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Life Lessons: Stretching Student Perspectives on Love and Family
New Byrne seminar captures the modern family in all its diversity
This article is part of an occasional series on the Byrne Family First-Year Seminar Program. The one-credit courses offer students a chance to explore science, art, politics, and other topics as they learn from professors who are deeply – and often passionately – immersed in research. In its third year, the seminars program is a central part of the transformation of undergraduate education in New Brunswick.
What does a “normal” family look like? Does a successful marriage have to begin as a romantic union? Should you expect your spouse to be your lifelong inspiration?
Students in a new Byrne seminar, “What Did You Say? Communication Dynamics of the Modern Family,” are learning that the answers to these questions are more complex than they may have imagined.
The seminar began chipping away at outdated notions of family in the very first class, when an informal poll of the 20 students showed that only about half came from traditional two-parent families. In the United States as a whole, the percentage is even smaller, about 25 percent.
“There is no normal anymore, which is the point we were trying to pick up on,” said Jennifer Theiss, who co-teaches the class with Vikki Katz. Both are faculty members in the School of Communication and Information.
The seminar examines the communication challenges couples face as they move from courtship to marriage, into their child-rearing years, and through later-life changes such as divorce and deteriorating health. As students take a closer look at these life stages, they’ll examine the family in all its modern permutations, including immigrant families and step-families, and get an introduction to the research that probes below the surface to explain why families behave as they do.
“We want to give students an opportunity to explore things they have always seen or thought about in a systematic way,” Katz said. “They have known family on an emotional or a descriptive level, but may never have thought it out in a systematic way.”
Last week, students had to think about marriage in a way that was unfamiliar, and a little unsettling to them. One of their assigned readings was a chapter from Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest memoir, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, in which the author visits ethnic Hmong families in Vietnam, and discovers marriages that are stable and solid, yet appear devoid of romance and resembling a pragmatic working arrangement.
Gilbert writes of being stunned to discover that an elderly Hmong woman she interviewed does not place marriage “at the center of her emotional biography in any way that was familiar to me.”
When it was the students’ turn to give their reaction to such marriages, one replied “depressing” and a few others quickly agreed. But Theiss used the reading as an opportunity to raise questions about the Western ideal of marriage. Noting that the divorce rate in the United States is above 50 percent, she cited a recent survey that said the quality many American women want most in a husband is the ability for him to inspire them.
“You have to wonder how many people walk down the aisle with these starry-eyed expectations that the person at the other end of the aisle is going to inspire them every day for the rest of their life,” Theiss said. “Those are tall orders . . . big shoes to fill. Maybe the Hmong people kind of have something here.”
After stretching students’ notion of marriage, the seminar analyzed the various theories of love. Students learned John Lee’s love styles, such as Eros (passionate and physical) and Agape (selfless love), and then did an exercise to see which one or which combination of the six styles fit them the best.
Student Sierra Silva said the seminar is her favorite class, and said the exercise on love was particularly enlightening. “This allows me to look at relationships in a brand new light,” she said. “It’s so interesting to see why you react to certain people.”
Theiss and Katz decided to offer the seminar because family is at the intersection of their respective research interests.
Theiss focuses on the ways in which romantic relationships shape and are shaped by interpersonal communication between partners, particularly during major transitions in relational life.
Katz’s primary research centers on children in immigrant families, and the roles that they play as the main English speakers in decoding language, culture, and media for their families and community.
Besides the readings, students are required to conduct three interviews with a family member or friend focusing on getting married, becoming parents, and a major family transition. They must also write a one-page reflection on each of these interviews.
Katz said the seminar presents some challenging material but also provides some useful knowledge students can use in negotiating their own relationships. “We want them to walk away with a deeper understanding of how and why their own family functions the way it does, and a greater sense of empathy for the things they may have experienced or seen,” she said.
