Tag Archive for: Relationships

, , ,

The Mental Load Behind the Mess

Clutter looks harmless until you live with it.

It’s the shoes by the door that turn into a pile, the mail that never quite lands in a folder, the laundry that migrates from basket to chair to “I’ll deal with it later.” For some people, that’s background noise. For others, it’s like trying to relax while an alarm quietly beeps in the next room.

A 2025 study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology by researcher Francis Quinn helps explain why clutter can feel so heavy. In a survey of 501 adults, people who reported more clutter also reported worse mental well-being, lower life satisfaction, and more negative emotions.

The study found an important “middle step,” too: clutter tended to make people see their homes as less beautiful, and that loss of “home beauty” partly explained why well-being dropped. In other words, clutter didn’t just take up space, it changed how home felt, and that mattered.

Now, if you’ve ever thought, “Okay, but why does this stress me out more than it stresses my spouse?” you’re not imagining things. One of the most talked-about studies on this comes from psychologists Darby Saxbe and Rena Repetti. In their 2010 research, they asked dual-income couples with children to give video tours of their homes while describing what they saw, then the researchers tracked mood and measured cortisol, a stress hormone, over several days. The pattern was clear: wives who described their homes with more “stressful” language, words like cluttered, messy, or unfinished, showed less healthy daily cortisol patterns and worse mood. For husbands, the link between home conditions and stress was much weaker.

That doesn’t mean men don’t care about home, and it doesn’t mean women are simply “pickier.” It points to something deeper: clutter is rarely just clutter. It often stands for unfinished tasks, and unfinished tasks usually have an owner in the family system, even if nobody ever said it out loud.

This is where the idea of the female mental load connects to the mess on the counter.

Sociologist Allison Daminger, in her 2019 paper in American Sociological Review, described “cognitive labor” as the work of noticing what needs to be done, planning it, deciding how it will happen, and then monitoring whether it actually gets done. That’s the invisible job behind the visible chores, and it’s one reason clutter can feel like more than “stuff.” It can feel like proof that the whole mental checklist is still running.

More recent research has put numbers to the emotional cost. A 2024 study in Archives of Women’s Mental Health examined cognitive household labor and found it was linked to women’s depression, stress, burnout, overall mental health, and relationship functioning. The point isn’t that women are destined to carry this burden, it’s that many do, and clutter can become a daily trigger because it’s a constant visual reminder of all the managing that remains undone.

So what do couples and parents do with this information without turning it into a blame game?

Start by translating the fight. Many “clutter arguments” are really arguments about support, responsibility, and rest. A helpful sentence sounds like, “When the house is cluttered, my brain won’t shut off. It feels like a list I’m still responsible for.” That’s different from, “You’re a slob,” and it gives your partner something real to respond to.

Next, move from “help” to “ownership.” Helping is doing something when asked. Ownership is noticing, planning, and finishing without being managed. If the mental load is part of what makes clutter

 so stressful for women, then the solution can’t be one partner acting as the home manager who hands out assignments. A fairer approach is agreeing on a few areas that each person fully owns, like school papers, laundry start-to-finish, lunches, bedtime reset, or the kitchen close-down, and letting the owner decide how to handle it.

Then, lower the temperature by defining what “good enough” means in this season. Not your ideal house, not your childhood house, not the one on social media, just a shared minimum standard that protects peace. When couples don’t define the standard together, the more stressed partner often becomes the default enforcer, and that role is exhausting.

Finally, make it routine, not personal. A short daily reset, ten minutes after dinner, everyone involved, can do more for harmony than one big cleaning sprint on Saturday that ends in resentment. The goal is not a magazine-ready home. The goal is a home that feels livable to both of you, and restful to the person whose body treats clutter like a stress signal.

If the research teaches us anything, it’s that home isn’t just where we keep our stuff. Home is where our nervous systems try to recover.

When couples take clutter seriously as a mental load issue, not a character flaw, they stop arguing about piles and start building partnership, and that is the kind of clean-up that actually lasts.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org.

/0 Comments/by
,

What High Vs. Low Effort Looks Like in Families

“Low effort family” is a new term trending across social media. With therapists, researchers and relationship enthusiasts weighing in and providing different definitions of what a “low effort family” looks like, I had to do my own research.

Some families run on “auto-pilot.” Plans are last minute. Rules change depending on who’s tired. Conversations are mostly logistics (“Where’s your backpack?”). Conflict either blows up or gets buried.

