A predictive map for family happiness

Dr Lawrence Fisher and colleagues of the department of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, have developed a family map which can predict which families will cope well with particular problems. The map shows that for a family to be as healthy as possible it should be optimistic, believe in God and be led by a traditional male. Dr Fisher and his team studied 255 'normal' families in central California and uncovered correlations between 14 indicators of physical and mental health and more than 50 ways that a family behaves and organises itself.

The research found that the traditional marriage benefits the man more than the women. The popular notion is that it's healthy for people to express their emotions. But Dr Fisher found that if the woman is hostile, tries to make the man feel guilty, talks more than he does and does not allow any warm connections to come through, then the man is very likely to be depressed. She on the other hand is unaffected. But if she allows him to take control of an argument, the effects may be positively harmful to her.

If the woman is able to establish some privacy - such as a rule about knocking before opening the bedroom door - and has something she does on her own, then there is a strong correlation with both self-esteem and taking care of her health.

Sex-role traditionalism is associated in men, the study finds, with avoiding anxiety or depression and having regular health checks. This traditionalism encompasses believing that women are mainly involved in child rearing and that women should put the needs of the family before their own.

Dr Fisher believes that the strong connection between religious belief and good health shown by the study may be because religion gives families a wider support group.

Smoking among women in the study decreased only when they regularly got some privacy.

Both men and women who had an optimistic belief that everything would turn out all right in the end, tended to enjoy a sense of well-being, self-esteem and to be free from depression.

Dr Fisher's recipe for the healthy couple includes 'organised cohesiveness', where the partners know who is in charge of which areas of their joint life and what the rules are, and where they are close to each other and spend time sharing thoughts and feelings.