What Are Your Family Rules?
How Family Rules Profoundly Affect Our Lives
BY ARLENE HARDER, MA, MFT
Discover for hidden family rules continue their influence for many years, especially those rules we followed unconsciously.
PLEASE NOTE: This piece is part of three articles dealing with rituals, rules and myths of families. Since all three use my family of origin as an example, you may understand this better if you also read: Common Family Rituals Reinforce Family Rules and What is Your Family Myth?
"It is very difficult and expensive to undo after you are married the things that your mother and father did to you while you were putting your first six birthdays behind you."
— Bureau of Social Hygiene Study, 1928
Perhaps you don't think of your day-to-day activities in the home as "family rules." You're more likely to think of rules in terms of what you specifically tell your children, such as, "You know it's a rule that you can't jump on the furniture!"
But beyond that, children also learn what is appropriate and inappropriate by simply absorbing what goes on in the family from day to day and year to year. From these rules children conclude what kind of rules they want for their own lives, and for their children.
When I consider how this process worked in my own life, I could use one phrase to describe it: "In the Fabian Family Father Knows Best." Our parents seldom used those exact words, but all four of us children clearly understood four basic ground rules, each of which was reinforced by its own set of rules.
I set them out for you here so you might consider what kind of rules you learned from the family in which you grew up — and what kinds of rules you're teaching your children.
Rule One: Parents are always united in love and in decisions.
 Fathers and mothers have specific roles to fulfill.
The father has veto power over decisions
These rules were based both on a genuine love and affection my parents had for one another and on a decision, disclosed by my mother when I was grown, that they would never disagree in front of us. In fact, we were prevented from seeing that they ever disagreed to any significant degree. Consequently, I believed for many years that couples could not both love and fight!
While my parents' unity created a rigid boundary between them and us, they functioned within well-defined, separate roles. My father was designated head of the household and disciplinarian. He made the major decisions, such as those concerning money and where we would live. My mother played the traditional role of a pastor's wife. She also juggled many responsibilities effectively. She cooked, cleaned, mended, wallpapered, plastered, sang in the choir, taught Sunday School, entertained, wrote articles, and worked full time.
Rule Two: Children are to follow rules.
Children must love and respect their parents.
Don't question the rules.
Do things the right way, "the Fabian way."
Do your chores unless it's your birthday or you're sick.
Get good grades in school.
These rules best illustrate my parents' beliefs about children. Children could not be trusted to learn naturally without a great deal of direction and criticism. They needed parents to teach them right and wrong. So we learned the "correct" way to do any task, which I think of as "the Fabian way," and were not encouraged to discover alternative methods on our own.
When we inquired why we had to do something "the Fabian way" or why some request had to be followed, the most frequent response was, "Because I said so." Sometimes we would get an answer, but I was seldom satisfied. Yet absolute respect is required when there is absolute authority, so we didn't question more than once and obediently complied with their rules. Love, I came to see, was another matter.
Had my father died before I had a chance to work out the resentment I felt because of his strictness, I would not have learned to loved him as freely and deeply as he wanted to be loved. Fortunately, I had several opportunities. For example, when he and mother came to visit about 1983, I arranged to have him accompany me on a trip I needed to make in a town half an hour away. (I told mother I wanted to be alone with him and she was glad to give me that opportunity, since it was rare for them to be apart after their retirement.)
As we drove, I asked him what effect he felt the early loss of his father had on his development of a strict style of parenting. From that beginning, we discussed many things I had never talked about with him. For example, I told him how deeply I was hurt when he criticized me from the pulpit, in front of the whole congregation, when I graduated from confirmation class and had turned to the girl next to me to make a comment. He said that at the time he thought he was doing the right thing. However, when he and mother left for Ohio at the end of that stay in California, he gave me a hug and said something I had yearned to hear from him for decades. He simply said, "If there is anything I've done to hurt you, I am sorry." I will always remember that simple apology, for apology did not come easily to our father.
Also, having gone through a good deal of therapy, I learned to forgive him and accept the reality that, considering his background, he was not able to be anyone other than who he was as a father.
Rule Three: Say whatever you think and feel as long as it's not negative.
Don't trust your feelings if they are negative.
Do not get angry, argue, or fight.
Parents can deny weaknesses and mistakes.
Children must admit weaknesses and mistakes.
These sub-rules, which controlled discussions in our family, gave the illusion that we could freely discuss anything. After I left home and got some perspective on the situation, I realized that the choice of subjects and the depth to which we could explore them was controlled entirely by these family rules.
What could and could not be said, which grew out of the original position that "Father Knows Best," gradually took on a force of its own that was, I believe, quite beyond what my parents expected or intended, with several unfortunate consequences.
The first negative effect exacerbated the normal distance that exists between children and parents. For example, although we children were expected to admit our mistakes, so we could learn from them, my father was unwilling to discuss and admit his errors, even outside the family. Thus we were prevented from learning from his mistakes. (And so was he!) Furthermore, this kept us from seeing that our parents had the whole, normal range of human strengths and frailties. It also prevented us from sharing in their fears and struggles.
The second effect of these rules circumscribed the ways we were allowed to communicate our needs. In a home in which one could not express negative feelings, get angry, or discuss topics unacceptable to the parents, manipulation became an effective, if indirect, way to get needs met. It took me many years to learn to be direct in my communication and to believe I could be understand and get my needs met without going around the bush.
Rule Four: Families participate in activities together.
Families do fun and interesting things.
Children can "do their own thing" if parents approve.
Without this rule, I think we would have turned out quite differently. True, all four of us are, to one degree or another, perfectionists because of the first three rules under which we were raised. But we've managed to do reasonably well because of this last "rule," which we experienced as the least rigid and the most fun.
True, it was our parents who decided when and where we would go on vacations, what time we had to return from the park, at what restaurant we would eat, what movie we would see, etc. Yet we children didn't question their right to decide such things (we weren't the kind who rebelled) and simply enjoyed the opportunity to go many interesting places and experience a variety of events.In fact, I believe it was through family activities, almost all of which were experienced as enjoyable despite the requirement to participate in them, that my parents showed they genuinely cared for us. And we children knew we were privileged to have greater horizons than many of our friends whose parents were less authoritarian.
Therefore, despite the restrictions I felt as a child, there was a positive, cumulative effect of our many different shared experiences, from fishing and camping to ice skating and trips to museums. When I stood on the huge platform in Grand Central Station, waiting for a train to take us on a trip to a new adventure, I forgot the rules and regulations, the demands and expectations of my father. Somehow, deep inside, I was glad to be a member of the Fabian family.
© Copyright 1983, Revised 2005, Arlene Harder, MA, MFT |