Other families aren’t perfect, but they’re more intentional. They follow through. They build a few steady routines. They repair after hard moments.

That’s what I mean by “low effort” vs. “high effort” families.

These aren’t official research labels. But they describe real, research-backed family processes that shape how kids and adults do over time.

A “low effort” family often isn’t lazy. It’s usually low bandwidth. Stress, long work hours, money pressure, anxiety or depression, and lack of support can drain a family’s capacity. When you’re running on fumes, you react instead of plan. Limits get inconsistent. Connection gets replaced by correction. And the hard conversations keep getting pushed down the road.

A “high effort” family isn’t a “perfect family.” It’s a family that puts energy into a few basics: predictable routines, warmth plus limits, direct communication, and real repair. Family therapist and researcher Froma Walsh, PhD, describes family resilience as learnable processes—how families organize, communicate, and make meaning under stress. In other words, “high effort” is a set of skills you can build, not a personality you either have or don’t.

Why does any of this matter? Because small, repeated patterns add up. For example, routines aren’t just nice, they’re protective. A large systematic review of family routines (spanning decades of studies) found that routines are linked with positive child outcomes and can be especially helpful in high-risk settings. When a home is predictable in a few key ways, like sleep, meals, school rhythm, kids tend to feel safer and more steady.

Follow-through matters too, especially as kids get older.

A 2025 meta-analysis that pulled together 571 studies with more than two million participants found parental monitoring and behavioral control are associated with lower substance use in adolescents and emerging adults. That’s a research way of saying: when parents pay attention, set limits, and stay engaged, risk goes down.

And the emotional climate matters. A systematic review and meta-analysis found parenting behaviors are meaningfully related to internalizing problems in kids and teens, things like anxiety and depression. Kids don’t need parents who never mess up. They need parents who are present, responsive, and willing to repair.

If you’re wondering where your family falls right now, don’t overthink it. Just look at the past two weeks. Have you had two or three predictable routines most days? Have you followed through on limits more often than not? Have you had any daily connection with your kids that wasn’t correction or logistics, even ten minutes? And when there’s conflict, does it get repaired within a day or so? If you’re answering “not really,” that’s a sign you might be in a low-effort season.

Here’s the good news: moving toward “high effort” doesn’t mean doing everything. It means doing one thing consistently. Pick one routine that causes the most chaos, such as bedtime, mornings, dinner, homework, and simplify it until it’s repeatable.

The goal is not a Pinterest routine. It’s predictability.

Or choose one repair habit and practice it like a script: “I didn’t handle that well. I’m sorry. I hear you. Let’s try again.” That one sentence can change the emotional temperature of a whole house.

And if your home feels stuck with constant conflict, ongoing shutdowns, or mental health concerns, getting support is not a sign you failed. It’s a high-effort move. A licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT), psychologist (PhD/PsyD), or psychiatrist (MD) can help you build skills and lower stress.

Naming the difference between low effort and high effort matters because it turns “We’re struggling” into something you can actually work with: specific, changeable habits. And families don’t transform in one big dramatic moment.

They change through small choices, repeated often, that make home feel steadier and more connected.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org.

/0 Comments/by

How to Be Mad and Still Be Kind

Anger gets a bad rap. But anger isn’t the villain in your relationship.

It’s more like your body’s push notification: “Something feels unfair, unsafe, or important—please look here.” The trouble is that when anger is loud, we tend to do one of two things: explode (control) or shut down (connection at any cost). Neither one helps you feel heard.

So the goal isn’t “never get angry.” The goal is to handle anger in a way that protects the relationship and protects your dignity. That starts with a humbling truth: you can’t control another adult. You can only control what you bring to the moment through your tone, your timing, your words, and your next move.

Here’s what research suggests actually helps.

First, remember: when you’re angry, your body is part of the conversation (whether you want it to be or not). In research on couples, John Gottman and Robert Levenson found that physiology and patterns of negative emotional exchange during conflict were tied to relationship satisfaction in later outcomes (see their work in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). In normal-person language: when your nervous system is in overdrive, your brain is not great at listening, problem-solving, or being generous.

That’s why the first step to “getting your point across” is surprisingly simple:

Regulate first. Speak second.

