Coffin Corner

By LAURA LANDRO

What can 1,500 Americans born a century ago, most of them long dead, tell us about the secret to a long life? Plenty, according to Howard S. Friedman and Leslie R. Martin, two psychologists who, in "The Longevity Project," mine an eight-decade research effort for answers to the kinds of questions that sent Ponce de León searching for the Fountain of Youth.

There are no magic potions on offer here, but many of the findings are provocative. The best childhood predictor of longevity, it turns out, is a quality best defined as conscientiousness: "the often complex pattern of persistence, prudence, hard work, close involvement with friends and communities" that produces a well-organized person who is "somewhat obsessive and not at all carefree."

The study was initiated in 1921 by Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman, who asked San Francisco teachers to pick out their brightest students—most were about 10 years old—to help him try to identify early glimmers of high potential. Terman was most interested in intellectual achievement (his revision of Alfred Binet's intelligence scale produced the Stanford-Binet IQ test), but his interviews were so detailed that the results could be used as a basis for studying the respondents' lives in follow-up interviews across the years. Terman himself died in 1956, just shy of 80; after his death his work was picked up by others, with Mr. Friedman and Ms. Martin launching their portion of the project in 1990.

The study's participants, dubbed Terman's Termites, were bright students, but having a high IQ didn't seem to play a direct role in longevity. Neither did going on to an advanced degree. The authors suggest that persistence and the ability to navigate life's challenges were better predictors of longevity.

Some of the findings in "The Longevity Project" are surprising, others are troubling. Cheerful children, alas, turned out to be shorter-lived than their more sober classmates. The early death of a parent had no measurable effect on children's life spans or mortality risk, but the long-term health effects of broken families were often devastating. Parental divorce during childhood emerged as the single strongest predictor of early death in adulthood. The grown children of divorced parents died almost five years earlier, on average, than children from intact families. The causes of death ranged from accidents and violence to cancer, heart attack and stroke. Parental break-ups remain, the authors say, among the most traumatic and harmful events for children.

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The Longevity Project

By Howard S. Friedman and Leslie R. Martin
(Hudson Street Press, 248 pages, $25.95)

"The Longevity Project" is short on actual statistics, asserting instead broad trends among its study subjects and leaving readers to search through footnotes and then track down published studies if they want to learn more. With its relatively small sample and retrospective design, it hardly reaches the level of large population-based scientific investigations like the Framingham Heart Study, which followed thousands of participants for decades to identify common factors that contribute to cardiovascular disease, or the Women's Health Study, a 10-year randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of nearly 40,000 women age 45 and older.

Mr. Friedman and Ms. Martin do claim to have used accepted scientific-validation methods to confirm that their findings can be extrapolated for a general understanding of health and longevity. But their results are based mostly on sifting participants' self-reported data, with death certificates providing the only verifiable information: age and cause of death. Data on factors like genetic predisposition to disease weren't gathered.

Moreover, the study's subjects lived most of their lives in a dramatically different time, before AIDS threatened longevity and before medical advances such as angioplasty and the development of cholesterol drugs came along to improve life-span. The respondents were almost uniformly white children from middle-class families, so the results don't tell us much about the longevity of other groups. And many of the girl students did not go on to have careers, so "The Longevity Project" focuses on men when it discusses workplace matters and their role in long-term health.

The book offers quizzes so that readers can assess various qualities—such as sociability, neuroticism and the tendency to "catastrophize"—and compare the results with those of Terman's Termites. The respondents to the study who fared best in the longevity sweepstakes tended to have a fairly high level of physical activity, a habit of giving back to the community, a thriving and long-running career, and a healthy marriage and family life. They summoned resilience against reverses and challenges— including divorce, loss of a spouse, career upsets and war trauma. By contrast, those with the darkest dispositions—catastrophizers, who viewed every stumble as a calamity—were most likely to die sooner. (The book doesn't say by what margin; a study published in 1998 reported that men in the Terman group were 25% more likely to die by age 65 if they were catastrophizers.)

And what about those cheerful, relatively doomed kids? The authors tell us that, later in life, such children would be more likely than their peers to throw caution to the wind when it came to life-shortening habits like smoking, drinking and driving fast cars. The chipper types were also more likely to die from homicide, suicide or accident. Of course, the authors don't suggest telling happy kids to wipe the grins off their faces, but Mr. Friedman and Ms. Martin do make a case for instilling values such as forethought and purposefulness. Indeed, "The Longevity Project" is not just an exercise in numbers-crunching; its larger aim seems to be to improve public health by encouraging a society with more goal-oriented and conscientious citizens. Now that's a long-term project.

Ms. Landro writes The Informed Patient column for the Journal.

Twenty-one participants attended the "Mastering the Mysteries of Love Leader Training" at a 3-day Course Intensive led by Authorized MML Trainer Bento Leal at The Relationship Institute at UTS on Jan. 28-30, 2011. Following are comments from some of those who attended the leader training:

Check out the event Video!

