support, and set clear and appropriate boundaries and expectations for their children.

Overall, these studies don't espouse one religion, or even Christianity as many of us tend to immediately think when we hear religion. They just show us that ascribing to a method of worship that promotes positive morals and contains a strong sense of community and support, as well as carrying these elements of worship into the home can greatly enrich family life. Just remember that these benefits are only realized when our worship opens ourselves and our families to the service and love of others within and without the family unit.