A large meta-analysis in Clinical Psychology Review analyzed 154 studies on anger management and found that strategies that decrease arousal, like relaxation, breathing, and mindfulness, reduce anger and aggression. Meanwhile, arousal-increasing strategies, like “venting,” punching things, or working yourself up, were not effective overall.

If your current plan is “I just need to blow off steam,” the research kindly suggests: maybe not like that.

Brad Bushman’s well-known study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that “venting” while thinking about the person who angered you (basically, replaying the offense) made people more angry and more aggressive.

Instead, try this two-step move: Pause + Cool.

Pause (out loud). Say: “I’m getting heated, and I don’t want to say this in a way I regret. I want to talk about it. Can we take 20 minutes and come back?” The “come back” part matters. It protects connection.

Cool (on purpose). Do something that lowers your intensity. Breathing is not “woo.” It’s wiring. A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials in Scientific Reports found breathwork interventions lowered self-reported stress compared to controls. Lower stress doesn’t magically solve the issue, but it helps you show up with steadier hands on the wheel.

While you cool down, here’s the key: don’t rehearse your argument like you’re prepping for court. Rumination keeps anger hot.

Next: get your brain back online without stuffing your feelings.

A lot of us were taught that “being calm” means acting like we’re not upset. But hiding emotion has a cost. James Gross and Oliver John found that people who use cognitive reappraisal (changing how you interpret a situation) tend to have better well-being and relationship functioning than those who rely more on expressive suppression (pushing emotion down and masking it).

And in a peer-reviewed study in the journal Emotion, Emily Butler and colleagues found that when someone suppresses emotion during a conversation, it can disrupt connection and increase stress in the interaction. Suppression may look polite on the outside, but it can make understanding harder on the inside.

So what do you do instead? Try distance without disowning.

Ethan Kross and Özlem Ayduk have shown that taking a more “self-distanced” perspective while reflecting on upsetting events can reduce distress and help people make meaning rather than getting stuck. In real life, that can sound like:

What am I needing right now? Respect, help, reassurance, fairness? What story am I telling myself about what this means? If I were advising a friend, what would I tell them to do next?

Now you’re ready for the part that matters: saying your piece clearly without breaking the relationship.

Here’s a simple structure that keeps you in your lane (control yourself) while still being honest:

Observation (facts, not a verdict): “When you came home and didn’t tell me you’d be late…”
Impact (emotion + meaning): “…I felt anxious and unimportant.”
Need (what matters): “I need reliability and teamwork.”
Request (specific next step): “Can you text me when you’re running late—even if it’s just two words?”

Requests invite influence; demands invite defense. And if they say no? You still haven’t lost your power. Power was never “making them.” Power is choosing what you do with the information.

Sometimes anger is less about the topic and more about the fear underneath: “Will I matter here? Will I be alone in this?” Your job is to communicate your boundaries without trying to run their nervous system for them.

A boundary sounds like: “I’m willing to talk about this when we’re both respectful. If yelling starts, I’m going to pause the conversation and come back in an hour.” That’s not punishment. That’s stewardship.

One last research-backed reminder: delay is a superpower. In research on self-regulation in intimate conflict, Eli Finkel and colleagues found that even brief delays can change what people verbalize during provocation (and self-regulation helps override harmful impulses). Most of us don’t need the perfect response. We need ten seconds of wisdom.

So if anger has been running your relationships lately, don’t start by asking, “How do I win this conversation?” Start by asking: “How do I show up like the kind of person I want to be even when I’m mad?”

That’s connection over control. And it’s a skill. Not a personality trait.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org.

/0 Comments/by

New Year, New We: A Different Kind of Resolution

By now, most of us have made, and quietly broken, our New Year’s resolutions. The gym membership we swore we’d use. The sugar we promised to quit. The planner we bought with the best of intentions… now collecting dust.

But what if this year, instead of resolving to fix ourselves, we focused on strengthening our relationships?

After all, research consistently shows that the quality of our relationships, not our willpower or waistlines, is one of the strongest predictors of happiness, health, and even longevity. In fact, the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest-running studies on human happiness, has found that close, healthy relationships are the single biggest contributor to life satisfaction and long-term well-being. Not career success. Not money. Not even exercise. Relationships.

So maybe our New Year’s resolutions are aiming at the wrong target.

Part of the reason resolutions fail is because they’re often vague, lofty, and disconnected from daily life. “Be a better spouse.” “Spend more time with my kids.” Noble goals, but not very actionable.