 

"I thought I would get some good advice on counseling with young married couples, but I received much more than that! I was guided step-by-step to discover the art of masterful human communication and the divine quality that is revealed in each person when genuine expression and empathic listening are employed. As Bento Leal (our trainer) put it, ‘what better way to live for the sake of others than to listen with your whole heart?'"
- Joe Leonard, Clifton, N.J.

"What excited me most was the ‘expression stick,' which gave me security and protection I needed whenever my husband and I had to discuss any issues important to our family life. My husband looks more confident now to break down the wall which has existed between us, (but) we have a long way to go. We plan to study this content each day and practice it together." - Ayako Heller, Harlem, NY
"The relationship enhancement skills broke down several communication barriers that my wife and I have experienced in the past... Even one of the skills taught can have a huge impact on a couple's relationship and be life-changing!" - Jorg Heller, Harlem, NY	"Last week my wife was so upset with me because I wasn't listening to her. The MML training helped me to see the problems we face from her perspective. It put me "in her shoes." She was surprised to see how I changed in my listening and my attitude towards her. Since then, our relationship has improved a lot." - Matthew John, UTS Student
"It is easier to fall in love than to keep that love. I learned more that I can use in practice than just another theory." - Tchinda Fabrice Mbuna	"Acknowledging the good in another person helps to defuse a negative situation and promotes a healthy dialog. Bento Leal, who facilitated the MML training, is excellent!" - Theresa DeVore
"This training conveyed useful techniques that are easy to use!" - Rev. Avis Clark, Professional Counselor NYC Dept. of Education	"These skills can change people's lives in their marriages and other types of relationships." - Elece McKnight, UTS student
"The communication skills are really practical and can strengthen marriages!" - Drissa Kone, UTS student	"I would recommend this training to others!" - Rev. Brenda Fraser

Mastering the Mysteries of Love (MML), co-written by Dr. Bernard G. Guerney, Jr., and Mary Ortwein, M.A., is a version of the nationally-recognized, research-based program titled Relationship Enhancement developed by Dr. Guerney in the 1960s. The course is designed for couples, normally presented in a class setting, and teaches 10 key communication skills, notably Showing Understanding (Empathic Listening), Expression (Speaking to Be Understood), Discussion (Pattern of Taking Turns), Conflict Management and Problem Solving Skills. Mr. Leal explains that "the goal of the course is to help couples not only make marriages that survive but actually thrive -getting better, stronger, deeper, happier, and more fulfilling!"

The 3-day (16 hour) Intensive at UTS offered the trainees the opportunity to learn and practice the skills themselves as class participants, interspersed with hour-long sessions where they practiced teaching the course to each other in groups of four.

The training was extremely dynamic and interactive based on a comprehensive learning model of listening, seeing, and experiencing by doing. On the final day, each trainee received a Certificate of Completion naming them as an Authorized Program Leader of MML, authorizing them to order course materials and to teach the course to anyone, anywhere, any time - an excellent credential for teaching the course to couples in a marriage or couples ministry in a church, small group fellowships, home settings, and at community organizations such as at schools, libraries, etc.

Several of the trainees reported going home after the first day, using the skills with their spouse and others and discovering remarkable improvement in their communication, and coming back the next day and reporting the breakthrough to the rest of the class.

Before going to the airport to fly back home to the Bay Area in California, Mr. Leal said that he is looking forward to conduct similar trainings in the near future at The Relationship Institute in NYC or as a satellite course in other cities around the country.

More about the Mastering the Mysteries of Love course can be found at www.skillswork.org. For more information and ideas of how the MML course might be used, contact Bento Leal at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   or The Relationship Institute at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Data From the National Survey of Family Growth
Based on a 2002 study by the CDC based on face-to-face interviews with 10,847 women age 15-44 in 1995.
Summary of results by Richard Niolon

How many women marry, divorce, and cohabitate?

• About 28% of all women have never married nor cohabitated. 31% have married with cohabitation, and 31% have married without cohabitation. 10% have married but never cohabitated. 75% of Black women are likely to marry at some point in their lives, compared to 91% of White women, though both rate it equally as important
• At any given time, roughly 50% of women are married, 7% are cohabitating
• Trends were for high chances of divorce from the 1950s to mid-1970s, leveling off from 1975-1984 for White women, but increasing from the 1960's to 1970's slowly, then increasing at a greater rate in the 1980's.
• For all women, 39% of cohabitation relationships end in 3 years, and of those remaining, 58% turn to marriage. 49% of cohabitation relationships end in 5 years, and of those remaining, 70% turn to marriage. The percentage that turn to marriage within 5 years are 75% for White women, 61% for Hispanic women, and 48% for Black women
• Increasing cohabitation is offset by the increases in divorce, so the number of coupled women is about the same

How likely is a cohabitating relationship to turn into a marriage?

