Divergent Realities: The Emotional Lives Of Mothers, Fathers, And AdolescentsFamily dysfunction has been blamed on many causes - the absence of fathers, mothers working outside the home, lack of money or social supports. But, argue the authors of this original and provocative book, it is often presence rather than absence that lies at the heart of troubled families. In fact, they show that it is common for family members to be in the same room and yet be oblivious to each other's thoughts and feelings. Family life breaks down because members experience the same event in different ways and are unable to bridge the gap. How can adolescents and well-meaning parents be so out of touch? What are the daily sources of conflict between husbands and wives? What windows of opportunity does contemporary life provide for family members to talk with and appreciate each other? To answer these questions, the authors used the unique Experience Sampling Method. Fathers, mothers, and adolescents carried electronic pagers for a week and provided reports on their activities and emotions at random times when signaled by the researchers. Already employed to great effect in studying individuals (the method served as the basis for Larson and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book Being Adolescent and the latter's Flow), this is the first time this technique has been used to uncover the dynamics of family life. The result is an unprecedented study revealing the hour-by-hour emotional realities lived by families in middle America: the daily clash between fathers, who experience their family life as a refuge, and working mothers, who arrive home each evening to a six o'clock "crash"; between the world of young adolescents, whose emotions can be perilously out of check, and their parents, whoselives focus on emotional equilibrium. The authors demonstrate that these and many other divergent realities provide a breeding ground for dysfunctional family processes, and they discuss creative ways for families to surmount the emotional hazards of everyday life. |
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Page 7
... able to get through the challenges of contemporary life with minimal tension and conflict . We believe they are able to do so by exercising a special wisdom that lies beyond traditional injunctions to love , trust , and honor each other ...
... able to get through the challenges of contemporary life with minimal tension and conflict . We believe they are able to do so by exercising a special wisdom that lies beyond traditional injunctions to love , trust , and honor each other ...
Page 215
... able to respond to members ' emotions without letting one person's emotions dic- tate or dominate another's , as was demonstrated one evening at the Schaaks ' . Events on this evening began much like other conflagrations we have seen ...
... able to respond to members ' emotions without letting one person's emotions dic- tate or dominate another's , as was demonstrated one evening at the Schaaks ' . Events on this evening began much like other conflagrations we have seen ...
Page 219
... able to relax traditional authority structures and find islands of time when they could interact as equals . What , then , is quality family time ? To define it by any rigid criteria would be mistaken . The activities , topics of ...
... able to relax traditional authority structures and find islands of time when they could interact as equals . What , then , is quality family time ? To define it by any rigid criteria would be mistaken . The activities , topics of ...
Contents
A BREW OF EMOTIONS | 1 |
CYCLES OF WORK AND LEISURE | 17 |
INTERWEAVING WORK AND RELATIONSHIPS | 49 |
Copyright | |
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active recreation adoles adolescent's Andrew Collins anger angry Anne appendix arena of comfort average emotion beeped beeper behavior boys conflict correlated couples Csikszentmihalyi Cyndi Lauper daily daughter depression Developmental Psychology distress early adolescence effect emotionally employed women experience family members family's fathers felt friends girls Glenna grade happy healthier families household housework husbands husbands and wives interac interactions irritable Journal kids Larson leisure less lives marital marriage men's Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi mothers and adolescents Murray Bowen needs negative emotion Newbury Park pager parents pattern percent versus Pleck positive emotion positive moods Psychology puberty realities Reed Larson relationship reported feeling Richards rience role Roxanne sample Selman shared social spend spent spouse stress study reported suggest talking teenagers teens tion two-parent unhappy United Media warmth watching TV week well-being Wendy Wendy's wife wives young adolescents Z-Score