Psychologists draw a helpful distinction between resolutions and habits. A resolution is a declaration of intent. A habit is a behavior repeated so consistently it becomes automatic.

According to behavior researcher Dr. BJ Fogg of Stanford University, lasting change doesn’t come from massive motivation, it comes from small behaviors that are easy to repeat. Or as author James Clear puts it, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

In other words, strong families aren’t built on grand promises made once a year. They’re built on small, repeated actions done week after week.

Instead of asking, What do I want to change about myself this year? try asking, How do I want the people closest to me to experience me?

Here are a few evidence-based, relationship-centered resolutions, paired with habits that actually make them stick.

1. Resolution: “I want to be more present with my family.”

Habit: One device-free window every day.

Research from the Journal of Marriage and Family shows that even brief, consistent moments of focused attention—what researchers call “high-quality time”—strengthen emotional bonds more than occasional big gestures. That might look like 15 uninterrupted minutes after work, phones down at dinner, or sitting on the edge of your child’s bed at night and really listening.

Presence doesn’t require more time. It requires fewer distractions.

2. Resolution: “I want a stronger marriage.”

Habit: One daily moment of connection.

Marriage researcher Dr. John Gottman found that successful couples regularly turn toward each other in small ways—responding to bids for attention, affection, or conversation. A quick check-in. A hug that lasts more than six seconds. A genuine “How was your day?”

These moments may seem insignificant, but Gottman’s research shows they compound over time, building emotional trust and resilience. Strong marriages aren’t fueled by grand romantic gestures; they’re sustained by everyday kindness.

3. Resolution: “I want less conflict at home.”

Habit: Change how you start hard conversations.

According to Gottman’s research, the first three minutes of a difficult conversation predict how the rest of it will go more than 90 percent of the time. He calls this the “soft startup.”

Instead of leading with criticism (“You never help around here”), try leading with curiosity or ownership (“I’m feeling overwhelmed and could use your help”). Same issue—very different outcome.

Conflict doesn’t damage relationships nearly as much as how we handle it.

4. Resolution: “I want to be a better parent.”

Habit: Catch your kids doing something right—daily.

Studies in developmental psychology show that positive reinforcement is far more effective than constant correction. Children thrive when they feel seen for their effort, not just their mistakes.

A simple habit—naming one thing your child did well each day—can dramatically improve connection, cooperation, and confidence. Bonus: it changes your mindset, too.

If you want your resolutions to survive past January, keep these principles in mind:

  • Make them small. If it feels almost too easy, you’re doing it right.
  • Attach them to existing routines. Talk during the car ride. Connect at bedtime. Check in over coffee.
  • Focus on consistency, not perfection. Miss a day? Start again tomorrow. Relationships grow through repair, not flawlessness.
  • Measure what matters. Instead of asking, “Did I stick to my resolution?” ask, “Did my people feel more loved this week?”

At the end of the year, no one will remember whether you kept your plank streak or skipped dessert. But they will remember how it felt to live with you. To be married to you. To be parented by you.

So maybe the best New Year’s resolution isn’t about doing more, but about loving better.

And that’s a resolution worth keeping.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org.

/0 Comments/by
,

Loving Your Spouse Through the Unknown

Right now, our house feels a bit like a circus act where someone is trying to keep 14 plates spinning at once.

My husband is in a job transition. It is not that he lacks connections or promising leads; it is that we do not have a clear known. Is the next step a new full-time job, launching his own business, or piecing together contract work? At the same time, my schedule has been bananas with early mornings, late nights, and travel sprinkled in, while we have put our house on the market and the kids have been trading the same bug for weeks.

In the middle of it, I have found myself asking a simple but complicated question: How do I love him well right now? How do I show up for his stress when mine is screaming for attention too?

If you are walking through a hard season with your spouse or partner, whether it is a job loss or transition, health issues, caring for aging parents, burnout, or financial uncertainty, you are not alone.

Researchers have found that one of the most important things in stressful seasons is “partner responsiveness,” the sense that your partner understands you, cares about you, and is genuinely there for you. People who feel that way about their partner tend to report less distress and more relationship satisfaction, even when life is hard.

Another big idea is that stress is best handled as a shared burden, not an individual one. Experts call this “dyadic coping” and use it to describe how couples manage stress together instead of separately. When partners talk openly about what they are facing, support each other, and make decisions as a team, they are more likely to stay connected and resilient.