• Cohabitation is more likely to turn to marriage if the woman comes from a two-parent home, has never been raped (14% for White women, 5% for Black women), values religion (7% more likely), has never suffered from GAD, and comes from a higher family education and income. This is less so for White women (4% difference in cohabitation to marriage rates between low and high incomes families), but more so for Black women (32% difference in cohabitation to marriage rates between low and high incomes families)
• White women were more likely to have cohabitation turn to marriage if they were employed. Black women were more likely to have cohabitation turn to marriage if they were employed full-time, but more likely to have the marriage break up if they were employed part-time
• Community prosperity is related to relationship stability, with cohabitation being more likely to lead to marriage in prosperous areas (27% more likely for White women, 13% more likely for Black women), and both marriage and cohabitation being more likely to fail in poor neighborhoods.

  Using rates of male unemployment as the guide:

The good news is that research on what works has moved on apace in recent years. Although a healthy debate continues as to why married families tend to have better outcomes, it is no longer tenable to argue that selection is all. Commitment theory and research draw together the importance of both family structure and quality of relationship for healthy stable families. Studies of relationship education programmes also show that great relationships can be taught and learnt, knocking one third or more off breakdown risk. It’s what my charity does really well, for example, even if we only scratch the surface.

Let me just highlight one especially promising new area of research from the US on stability amongst unmarried couples. This is important because the main driver of UK family breakdown since the 1980s has been precisely the collapse of unmarried couples. The early findings from this new research show that certain acts – such as taking out a joint club membership together, getting a pet together, buying a home together – tend to distinguish who stays together and who splits up. These “acts of dedication” all represent deliberate decisions that reflect future intent as a couple. Living together and having a baby together do not have such predictive value. Couples can “slide” more than “decide” through these transitions. The importance of decision-making on subsequent behaviour is one plausible explanation for why almost all intact couples with 15 year old children are married. The deliberate decision to marry represents the ultimate “act of dedication”.

So here is my serious and urgent question to the government. Where is your family policy?

You’ve been running the show for nearly a year. You must be aware of the gigantic and rising bill associated with family breakdown. £42,000 million every year. Through a variety of channels (including the independent ”Breakdown” and “Breakthrough” Britain family policy papers that you yourselves commissioned) you’ve been shown the evidence that it is not divorce but the collapse of unmarried families that is the driver behind rising family breakdown. Yet, aside from the solo efforts of Iain Duncan Smith, you have barely acknowledged the nature and extent of the problem, let alone policy solutions.

Part of this policy should involve family structure. The Prime Minister’s verbal support for marriage is confused by contradictory actions. The Department of Work and Pensions is reintroducing marital status into their research programmes. The Office of National Statistics is eliminating marital status from their future birth data. The recent Field poverty review and Allen early years review blindly and irresponsibly ignored any mention whatsoever of the impact of family structure. Elimination of the couple penalty is the most positive policy to date but will probably reduce fraud more than family breakdown. The trend away from marriage began twenty years before tax credits added their disincentive to family formation. The Prime Minister has research on his side. Government should be sending clear and unequivocal signals about the protective benefits of marriage.

Part of this policy should also involve family relationships. Despite pronouncements about the importance of relationship quality, you have no explicit policy on preventive relationship education programmes that offer the best chance of doing anything about this. Less than half of the newly awarded £7.5m annual funding for “relationship support” might be considered preventive. Even if all were preventive, this fund would still only represent £1 spent on turning off the tap for every £5,500 spent on mopping up the mess. It’s hardly a determined effort to get to grips with the serious problem of family breakdown.

What might a determined effort look like? Let me reiterate the enormous costs that we pay already. £42,000 million every year. A great deal of family breakdown is utterly avoidable. If that weren’t the case, relationship education programmes would have no impact. What would you spend today to try to reduce this bill tomorrow? £40 million could kick start a national rollout of relationship education. That’s still only a tiny 0.1%. If it proves fruitful, you should be far more ambitious.

So where is your family policy?

See http://familyscholars.org/2008/04/15/the-taxpayer-costs-of-divorce-and-unwed-... for US figures.

The Art of Compromise

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious.

- Sun Tzu

Couples are often advised to “choose their battles.” That is to say, know which issues are worth fighting for and which aren’t really important. The logic is that you should save your strength for the things that really matter.

Unfortunately, not all conflicts have clear winners. In some instances, both parties may have reasonable but contradictory claims. You can go ahead and fight it out … but neither of you will be victorious. In such situations, you and your partner must be able to compromise. Otherwise, your relationship will reach a stalemate, with neither of you being able to move forward.

 

How to Compromise http://www.twoofus.org/educational-content/articles/the-art-of-compromise/index.aspx