I Dislike the Dog that Likes the Rabbit that I Dislike: Why Do We Like Some People but Dislike Others?

The notion that people prefer similar others is as empirically-validated a research finding as they come in our field (see here, for example). Similar people make us feel better about ourselves, and who doesn’t like somebody that makes us feel better about ourselves? In fact, the preference for similarity is so common that it is considered a general characteristic of the human condition, and it’s not hard to imagine how preferring to hang around similar people, and avoiding dissimilar people, might benefit survival.

Recently, researchers have begun to identify exactly how early this preference for similar others begins to develop.  One can’t help but wonder whether this “universal” preference for similar others is nature (i.e., we’re born with it) or nurture (i.e., others, such as our parents, teach us to like similar others and not like dissimilar others).

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How Your Family Upbringing Helps or Hinders Marital Conflict Resolution

If you are in a romantic relationship, it is nearly inevitable that you will experience conflict with your partner at some point. How you deal with conflict influences your relationship. When disagreements arise, some people manage them better than others. For example, some are able to talk through their problems in a supportive and respectful manner, whereas others fail to express their concerns and resolve their disagreements. These different conflict resolution skills (or lack thereof) come from many places, but recent research in Psychological Science suggests that your family climate during your adolescence may have something to do with how you manage conflict as an adult.

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Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems: How Having Money Can Make You a Worse Parent

Common sense suggests that people should get their financial ducks in a row before having children. Indeed, couples frequently put off having children because they first want to be more financially secure. There are definitely some important upsides to this strategy; for example, kids tend to be healthier and happier when their parents are more well-off. But might there also be downsides to pursuing wealth before parenting?

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Dating with Children: How and When Should You Introduce the Kids?

I have not been able to see The Consultant much the last few weeks due to his travel schedule. When he is in town, our ability to find time to spend together has been further complicated by the fact that we both have kids. Faced with the possibility of not seeing each other at all over the long Thanksgiving weekend because of our childcare obligations, I proposed “running into each other” at a local museum. He was looking for something to do with his tween girls anyway, so it seemed like a good idea at the time.

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Note to Parents of Adolescent Kids: Stay Out if You Want "In"

My daughter is 4 years old, and has proven to very evasive when asked about her daily life at the Montessori she attends daily. A typical dinner conversation will go something like this:

Me: How was your day?

Her: Boring.

Me: What did you do? Who’d you play with?

Her: Nothing.

That pretty much captures it. And I will admit that it absolutely drives me crazy. Why? Because if the details of her private life are this elusive to me now, there’s no way I’m going to make it through her adolescent years without some intense therapy. I always want her (and our son) to feel comfortable confiding in me and keeping me informed about what’s going on in their lives --- something that will become increasingly important as they age and spend more and more time in their own private social worlds.

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"Gay" Parenting and Child Outcomes: The Devil is in the Details

A recent study by University of Texas sociologist Dr. Mark Regnerus is receiving a large amount of media attention. The study, published in Social Science Research, supposedly calls into question the empirically-based argument that children who grow up in households with two mommies or two daddies generally show no differences on a host of outcomes relative to kids who grow up with a mom and a dad. You can read a summary of the work, written by the lead author, here.

As William Saletan, of Slate.com writes, however, the devil is in the details. The survey methodology, analytical strategy, and overall conclusions drawn by the reseachers all suffer from serious limitations (never mind the role of the funding source for the study). Saletan does an excellent job of evaluating the work and highlighting how the findings, if anything, argue for marriage equality.

This work, and the ensuing discussion/debate, demonstrates once again how conclusions drawn from research are only as sound as the science behind the research.  

image credit: blogs.orlandosentinel.com

Common Punishment Techniques: Do They Work?

When most people hear the word discipline in the context of parenting, they often think of punishment, which generally involves the application of some negative stimulus (e.g., physical pain, like spanking) or removal of something positive (e.g., removal from a rewarding activity, like a time-out from play) in hopes of changing a child’s behavior. Researchers, however, conceptualize the term discipline far more broadly; it turns out that a lot of what parents might do when their children misbehave is considered discipline. For example, recent research by Elizabeth Gershoff and colleagues assessed how eleven different parental responses (or, as researchers refer to them, discipline techniques) in six different countries were associated with 8- to 12-year-old kids’ aggressive and anxious behaviors. Researchers asked parents how frequently they performed eleven behaviors after their kids misbehaved over the prior year (kids also indicated how often their parents did these things) and also measured kids' use of aggression and anxiety symptoms.

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Marriage Equality: Let’s Ask the Kids

image source: blogs.prideangel.com

Marriage laws may affect the children of same-sex partners, but until recently the impact of such laws on kids has not been studied. When researchers examined the views of adolescent and young adult children of gay and lesbian couples, the children typically desired marriage for their parents. Although opponents of same-sex marriage express concern about the welfare of same-sex couples’ kids, this research suggests that families of same-sex couples think that marriage would benefit them.