So what does all of that look like on an ordinary Tuesday night when the kids are coughing, the emails will not stop, and your partner is wondering if they will ever feel settled again?

Here are a few practices I am trying, very imperfectly, in our own house.

Lead with empathy, not solutions.

Most of us are quick to jump into fixing mode: “Have you tried…?” “What if you just…?” I am trying instead to start with simple, grounded empathy: “This limbo is exhausting. Of course you are worn out.” That kind of validation says, I see you, and I get why this is hard. Feeling understood often does more good than the perfect pep talk.

Ask what kind of support they want.

One day your spouse may want to brainstorm résumés and business ideas. The next day, they may need quiet and a mindless show. Instead of guessing, try: “Do you want ideas right now, or do you just want me to listen?” Support works best when it matches what the person actually wants at the moment.

Be a soft place to land and a mirror of their strength.

During a job transition, it is easy for someone’s sense of worth to get tangled up with productivity and paychecks. Yes, your spouse needs comfort and a reminder that you are okay today. But they also need you to reflect on the parts of them that are bigger than this season: “You are wise and capable. That does not disappear just because things feel uncertain.” That is the “safe haven” and “source of strength” idea in real life.

Create tiny rituals of connection.

In seasons like ours, uninterrupted date nights can feel fictional. But small, consistent check-ins matter more than grand gestures. It might look like a ten-minute “how is your heart?” chat after bedtime, a quick midday text, or putting your phone down when they start talking. Couples who respond to each other’s little “bids” for attention most of the time are the ones who tend to stay happily together.

And when (not if) you get it wrong, repair. There will be nights when you snap, offer the wrong kind of support, or completely miss how overwhelmed your spouse is. The goal is not perfection; it is the willingness to circle back: “I am sorry I jumped into problem-solving. Can we try that again?” Those “repair attempts” are powerful because they send the message, Our relationship matters more than this moment.

I wish I could tell you I have mastered all of this. I have not. Some nights I get it right; some nights I crawl into bed and think, Well, that was not my best work as a wife, mom, or human.

But I am learning this: supporting your spouse in a difficult season is less about one heroic conversation and more about a hundred small choices to stay emotionally present, to say, “I see you,” “I am with you,” and “We will figure this out together,” even when the path forward is still foggy.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org.

/0 Comments/by
,

Grief is More Than Five Neat Stages

As lights go up and holiday music follows us into every store, grief has a way of slipping into the season uninvited.

Someone mentioned to me recently that the “five stages of grief” have been debunked.

I knew exactly what they meant. For years, those stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) have floated around like a script we’re all supposed to follow. Movies use them. TV shows use them. Friends whisper them in church hallways and at hospital bedsides: “She’s still in denial,” or “At least he’s reached acceptance.”

So when my friend said that, I started thinking about all the people I’ve sat with after a loss who quietly ask, “Is it bad that I’m not angry?” or “It’s been a year and I still cry all the time. Am I behind?” Underneath the question is the real fear: Am I grieving wrong?

That sent me digging into what the research actually says. Is the “stages idea” truly outdated? And if so, what do we know now about how people move through loss?

First, a little context. The five stages came from psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross back in 1969. She was studying people who were dying from terminal illnesses, not people grieving a loved one who had died. Her work was groundbreaking in its time because it gave language to the emotional world of people facing their own mortality. But as her ideas seeped into popular culture, the stages started getting applied to just about any loss: divorce, job changes, breakups, bereavement.

Even Kübler-Ross later admitted people were misunderstanding her. The stages were never meant to be a rigid, one-size-fits-all roadmap. Real people don’t move neatly from Denial to Anger to Bargaining like kids going through an inflatable obstacle course.

But that’s how we started to talk about grief, as if we could check off emotional boxes and eventually graduate to “acceptance.”

Over the last few decades, grief researchers have been gently, and sometimes not so gently, pushing back on that idea. When they actually follow people over time, they don’t see one tidy sequence. They see a lot of variation. Some people have intense, overwhelming grief that slowly eases. Some struggle for a long time. And some, maybe more than we’d expect, show what psychologists call resilience: they are deeply affected by the loss, but they’re still able to function, experience moments of joy, and keep living their lives even in the shadow of that grief.

