Recession Lingers, Dating Thrives

The Recession and Families: Post 4 of 4

This severe economic downturn may help the dating scene as people are looking for simple companionship. Click here to read an interesting piece that was written by the Associated Press.

The article explains, "Credit the recession for staycations and bringing us more game-night parties at home. But also give it a shout for spurring more first dates. Economic woes, it seems, unleash something practically primal in many of us who find ourselves without a partner: a hard-wired desire for companionship. Some singles are now hunting for dates with the same fervor others are showing hunting for jobs.

It’s not just the frequency of our dates that’s changing — it’s also the people we’re choosing to spend time with. “They’re looking for something that’s genuine in a world that isn’t very secure,” said Bathsheba Birman, co-founder of the Chicago dating event Nerds at Heart. “With headlines full of why you can’t trust established institutions that you thought you could ... people are re-examining their own values.”

Craig Kinsley, a neurologist at the University of Richmond, said stomach-fluttering first dates also release brain chemicals that can temporarily erase worries, even about 401(k)s and layoffs and falling portfolios and upside-down mortgages."

This last paragraph about brain chemicals reminds me that it has been a while since I featured Dr. Helen Fisher, anthopologist at Rutgers, in a Blog Post. I'll just add that to the summer to-do list.
I hope you are having a safe and enjoyable summer.

Family Life Takes a Hit From Recession

The Recession and Families: Post 3 of 4

What effect does an unemployed parent have on family well being?

Do men take over family responsibilities when their wives become the sole breadwinners?

Michael Luo wrote an excellent piece for the NY Times recently that describes the impact of this recession on families. "For many families across the country, the greatest damage inflicted by this recession has not necessarily been financial, but emotional and psychological. Children, especially, have become hidden casualties, often absorbing more than their parents are fully aware of. Several academic studies have linked parental job loss — especially that of fathers — to adverse impacts in areas like school performance and self-esteem."

Luo describes, "A recent study at the University of California, Davis, found that children in families where the head of the household had lost a job were 15 percent more likely to repeat a grade."

“The extent that job losers are stressed and emotionally disengaged or withdrawn, this really matters for kids,” commented Dr. Ariel Kalil (University of Chicago). “The other thing that matters is parental conflict. That has been shown repeatedly in psychological studies to be a bad family dynamic.”

"Besides quarrels over money, the reversal in the couple’s roles also produced friction. Dr. Kalil said a recent study of how people spend their time showed unemployed fathers devote significantly less time to household chores than even mothers who are employed full-time, and do not work as hard in caring for children."

A Singer: It's a problem that I labeled Role "Non-Reversal" Syndrome, where men seem to forget how big a burden their spouse bears as wife/mother....and they just forgot to switch roles when their wife works all day and they sit at home. Men at home, must quickly take over the lion's share of household tasks to give their wives some much needed down-time and stress relief.

Recessions's Silver Lining May be: Solidifying the Marital Bond

The Recession and Families: Post 2 of 4

“Judging by recent press reports,” writes Bradford Wilcox in the Wall Street Journal, “the family fallout associated with the Great Recession has been severe.” According to Money & Marriage, a report released recently by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Institute for American Values, the financial pressures associated with the Great Recession can lead to a downward spiral of marital recriminations, tension and conflict as spouses struggle to pay bills, adjust to the loss of a job or find themselves forced out of their home. “This downward spiral is especially likely to unfold when a husband loses his job—a particularly salient reality in the current recession, where more than 75% of the job losses have fallen on the shoulders of men.”

According to Wilcox, “There may be a silver lining in all this financial pain. For most married Americans, the Great Recession seems to be solidifying, not eroding, the marital bond. To be sure, some couples have simply postponed a divorce until the economy rebounds, when they expect to have a better shot at starting new lives.” And anecdotal evidence suggests that a number of couples have responded to the recession by rededicating themselves to their marriages.

"Perhaps more important, the Great Recession is leading some spouses to develop a renewed appreciation for the social and economic solidarity engendered by marriage and family life. While it is true that the recession has been a source of harmful stress for many couples and families, a recent Pew Research survey found that about four in 10 Americans report that the recession has brought their family closer together."

