Ideals of Marriage and Parenthood Adrift

New Trends Suggest Sea-Change

It may come as no surprise, but new research proves that younger generations of Americans hold new and evolving impressions about marriage and family, compared to those of their parents. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, younger adults see less of a moral stigma when it comes to cohabitation without marriage and out-of-wedlock births. Today, nearly four out of ten U.S. births are to unmarried women. At the same time, nearly half of all adults between 30 and 50 years old have spent a portion of their lives living together without being married.

The researchers note that there has been “a distinct weakening of the link between marriage and parenthood,” as evidenced by the finding that just 41 percent of Americans say children are “very important” to a successful marriage, compared to 65 percent who agreed in a 1990 survey. In fact, children now rank eighth out of nine items associated with successful marriage – falling behind “sharing household chores,” “good housing,” “adequate income,” “happy sexual relationship,” and “faithfulness.” This survey also notes that a majority of Americans believe the main purpose of marriage is “mutual happiness and fulfillment” rather than “the bearing and raising of children.”

In spite of prevailing assumptions, this increase in nonmarital childbearing is not just about unwed teenage mothers: the Pew study notes that teen pregnancy rates actually have been falling for decades. Rather, the increase in nonmarital births relates to the growing population of women in their 20s, 30s, and older who may forgo marriage, but still have children. Meanwhile, about 50 percent of those new mothers are living with their children’s fathers. This is a strong contrast to the early 1990s, when nearly one-third of nonmarital births were to cohabitating women.

Meanwhile, those surveyed find these trends to be dissatisfactory, with 71 percent saying the rise in nonmarital births is a “big problem” and 69 percent noting that a child needs both a mother and father to ensure a happy childhood.

Although the results reveal that people in nontraditional marital and parenting situations often have attitudes aligning with their behaviors, they do not suggest that they place less value than others on marriage as a pathway to personal happiness. In fact, never-married parents and cohabiters were more skeptical that a person “can lead a complete and fulfilled life if he or she remains single.” The researchers suggest that this could reflect the feeling that these groups may be less satisfied with their current lives than others. “For many of them, marriage appears to represent an ideal – albeit an elusive, unrealized one,” the report states.

There are limits to the public’s preference for the traditional mother-and-father dynamic. Sixty-seven percent of Americans say children are better off if parents who are “very unhappy with each other” get a divorce. Further, by a margin of 58 percent to 38 percent, more Americans believe “divorce is painful, but preferable to maintaining an unhappy marriage” than believe that “divorce should be avoided except for in an extreme situation.”

The research highlights a discrepancy in social values: divorce rates are on the decline, despite greater public acceptance, while the rates of nonmarital births have continued to rise amid steadfast public disapproval. The Pew Research Center also offers data breakdowns by age, religiosity, political conservativism, race, ethnicity, and gender. Click here to read the entire report.

THERAPIST SPOTLIGHT: Cate Shea Riihimaki, M.Ed., Ed.S., LPC

It may be cliché, but in the case of PC&CC’s Cate Shea Riihimaki, the apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree. Helping professions are her family business, with her father a doctor and her mother, Helen Curtice, a counselor at PC&CC. “The values that go along with helping others have always been a part of my family life,” Riihimaki explains.

Due to her love for working with children, Riihimaki initially thought she would become a teacher. After two years working at a military boarding school, she realized that she wanted to give more. “I found that I was much more interested in the ‘whole child’ so to speak, rather than just teaching math or coaching a sport. But I also realized that I wasn’t qualified to be giving support to them without better training. That’s when I decided to go back to grad school and learn about the counseling field and child development,” she says.

After receiving her M.Ed. and an Ed.S. in mental health counseling from the University of Virginia, Riihimaki developed a specialty of working with adolescents and young adults. “I see a lot of identity work in those stages. I’ve found that therapy is in general highly effective with that age group, if they’re motivated, and that you see a lot of positive growth,” she says.

Riihimaki finds it particularly rewarding to help families understand their children as they move through those development stages. “It’s healthy and normal for someone to go through an individuation process – to pull away from the family – at that age. But it’s typically a hard time for the family unit and, therefore, an outside person – clergy, mental health or a teacher – makes that somewhat painful process easier. It often helps the parents just to hear a professional say, ‘Your teenager doesn’t really hate you, she’s just trying to individuate in a good and normal way,’” she notes.

Her significant experience with bereavement work including traumatic loss and complicated grief, due to her time working with families experiencing loss due to AIDS/HIV. She currently hosts a grandparent support group for those who have lost children to AIDS and are raising their grandchildren as a result. As a new mother to an 8-month-old son, Dylan, she enjoys working with clients facing young parenting issues, and is skilled in play, art, and sand tray therapy techniques.

Riihimaki also employs Imago Relationship Therapy methods with parents and children. “I’ve found that to be tremendously beneficial in helping adolescents be ‘heard.’ The kids feel validated, no matter how outlandish their requests and comments may be to the parents, when it’s slowed down by the Imago process everyone seems to listen better,” she says.

Riihimaki works in PC&CC’s northwest Washington office at St. David’s Episcopal Church. She may be reached at 202-449-3789 x704.

REFERRAL CORNER: Locations, Locations, Locations
Did you know that PC&CC has offices beyond the District of Columbia borders? If you know someone in need of individual counseling or couples work, it may be more convenient for them to visit a therapist near home, rather than work.

Here is a guide to our locations and the therapists who work there:

Maryland

Chevy Chase*

Joanne Comstock

Beret Moyer

Ellicott City*

Gabriel Dy-Liacco

Rabbi Shlomo Slatkin

Virginia

Alexandria*

Ginny Graham

Washington, DC

Capitol Hill*

Keith Miller

Dupont Circle

Keith Miller

Beret Moyer

Stacy Notaras Murphy

Rebecca Sears

Foggy Bottom*

Carl Siegel

Palisades

Helen Curtice

Cate Shea Riihimaki

Takoma Park

Stacy Notaras Murphy

Kathleen Scheg

Rebecca Sears

Carl Siegel

Please feel free to contact our PC&CC counselors us anytime for consultation.

*Indicates locations that are wheel-chair accessible, with some modifications required at certain locations.

Relationship Tip of the Month

Loving Boundary-Setting

It is confusing to be in relationships and not know where we stand – whether this is on the job, in a friendship, with family members, or in a love relationship. We have a right to be direct about how we define the relationship – what we want it to be. But relationships equal two people who have equal rights. The other person needs to be able to define the relationship too. We have a right to know, and ask. So do they.

Honesty is the best policy.

We can set boundaries. If someone wants a more intense relationship than we do, we can be clear and honest about what we want, about our intended level of participation. We can tell the person what to reasonably expect from us, because that is what we want to give. How the person deals with that is his or her issue. Whether or not we tell the person is ours…

The clearer we can become on defining relationships, the more we can take care of ourselves in that relationship. We have a right to our boundaries, wants, and needs. So does the other person. We can not force someone to be in a relationship or to participate at a level we desire if he or she does not want to. All of us have a right not to be forced.

Information is a powerful tool, and having the information about what a particular relationship is – the boundaries and definitions of it – will empower us to take care of ourselves in it.

-From The Language of Letting Go, by Melody Beattie, pp. 236-237.

PC&CC EVENT CALENDAR:

Our “Getting the Love You Want” workshops for couples can serve as excellent premarital preparation or as a way to supercharge a couple’s ongoing marriage counseling. Past attendees have described the experience as powerful, deeply spiritual, inspiring, and fun. The two-day course offers the equivalent of 6 months in couples counseling work. The next Washington, DC workshop will be Sept. 8-9. Click here for more information.