That doesn’t mean they didn’t love the person enough. It means human beings are surprisingly capable of holding pain and everyday life in the same pair of hands.

Researchers have also found that while feelings like disbelief, yearning, anger, sadness, and acceptance do tend to appear at different points after a loss, they don’t line up in neat, universal stages. You might feel mostly numb at first and break down later. You might cry constantly in the early months and find yourself laughing with friends sooner than you expected. You might feel “mostly okay” 90 percent of the time, and then suddenly get hit with a wave of sorrow at the grocery store because you passed your loved one’s favorite cereal.

So has the “stages idea” been “debunked”? In a sense, yes. What’s been tossed out is the notion that there’s one correct emotional sequence everyone should follow on a predictable timetable. The emotions themselves, sadness, anger, bargaining, acceptance, are very real. Lots of people recognize themselves in one or more of those experiences. The problem comes when we treat them as rules instead of possibilities.

Newer grief science paints a picture that’s less linear, more flexible, and honestly, more comforting.

One of the most helpful models I’ve come across describes grief as a kind of back-and-forth motion rather than a straight line. Instead of “step 1: denial, step 2: anger,” it suggests that healthy grieving means moving between two different modes.

In one mode, you’re “loss-focused.” You feel the ache. You talk about the person. You cry, remember, tell stories, look through photos, or sit in that empty chair at the table and let yourself feel how wrong it all is.

In the other mode, you’re “restoration-focused.” You pay the bills, answer emails, bathe the kids, and figure out how to mow the lawn even though your spouse always did that. You learn how to live in a world where this person isn’t here in the same way anymore.

And here’s the key: you don’t pick one. You oscillate between the two. Some days you’re right in the center of the pain; other days you’re mostly focused on everyday life. That back-and-forth isn’t avoidance; it’s how your brain and body pace themselves so you don’t drown.

It also means you’re not failing if you find yourself laughing at a silly video one minute and sobbing in the car the next. You’re not “in denial” because you went to a football game and actually enjoyed yourself. You’re not “stuck in depression” because your eyes still fill with tears when you smell your grandfather’s aftershave. You’re doing what grieving people do: feeling your loss, and also slowly learning how to live inside a changed story.

Another shift in the grief world has to do with what it means to “move on.” For a long time, the goal was described as severing your emotional ties with the person who died so you could “detach” and invest in new relationships. Now, many experts argue that’s neither realistic nor desirable. Instead, they talk about “continuing bonds” and finding ways to stay meaningfully connected to the person who died, even as you move forward.

That might look like cooking your mother’s recipes on holidays, talking to your spouse or your child when you drive by a place they loved, keeping their photo on the fridge and telling your kids stories about them, setting a chair at the table during special occasions, or donating to a cause they cared about.

For many people, those ongoing connections are comforting, not pathological. It’s not that you never accept their death; it’s that love doesn’t evaporate just because a heartbeat stops. It reshapes itself.

Grief researchers also talk more and more about meaning. When someone we love dies, the world we thought we knew can feel shattered. Grieving isn’t just about learning how not to cry in the produce aisle; it’s about slowly piecing together a world that makes sense again. That might involve spiritual questions and identity questions such as: “Who am I now that I’m no longer their spouse, or their caregiver?” It may involve choices about how to live in a way that honors what that person valued.

That’s why grief counseling today often looks less like a therapist trying to drag you through stages, and more like someone walking beside you as you ask, and eventually answer, some of those hard questions.

Of course, not all grief eases with time. A small percentage of people experience what’s now called Prolonged Grief Disorder, which is grief that remains intense and overwhelming for a year or more, to the point that it severely disrupts daily life. If you feel frozen, unable to function, stuck in guilt or yearning or hopelessness long after everyone else seems to think you “should” be better, that’s not a character flaw. It’s a sign you deserve more support. There are therapists and grief specialists who can help anyone in that place find a way forward.

But for most of us, grief looks less like climbing a staircase and more like learning to live with an ache that changes over time. It might be a roaring wave at first, knocking you flat. Then, months or years later, it might show up as a soft tug at your heart when your child graduates, or when you hear a song on the radio, or when you meet someone new and think, “I wish you could have known them.”

So if you’re grieving and worried that you’re not doing it right because you skipped a stage, or circled back, or never felt the thing you were “supposed” to feel, here’s the good news: there is no universal checklist. There is only your love, your story, and your way through.

