Empty Nest Research / Bridezilla Myth / Anit-Love Drug - 1/20/09

[Smartmarriages]

- RELATIONSHIP HAPPINESS: THE EMPTY NEST
- BRIDEZILLA MYTH MUST BE STOPPED
- ANTI-LOVE DRUG MAY BE TICKET TO BLISS

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- RELATIONSHIP HAPPINESS: THE EMPTY NEST

As Norval Glenn has been telling us for years, here is another study that
confirms that marital happiness increases after the kids leave home.  As the
study says, it's important to understand WHY ­ why it decreases after the
kids arrive and why it increases after they're gone.  After all, we know
that we love having kids, love our kids, and love being parents - can't
imagine life without them. And, think how hard people fight for custody and
equal visitation if there's a divorce.  We need to understand WHY and help
couples *get smart* and apply the lessons while there are still kids on
board.  It's our job as marriage educators to translate these findings and
spread the word on how to apply the lessons of this research as divorce
prevention.  It's NOT that empty nest couples spend more time with each
other, but that the quality of that time is different - fewer interruptions,
less stress.  Couples with kids MUST carve out more stress-free time
together, just as the PREP program has been telling us for years - you can't
use your weekly dates to discuss the credit card bills or Jason's report
card or study habits.  And so on.    - diane

January 20, 2009
The New York Times 
Your Nest Is Empty? Enjoy Each Other
By TARA PARKER-POPE

The empty nest may not be such an unhappy place after all.

Since the 1970s, relationship experts have popularized the notion of ³empty
nest syndrome,² a time of depression and loss of purpose that plagues
parents, especially mothers, when their children leave home. Dozens of Web
sites and books have been created to help parents weather the transition.
Simon & Schuster has even introduced a ³Chicken Soup for the Soul² dedicated
to empty nesters.

But a growing body of research suggests that the phenomenon has been
misunderstood. While most parents clearly miss children who have left home
for college, jobs or marriage, they also enjoy the greater freedom and
relaxed responsibility.

And despite the common worry that long-married couples will find themselves
with nothing in common, the new research, published in November in the
journal Psychological Science, shows that marital satisfaction actually
improves when the children finally take their exits.

³It¹s not like their lives were miserable,² said Sara Melissa Gorchoff, a
specialist in adult relationships at the University of California, Berkeley.
³Parents were happy with their kids. It¹s just that their marriages got
better when they left home.²

While that may not be surprising to many parents, understanding why empty
nesters have better relationships can offer important lessons on marital
happiness for parents who are still years away from having a child-free
house.

Indeed, one of the more uncomfortable findings of the scientific study of
marriage is the negative effect children can have on previously happy
relationships. Despite the popular notion that children bring couples
closer, several studies have shown that marital satisfaction and happiness
typically plummet with the arrival of the first baby.

In June, The Journal of Advanced Nursing reported on a study from the
University of Nebraska College of Nursing that looked at marital happiness
in 185 men and women. Scores declined starting in pregnancy, and remained
lower as the children reached 5 months and 24 months. Other studies show
that couples with two children score even lower than couples with one child.

While having a child clearly makes parents happy, the financial and time
constraints can add stress to a relationship. After the birth of a child,
couples have only about one-third the time alone together as they had when
they were childless, according to researchers from Ohio State.

The arrival of children also puts a disproportionate burden of household
duties on women, a common source of marital conflict. After children,
housework increases three times as much for women as for men, according to
studies from the Center on Population, Gender and Social Equality at the
University of Maryland.

But much of the research on children and marital happiness focuses on the
early years. To understand the effects over time, researchers at Berkeley
tracked marital happiness among 72 women in the Mills Longitudinal Study,
which has followed a group of Mills College alumnae for 50 years.

The study is important because it tracks the first generation of women to
juggle traditional family responsibilities with jobs in the work force. In
the empty-nest study, researchers compared the women¹s marital happiness in
their 40s, when many still had children at home; in their early 50s, when
some had older children who had left home; and in their 60s, when virtually
all had empty nests. At every point, the empty nesters scored higher on
marital happiness than women with children still at home. The finding
mirrors that of a report presented last year at the American Psychological
Association, tracking a dozen parents who were interviewed at the time of a
child¹s high school graduation and 10 years later. That small study also
showed that a majority of parents scored higher on marital satisfaction
after children had left home.