Not Knowing is Making Us Sick

The Recession and Families: Post 1 of 4

"Psychologists and economists now know that although the very rich are no happier than the merely rich, for the other 99 percent of us, happiness is greatly enhanced by a few quaint assets, like shelter, sustenance and security. Americans are smiling less and worrying more than they were a year ago, happiness is down and sadness is up, we are getting less sleep and smoking more cigarettes and depression is on the rise."

Author Daniel Gilbert, in a NY Times article, asks Why? Some of us are clearly suffering in this recession, but it’s not as if we all lost all of our money.
"The reason is because people feel worse when something bad might occur than they do when something bad will occur. Most of us aren't losing sleep and sucking down Marlboros because the Dow is going to fall another thousand points, but because we don't know whether it will fall or not -- and human beings find uncertainty more painful than the things they're uncertain about."

"Consider an experiment by researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands who gave subjects a series of 20 electric shocks. Some subjects knew they would receive an intense shock on every trial. Others knew they would receive 17 mild shocks and 3 intense shocks, but they didn't know on which of the 20 trials the intense shocks would come. The results showed that subjects who thought there was a small chance of receiving an intense shock were more afraid -- they sweated more profusely, their hearts beat faster -- than subjects who knew for sure that they'd receive an intense shock."

A very interesting piece about human nature.

The Digital Divide in All its Glory

Here's my monthly column from the Home News Tribune:

Family car trips are very different than two decades ago, when our children were pre-teens. There are still plenty of lunches and snacks to prepare, and the frequent "Are we there yet?'' questions. However the "in-flight'' entertainment has really evolved. Back in the day, for the news, there was the car radio. For music, we had cassettes, and of course some quality time for family discussions.

In contrast, our recent family outing to the nearby Blue Mountain Ski Resort was filled with the latest gear. For directions to Blue two decades ago, we called their 800 number. This time, my son-in-law went to their website and downloaded the directions. He also checked traffic and was able to suggest alternate routes, since his Blackberry is GPS-enabled. Back in the day, I think the only people who were GPS-enabled were Navy Seals and employees of NASA.

We waited until we arrived at our destination to use a pay phone (remember those?) to check voice-mail messages. Nowadays everyone owns a cell phone. Halfway into the trip, my Bluetooth began beeping. It was my brother in Israel who joined three Singer brothers together for our weekly conference call. Years ago, I never would have imagined a three-way call on portable cellular devices connecting Orlando, Israel, and New Jersey. It's hard to miss the good old days when technology makes keeping in touch so much easier.

Lucky for me, one thing remained the same. With my daughters and my son-in-law on board, it was easy to get a legitimate family discussion going. I asked them about the digital divide; I wanted to understand it better and to have the input of my techno-savvy adult children. The responses were mainly directed at what the digital divide is not; it is not an income-related divide. "It's not about poor versus rich at all," stated my daughter, "because everyone has a cell phone these days." A home number will soon be a thing of the past. Anyone with a cell-phone can have internet and e-mail included, not to mention dozens of downloaded songs.


When we finally arrived at Blue Mountain, conditions were epic. We had found out about the conditions in advance but obviously not by calling the snow conditions hotline of yesteryear. My son-in-law's Blackberry displayed the entire ski report on Blue Mountain's website. He had also put out a "tweet'' to his Twitter followers with a few simple keystrokes and within an hour, heard reports about the ski conditions.

As we enjoyed the day, I began to realize the digital divide has a lot to do with age. Middle-agers (myself included), are a bit resistant to the latest technology. For young people, technology is a social imperative.

Regarding the haves and the have-nots, this is also about having an interest in the latest techno-fad, or having no interest. What if a person just wants to curl up with a good non-electric novel once in a while or what if they don't have enough time to keep up with the technology? It takes time to tweet and update your Facebook status. People who have jobs and families likely have less time for these activities.

During our last run of a superb day of skiing at Blue, my children filled one high-speed quad chair and I was assigned to the next random chair with three teenagers who were all friends. One asked me, "Sir, can you take a picture of us with my phone, so I can text it to Mom in the lodge and show her we're having a good time?'' I was happy to help. In the words of Bob Dylan, "The times they are a-changin.''

Be Counted columnist Dr. Alan Singer is a marriage therapist in Highland Park. Respond to this column via his website www.FamilyThinking.com.