You’re allowed to have days when you function just fine and days when you can’t stop crying. You’re allowed to keep their sweatshirt in your closet or talk to their photo, or bake their favorite cookies every year on their birthday. You’re allowed to laugh. You’re allowed to feel joy. You’re allowed to fall in love again. None of that erases what you had; it just means your heart is big enough to hold more than one thing at once.

Maybe the most merciful thing modern grief research tells us is this: you’re not behind. You’re not broken because you don’t fit into five tidy stages. You are a human being who loved someone and still loves them. You’re finding your own path forward, one breath, one memory, one day at a time.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org.

/0 Comments/by

Honoring Where You’re From While Building What Comes Next

The first time you pack a home to start a new one, you realize you’re not just moving furniture, you’re moving a culture.

I found that out the year my husband and I wrapped and packed our new dishes next to his large trunk of travel souvenirs and my grandmother’s floral music box. On paper, that box held a smorgasbord of fragile things. In practice, it carried a thousand little “we always…” and “we never…” statements that would follow us wherever we went.

Starting a family has a way of bringing those scripts to the surface. Holidays arrive, and suddenly there are three ideas of when and where to celebrate, as well as four opinions about what type of food should be on the table. Bedtime comes with a debate: two stories and a song? A quick goodbye or a slow cuddle? We inherit so much: our values, stories, jokes, grudges, and the choreography of everyday life.

The trick isn’t to erase what came before; it’s to honor it while shaping a culture that fits the people we are becoming.

Research gives us permission to take that work seriously. Decades of studies point to something deceptively simple: families who build steady routines and meaningful rituals tend to function better. Kids are more secure, parents report lower stress, and couples feel more satisfied, not because life gets easier, but because those small, repeated touchpoints stitch everyone together. The Gottmans would say these rituals are part of how couples “create shared meaning,” the sturdy beams of the Sound Relationship House. It’s not just the big traditions; it’s the goofy goodbye at the door, the nightly five-minute check-in, the Sunday call to Nana. Tiny things, done on purpose, turn into the grammar of “us.”

Still, none of us starts with a blank page. The way we handle conflict, money, faith, chores, and affection often echoes our family of origin. Attachment researchers have shown that early relational “templates” have a way of hitching a ride into adulthood. That can be a gift. Maybe warmth around the dinner table comes naturally. It can also be a challenge. Maybe we flinch when voices rise because that never ended well in our childhood home.

Naming those patterns doesn’t dishonor our parents or grandparents; it gives us the agency to decide what we’ll carry forward and what we’ll set down.

Marriage researcher Scott Stanley has a phrase I love: “decide, don’t slide.” He uses it for big transitions, but it fits family culture, too. It’s easy to slide into what’s familiar: we host because we always have, we drive six hours because that’s what’s expected, we serve the dish no one eats because it’s “tradition.” Deciding looks different. It sounds like, “We’re grateful for that, and here’s how we’ll do it now.” Intentional choices beat inertia every time.

Of course, our families of origin don’t stop being our families just because we start a new one. Therapist Esther Perel talks often about boundaries, not as walls to keep people out, but as guardrails that keep relationships safe. In practice, that might mean you send the holiday schedule to both sets of parents at the same time so no one is surprised. It might mean you ask that certain couple of conversations remain just that—between the two of you. It might mean expanding the table some years and narrowing it others. Boundaries make room for generosity because they reduce resentment.

I saw all of this come to life on the holiday we tried to please absolutely everyone. We committed to two Christmas meals, the long drive between them, and the “quick stop” at a third house that turned into a three-hour detour. By dessert, we were smiling for photos and privately exhausted with each other. The next year, we did it differently. We sat at the kitchen table with coffee and made four little lists, not as a manifesto but as a conversation.

First, we asked what we wanted to keep exactly as it was. Then we looked at what to tweak so it fit our season: the marathon holiday drive became a huge no. We decided one year we’d host, one year we’d travel, and one year we’d keep it small and invite anyone who wants to join us. We chose one thing to start that felt like us: a quick “rose, bud, thorn” check-in at dinner where each person shares a highlight, a hope, and a hard thing. And finally, we retired one tradition that had quietly stopped serving our family. We didn’t bury it; we gave it a grateful goodbye.