While the Berkeley researchers had hypothesized that the improvement in
marital happiness came from couples¹ spending more time together, the women
in the same study reported spending just as much time with their partners
whether the children were living at home or had moved out. But they said the
quality of that time was better.

³There are fewer interruptions and less stress when kids are out of the
house,² said Dr. Gorchoff, at Berkeley. ³It wasn¹t that they spent more time
with each other after the children moved out. It¹s the quality of time they
spent with each other that improved.²

She notes that the lesson from the empty nest may be that parents need to
work to carve out more stress-free time together. In the sample studied, it
was only relationship satisfaction that improved when children left home.
Over all, parents were just as happy with children at home as in the empty
nest. (What happens when adult children move back home, their job prospects
having evaporated in a brutal economy, has not been extensively studied.)

³Kids aren¹t ruining parents¹ lives,² Dr. Gorchoff said. ³It¹s just that
they¹re making it more difficult to have enjoyable interactions together.²

For the full article:
http://tinyurl.com/9yt3yd

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- BRIDEZILLA MYTH MUST BE STOPPED

Bridezilla' myth, like in 'Bride Wars' must be stopped
Chicago Tribune
January 13, 2009 
http://tinyurl.com/7qyjro

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 - ANTI-LOVE DRUG MAY BE TICKET TO BLISS

The New York Times
January 13, 2009
Findings
Anti-Love Drug May Be Ticket to Bliss
By JOHN TIERNEY

In the new issue of Nature, the neuroscientist Larry Young offers a grand
unified theory of love. After analyzing the brain chemistry of mammalian
pair bonding ‹ and, not incidentally, explaining humans¹ peculiar erotic
fascination with breasts ‹ Dr. Young predicts that it won¹t be long before
an unscrupulous suitor could sneak a pharmaceutical love potion into your
drink.

That¹s the bad news. The not-so-bad news is that you may enjoy this potion
if you took it knowingly with the right person. But the really good news, as
I see it, is that we might reverse-engineer an anti-love potion, a vaccine
preventing you from making an infatuated ass of yourself. Although this love
vaccine isn¹t mentioned in Dr. Young¹s essay, when I raised the prospect he
agreed it could also be in the offing.

Could any discovery be more welcome? This is what humans have sought ever
since Odysseus ordered his crew to tie him to the mast while sailing past
the Sirens. Long before scientists identified neuroreceptors, long before
Britney Spears¹ quickie Vegas wedding or any of Larry King¹s seven
marriages, it was clear that love was a dangerous disease. . . .

. . . .Although Dr. Young is not concocting any love potions (he¹s looking
for drugs to improve the social skills of people with autism and
schizophrenia), he said there could soon be drugs that increase people¹s
urge to fall in love.

³It would be completely unethical to give the drug to someone else,² he
said, ³but if you¹re in a marriage and want to maintain that relationship,
you might take a little booster shot yourself every now and then. Even now
it¹s not such a far-out possibility that you could use drugs in conjunction
with marital therapy.²

I see some potential here, but also big problems. Suppose you took that
potion and then suddenly felt an urge to run off with the next person you
spent any time with, like your dentist? What if you went to a business
convention and then, like an artificially stimulated prairie vole, bonded
with the nearest stranger? What if, like Tristan, you developed an
overwhelming emotional connection to your boss¹s spouse?

Even if the effects could somehow be targeted to the right partner, would
you want to start building a long-term relationship with a short-term drug?
What happens when it wears off?

A love vaccine seems simpler and more practical, and already there are some
drugs that seem to inhibit people¹s romantic impulses (see TierneyLab, at
www.nytimes.com/tierneylab). Such a vaccine has already been demonstrated in
prairie voles.

For the full article: http://tinyurl.com/7lz9wh

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