Stable Families Are Rooted in Strong Marriages

Published July 6, 1989. I recently read a short essay by Dr. Harold L. Lief, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He is director of the Division of Family Studies at the university and also directs the Marriage Council of Philadelphia.

Lief believes that in the middle class, at least during this century, when actual physical survival was not its major preoccupation, marriage and the family have had the paradoxically dual capacity of providing a haven from the battery of economic and social storms, and of itself becoming a major stress, creating a crack and possibly an irrevocable split in the family fabric.

He then notes that many couples come into contemporary marriage with conflicting notions about marriage. He writes.

“Most people seem to enter marriage with two opposing sets of expectations, namely (1) that marriage will bring happiness, personal fulfillment, and emotional security and (2) a vague fear, given the knowledge that so many marriages break up or otherwise fail, that the relationship with the spouse will be a source of disillusionment and pain. When external forces such as government or other social institutions like the church fail to provide a sense of security, people turn to their movements, often involving groups sharing similar needs, or they turn to each other.

“More and more,” he notes, “people are finding that they are unable to obtain emotional ease and security from the encounter groups so prevalent in our society.” But the Philadelphia physician is not fatalistic about contemporary marriage and family. “With good common sense they are discovering that these ubiquitous needs can be satisfied at home more effectively and at less cost financially and emotionally. If the marital unit is strengthened, the entire family is apt to benefit, and the family does indeed become a protective canopy under which each member has a great opportunity to develop his or her own potential.”

Lief then makes a point with which I strongly concur. “We live in a society in which the pace of technological progress increases at an exponential rate. At the same time, our emotional lives have not evolved very far from those of the caveman. For society to survive, there has to be a leap forward in emotional development that parallels the breath-taking technological achievements the world has witnessed in the last century. Any program that enhances our capacity to significantly develop more satisfying marital relationships may be one of the most important responses society can make to bridge the enormous distance between technology and emotion.”

It has been noted that stable marriages usually produce stable parents, who often produce stable children, who are likely to become stable adults. Healthy and stable individuals, in turn, produce stable marriages, completing the cycle.

Maybe concerned private, government, and church organizations should give more consideration to Lief’s observations. We spend millions, perhaps billions, of dollars annually trying to rehabilitate individuals. Perhaps more thought and subsequent funding should be given to preventive measures such as building marital and family relationships. Do you agree?