But we can create healthy families and raise tomorrow’s leaders ”“ if we focus on our marriages instead of our children.
In my pastoral counseling as an Episcopal minister, I share people’s joy at their weddings and baptisms, as well as the agony of their divorces. Today I see more kids acting out, more parents turning to medication, and more single parents in serious financial difficulty.
The intact family is an endangered species. The odds a marriage will eventually end in divorce, according to studies at the John Gottman Institute, are cause for concern. For example, a couple married in 1950 had only a 30 percent chance of divorce, and couples married in 1970 had about a 50 percent chance of splitting. But a 1990 marriage has a 67 percent likelihood of ending, and the divorce rate continues to climb. People are losing faith in love.
As I visit so many households full of misery, I see good, committed couples with the best of intentions end up either fighting or fleeing each other, like wild animals. That flight-response seems to control much more of our behavior than we realize.
There are many subtle ways we avoid our spouses every day. Our distancing behaviors may include staying at work late, or switching on the TV, or making our children the center of our universe.
Most of us would never dream that putting our children before our marriage could be a flight response. We often believe we just don’t have time for our spouse.
What ever happened to the concept of the family unit being just that, a unit? All the parts have to be tended to in balance or the unit flies apart.
Reading this leaves the impression (most likely unintended) of the advocacy of the kids being 2nd in line. I’ve seen marriages like that too and the results for how the kids turn out is pretty ugly no matter how happy the 2 adults were in meeting their needs before the kids.
IMHO, David Code is not fit to be a Christian marriage counselor based on the advice he gives in this article.
His #1 should be – commit to putting Christ at the center of your marriage and make Him your number one priority. Your spouse can never provide the fullfillment in life that God can and should provide.
His #2 should be – pray together regularly; for each other and your family; go to church together, and bring up your children in the ways of the Lord.
Shouldn’t really need a #3, but if you have to have one use this:
3a – don’t sweat the small stuff
3b – recognize that almost everything is small stuff.
Many folks seem to think that children are the purpose of a marriage, rather than the product of a marriage. It is all about priorities. I have seen WAY too many marriages fall apart because of over-devotion to the children, and ignoring the hard work of maintaining your marriage.
I don’t think that Mr. Code is telling people to neglect their kids, but to NOT neglect their marriages in favor of the kids. He is quite right that you do your children NO favors by putting them ahead of your spouse.
This article is a perfect example of why I would never go to an Episcopal priest for marriage counseling, or for any pastoral care for that matter. There’s nothing terrible about the advice offered here, really. But it’s simplistic, shallow and overly generalized. It’s as though he took a bunch of platitudes and strung them together without paying attention to whether they have any true connection to each other and at the end believed himself to be speaking something truly profound. In reality, though, he didn’t say anything I couldn’t learn just as easily (and more quickly) in the pages of the latest Cosmo.
Actually, I think David Code has the right idea. If folks go to him for premarital counseling, I bet he tells them the Christ is the center of the Christian marriage. Then he says something like “The best thing you can do for your kids is love your husband/wife.”
Too many “marriages” are merely breeding grounds for the children.
I think David is headed in the right direction too. Here’s what culture (in the form of Michelle Obama) tells us about its priorities however:
See like all of you in this room, I wear a whole lotta hats, lots of hats going on. I’m a working woman, I’m a daughter, I’m a sister, I’m a best friend. But the one role that I cherish the most that you’ve come to know is that role of mom. My girls are the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I think about before I go to bed. And I don’t care where I am – on the campaign trail, in a fundraiser, sitting in the back of a van somewhere, I am worried about how my girls are doing, about their well-being, about their stability. So for me, policies that support working women and families, this is personal. These are the issues that I carry in my heart every single day.
Nary a word about her husband……
Since I was a child, my father has had a little sign in his workspace that says, “The best thing a father can do for his children is love their mother.” When I was ordained (TEC) and did premarital and marital counseling, I would point out that the family cannot be strong if the marriage that brought the family into being isn’t stronger. If the marriage isn’t the strongest part of the family, then the children don’t learn what a marriage is and don’t perpetuate that in their own lives. They also learn that they are the center of the world, which is difficult and painful to un-learn.
Rev. Code’s advice here is sound. I don’t hear him saying (pace #1) that kids aren’t important. I also don’t hear him saying (pace #2) that Jesus isn’t the center of a good marriage. I hear him saying that in a culture that alternately worships and kills its children, the importance of the marriage is the secret to a happy family. The marriage is the foundation upon which the rest of the family relationships are built.
I commend Rev. Code for putting his finger on a sensitive spot in those of us who are parents. I have three young adult children. They are priceless gifts from God. I would do anything for them EXCEPT undermine their ability to stand on their own feet, separate whole persons from their mom and me. To avoid undermining their independence, I have to be willing to let them go in big and small ways everyday. If I need them too much, need their attention, their approval too much, I won’t be able to let them go. And this is where Rev. Code’s thesis comes into play. When my emotional needs for intimacy and togetherness are not being fulfilled in my marriage, it’s easy to turn to my kids to meet those needs. When tension in my marriage goes up, it’s often easier to avoid her than to engage her. But the tension I feel is often too hard to contain, so I find someone or something else to focus on. When that someone is one or more of my children, the energy I’m directing toward them is contaminated with my own emotional needs. Focusing on them gives me the feeling that I’m being a good dad, when in fact, I’m exploiting them to get relief from tension with their mom. For their sake, for their independence, I need (as Rev. Code says) to redirect my energy and attention back to the tension in my marriage that is driving the process. The fundamental question is not whether to put the marriage or the kids first. The fundamental question is: When tension and anxiety go up in your marriage, will you engage the challenge or avoid it by re-directing it elsewhere: kids, work, boss, in-laws, politics, church, affairs, internet porn, alcohol?