The Myth of the "Normal" Family - effect of family structure on children

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Jan, 2001 by Louise B. Silverstein, Carl F. Auerbach

"Rather than trying to find the `one right way,' parents need to be flexible and creative in finding strategies that work for their particular family."

OUR CULTURAL MYTHOLOGY about parenting is that there is "one right way" to raise children. Most people believe that the best way to raise children is with both a stay-at-home mother (at least while the kids are young) and a breadwinner father in a long-term marriage that lasts "till death do us part." We have been told that any family that is different from this norm shortchanges youngsters.

This point of view has become known as the family values perspective. However, the majority of families do not fit this model. Most mothers have to, or want to, be part of the paid workforce; about half of all marriages will end in divorce; and many more people than ever before will choose to have children without getting married.

New scientific information has emerged in the last 10 years that contradicts the idea that there is one right way. We now know that children can thrive in many different family forms. The scientific evidence shows conclusively that what is important for them is the quality of the relationships they have with the people who care for them, rather than the number, sex, or marital status of their caregivers.

Nevertheless, perfectly normal families that do not fit into the traditional mold feel abnormal and berate themselves for providing their offspring with an inferior version of family life. For these parents, trying to conform to the Myth of the Normal Family often generates guilt, anxiety, power struggles, and other stress.

The Myth of Father Absence maintains that most social problems--like juvenile violence, crime, and teen pregnancy--are caused by the lack of a father. If every child had a father, these social problems would disappear, argue the advocates of this viewpoint.

Susan and John, a middle-class African-American couple, had two boys aged six and 10 when Susan came into therapy asking for help to work out her marital problems. John attended one or two sessions, but then refused to come to therapy. John was a devoted father in terms of spending time with the boys. The marital problems were caused because he was often out of work. He had difficulty getting along with bosses and had recently begun to smoke marijuana.

John was a bright man, but always had difficulty in school. He had graduated from high school with a great deal of tutoring and had gone to junior college briefly. From his description of his struggles in school, he probably had an undiagnosed learning disability. Because these problems had not been understood, John had not gotten the help he needed, and he felt stupid. This sense of inadequacy about his intelligence was probably at the root of his difficulty in getting along with superiors and his retreat into drugs.

Susan, in contrast, had always done well in school. She had become a licensed practical nurse and was going to night school to become a registered nurse. She often worked additional hours on the weekends in a nursing home so that the boys could attend parochial school. She was exhausted from this difficult work schedule and the responsibility for all of the cooking and housework. Her stress was exacerbated by the fact that, in the last year, she was frequently the only breadwinner, as John had been fired from several jobs.

Over the next eight years, John's drug problems became much worse. He began using and selling cocaine. When he was using, he often became physically violent with Susan. Although he continued to share responsibility for child care, John was mostly out of work.

Susan stated that she wanted to leave John, but just could not bring herself to do it. She knew that their fights were frightening to the children and that seeing their father in bad shape was not helpful to them. Still, she could not convince herself to separate from her husband. Despite the fact that she was functioning as both caregiver and breadwinner, she believed that her boys needed their father. She worded that leaving John would mean that she was the stereotypical "black matriarch" who emasculated her man. Most important, she feared that, if John left, the boys would become involved with gangs, drop out of school, and generally get into trouble.

Did it make sense for Susan to stay in a marriage that was not working for her, for John, or for her children? If she did decide to raise the boys on her own, would they really be more likely to get into trouble than if she stayed in a marriage with a husband who was abusing her and cocaine?

The Myth of the Male Role Model is based on the premise that boys have a special need for fathers because only a male role model can teach a boy how to become a man.

Sharon is a physician. She is a very bright, no-nonsense kind of woman who feels more comfortable in the operating room than in a dating situation. She has always liked men and gotten along well with them, but had difficulty establishing and maintaining a romantic relationship. She had one very serious boyfriend in medical school, but they broke up after four years because of his drinking. After that, she had brief affairs with several other doctors throughout internship and residency training, but none of those relationships ever developed. The men she was involved with always ended up marrying nurses or secretaries, never a doctor.