Family & Parenting
Illness in a relationship
Long-term health problems change a partnership in specific ways, and the changes are easier to handle when they are named.
Family & Parenting
In-laws, co-parenting, siblings and inherited patterns.
Family & Parenting
Friendship after children
Social networks contract sharply after a first child, and the loss has consequences for the couple that are rarely connected to it.
Family & Parenting
Holidays, and why they produce so many arguments
A period of enforced proximity, high expectations and disrupted routine, which is a reliable formula.
Family & Parenting
Two careers and one household
Whose job takes precedence is decided by default in most couples, and the default has consequences that compound.
Family & Parenting
Grandparents, and how much say they get
A common source of conflict in young families, with a structure that becomes manageable once the roles are stated.
Family & Parenting
Caring for ageing parents while raising children
A period that puts specific and predictable pressure on a couple, and it is rarely planned for.
Family & Parenting
Blended families and the pace of them
The most common mistake is expecting the new arrangement to function as a family within a year, and the research suggests a longer horizon.
Family & Parenting
Co-parenting after separation
The research is reasonably clear about what affects children, and it points at the conflict rather than the separation.
Family & Parenting
Housework, and the arithmetic of it
Time-use data is unusually clear on this, and the discrepancy between perception and measurement is where most of the argument lives.
Family & Parenting
Becoming parents, and what it does to a couple
The research on relationship satisfaction after a first child is consistent and rarely mentioned in advance.
Family & Parenting
Money, and the conversations couples avoid
Financial disagreement is among the more commonly cited sources of conflict, and most of it comes from arrangements never explicitly agreed.
Family & Parenting
Meeting the family, and the politics of it
The introduction is straightforward. The ongoing negotiation between a partner and a family of origin is where the difficulty lives.
Family & Parenting
Living with someone for the first time
The difficulties are mostly logistical and mostly predictable, and almost nobody discusses them before moving in.