Goldberg, A. E., & Kuvalanka, K. A. (2012). The perspectives of adolescents and emerging adults with lesbian, gay, and bisexual parents. Journal of Marriage and Family, 74, 34-52. doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2011.00876.x

Why You Should Never Compare Your Kids

Click here to read the rest of the story from Parenting. Illustrated with Crappy Pictures.

The Birds and The Bees: As Early as Age 3?

Whenever I teach my Psychology of Adolescence class, I have at least one student ask me when parents should have “the talk” with their children. Many of these students lament that their parents never talked with them about sexuality; others anticipate having their own children and want to know what research suggests they do. I always preface my research-based advice by noting that my own children are young (currently 4 and 6) and (hopefully) many years from being sexually active. As any parent knows, it is far easier to give advice to others about how to parent children then it is to actually parent their own. And yet, the data on this topic is clear and my research-based opinions are strong, so I proceed with advice.

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Parents’ Divorce Affects Kids’ Future Relationships

When parents divorce, does it influence their kid's views about divorce and the stability of their future adult romantic relationships? It depends on how children view mom and dads’ relationship prior to the divorce. Those who recalled observing their parents fight had more favorable views of divorce as young adults. But those who saw less conflict prior to the divorce had more negative views of divorce and experienced more stable relationships as adults.

Cui, M., Fincham, F. D., & Durtschi, J. A. (2011). The effect of parental divorce on young adults’ romantic relationship dissolution: What makes a difference? Personal Relationships, 18, 410-426.

Ticking Biological Clocks and Career Aspirations: Managing Incompatible Goals

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to meet the “right” guy and be a mother. The question was, “when?” You see, I also had goals to go to graduate school and get a job as a professor at a university. Sadly, these goals are oftentimes incompatible for anyone in the workforce (click here for more information about this choice). There are many costs involved with motherhood,¹ such as loss of wages, decay of skills and lowered productivity, child care expenditures, not to mention losing precious sleep! In fact, for each year of motherhood delay, women can expect a 9% increase in earnings and 3% increase in wages!

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Ask Dr. Loving: Can Our Relationship Survive His STD?

I have a friend who has been very forthcoming about his sexual experiences and how he was diagnosed with an STD when he was 20 years old. I am very attracted to him and although he has an STD, knowing that does not repulse or drive me away. But it does make me seriously consider, if I were ever to be with him in a relationship, would it work without sex?  -- trustingHim

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Teenagers: Perhaps Not as Evil as You Think

Researchers had teenagers and their parents read about situations in which the parents asked their kids for help, requiring the kids to give up their own plans with friends. Parents and teenagers agreed that the teenagers should help their parents, particularly when the parents really needed the help.  In situations where the parental request for help was not particularly urgent, however, the teenagers reported feeling more responsibility to help than the parents thought they should. 

Smetana, J. G., Tasopoulos-Chan, M., Gettman, D. C., Villalobos, M., Compione-Barr, N., & Metzger, A. (2009). Adolescents’ and parents’ evaluations of helping versus fulfilling personal desires in family situations. Child Development, 80, 280-294.

image source: blog.bluemountainlodges.ca

Fathers: Filling the Void to Help Create a Better You

What follows is a rough transcript of a conversation I had with a woman a few weeks ago while at my neighbor’s barbeque. (Background: She heard that I had two kids and my son had recently turned 5 months old). 

Her: So, what does your wife do?
Me: She’s a paralegal.
Her: Does she work full-time?
Me: Yes
Her: That must be really hard for her -- having to put her son in childcare all day. [note: she may not have emphasized the ‘her’, but I certainly heard it so]
Me: Yes, it is hard for us; we don’t like spending any more time away from our kids than we have to.

Admittedly, I may have stressed the plural pronouns in my response overly enthusiastically, but as someone who fancies himself an involved father, I couldn’t help but make it clear that childrearing or life decisions that affect our children are made by, and impact, both me and my wife.

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The High Costs of Parenthood

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the costs of raising kids. To be clear, I’m not talking about the monetary costs ($118k to $250k in the U.S. by the time the kid reaches age 18, and that’s not counting college). Rather, a lot of the popular press writing on the topic has focused on the drop in marital and/or life satisfaction individuals experience following the birth of a child. Both New York Magazine (All Joy and No Fun: Why parents hate parenting) and a more recent story on CNN.com (Does having children make you happy?) paint a gloomy picture regarding the impact children have on individual and relationship well-being.

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Visualizing the State of Marriage

We've said it before, but it bears repeating: WE LOVE DATA. And we really like data when it's visually captivating. Here's an interesting graphic representing tidbits about marriage in the United States over the last five decades. One of the more alarming trends is the rising divorce rate for those with low socioeconomic status relative to the economically privileged, also known as the "marriage gap," proving once again that being poor sucks.

<-- click on the image to the left to supersize it.

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