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. |
What people are saying - Write a review
DIVERGENT REALITIES: The Emotional Lives of Mothers, Fathers, and Adolescents
User Review - KirkusA soundly researched and lucidly written survey of the daily emotional experience of mothers, fathers, and adolescents in 55 European-American working- and middle-class families. The book is based on ... Read full review
Divergent realities: the emotional lives of mothers, fathers, and adolescents
User Review - Not Available - Book VerdictThis book emerged from a study in which triads of mothers, fathers, and young adolescents (ages 10-14) from suburban white families were provided with beepers that rang at random times throughout the ... Read full review
Contents
A BREW OF EMOTIONS | 1 |
CYCLES OF WORK AND LEISURE | 17 |
INTERWEAVING WORK AND RELATIONSHIPS | 47 |
Copyright | |
9 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
active recreation adoles adolescent's anger angry appendix arena of comfort average emotion beeped beeper behavior Betty Friedan boys chapter child chores conflict correlated couples Cyndi Lauper daily daugh daughter depression Developmental Psychology distress effect emotionally employed women experience family members family's fathers reported felt friends full-time homemakers girls Glenna grade greater happy healthier families home sphere household housework husbands husbands and wives interac interactions irritable kids labor Larson less lives marital marriage men's Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi mothers and adolescents needs negative emotion pager parents pattern peers percent versus Pleck positive emotion positive moods puberty realities Reed Larson relationship reported feeling rience role Roxanne sample Selman shared social spend spent spouse stress study reported suggest talk teenagers teens things tion two-parent unhappy warm warmth watching TV week well-being Wendy Wendy's wife wives young adolescents z-score