None of that made our family perfect. But it did make us more deliberate. We tied our choices to values we wanted to grow: gratitude, hospitality, playfulness, faith. Our rituals weren’t just busywork; they were habits of the heart. We put the small things on the calendar, because meaningful traditions rarely survive on good intentions. And we gave ourselves permission to laugh when the beautiful plan met the very real toddlers.

If you’re wondering whether any of this matters beyond feeling cozy, the answer is yes. Scholars like Brad Wilcox and others have shown that, on average, children do better (academically, emotionally, and financially) when they grow up in stable, committed two-parent homes. There are wonderful exceptions, and every family constellation can be loving and strong.

But it’s fair to say that investing in the culture of your home is not just sentimental, it’s one of the most practical ways to give kids a secure base. Rituals and routines are how love puts on work clothes.

So maybe this is your season to sift the heirlooms. Keep what is unmistakably good. Sand and refinish what needs adapting. And be brave enough to build a few pieces of your own. It might be Friday night pizza on the floor, a monthly family service project, a standing date night, or a once-a-week FaceTime with the cousins. It might be the boundary that says, “We’ll join you Saturday morning, but we’ll sleep in our own beds Friday night.” It might simply be the quiet promise that your partner gets the benefit of the doubt, even when the day goes off the rails.

Years from now, your children may not remember what you served or whether the napkins matched. They’ll remember the feeling around the table. They’ll remember that in your home, people showed up, stories were told, forgiveness was normal, and love was practiced on purpose. That’s what it means to honor where you’re from while building what comes next.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org.

/0 Comments/by
, ,

Second Chances, Slower Starts: How We Got to Fewer Divorces

Love isn’t dead, but it is getting wiser.

Pew Research Center’s newly released brief on divorce lands with a hopeful headline for families: compared with the 1980s, Americans are less likely to divorce than they used to be. That’s not wishful thinking or an over simplification, it shows up in a long arc of numbers. Researchers at Bowling Green State University track the “refined” divorce rate (divorces per 1,000 married women). That rate peaked in 1980 at 22.6 and has fallen substantially since down to 14.4. In other words, among people who do marry, marriages today are, on average, more stable than they were in the Reagan era.

Pew’s snapshot brings the story into the present tense: divorce still touches many lives, with over 1.8 million Americans divorcing in 2023. But the broader trend is that divorce is less common than decades ago. 

So what’s behind the decline? A few big trends seem to be at play.

First, Americans are marrying later, and that matters.

The typical first-time bride is now around 28–29 years-old, and the typical groom is about 30–31, up dramatically from newlyweds being in their late teens/early twenties in the 1980s. Waiting a little longer tends to reduce divorce risk; people bring more maturity, more education, and a clearer sense of “fit.” Peer-reviewed studies find that marrying young is linked to higher odds of splitting. Translation: couples are slowing down, choosing more intentionally, and that’s paying off.

Second, the marriage pool has changed. Today’s marriages are more selective and more likely to involve partners with higher education, and education is tied to lower divorce risk. That compositional shift nudges the overall divorce rate down. (Think of it like this: if more of the people who marry have the traits associated with stability, the averages move.)

Now, a key caveat that actually strengthens the good news: the marriage rate itself is lower than it was in the late 20th century. Fewer marriages overall means fewer opportunities for divorce, which helps pull down “crude” divorce measures (per 1,000 people). But even when you focus only on those who are married—the refined rate mentioned above—divorce has still fallen since the 1980 peak. Both things can be true: we have fewer marriages, and the marriages that do happen are, on average, sturdier.

How should we interpret this shift?

First, take heart. The cultural panic of “half of all marriages end in divorce” was always an oversimplification and it’s even less true today. Many couples are entering marriage later, with more shared expectations, and they’re staying together longer. That steadiness shows up in the data Pew just pulled together and in the federal stats underneath it.

Second, remember what actually protects kids and couples day to day: not a date on a license, but the temperature of the relationship. Reviews in top journals keep pointing to the same levers such as lower conflict, clearer routines, and intentional commitment. Those are choices any couple can practice, whether you married at 23 or 33.

Finally, keep the denominator in mind. Because fewer people are marrying at all, crude divorce rates will stay low even if behavior doesn’t change. That’s why the refined rate is so useful, because it tells us that among those who are tying the knot, marriages really are more durable than they were a generation ago.

That’s worth a quiet cheer, a date night, and maybe a shared Google calendar to keep the wheels turning at home. 

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org.

/0 Comments/by