This book wins the award for longest post-colon title: The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Tell Your Family History, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More.  Bruce Feiler dives into an eclectic amount of topics that help shape the modern family.  After talking to experts from plenty of backgrounds (military, Silicon Valley, sex ed mom), he put together over 200 “unique practices” to improve family dynamics.  

I skimmed through a couple of topics (a chapter on the interior of the house?) but most of them were at least intriguing.  With each chapter he weaves through a topic or issue then leaps into the research on it, then breaks down practical takeaways to address it.  Some takeaways are corny and some are great but this just lends to the variety of families out there. 

This is absolutely irrelevant to the book but here’s an interesting side note I discovered while researching the author. Feiler created the Feiler faster thesis (FFT) which is defined as ”a thesis, or supported argument, in modern journalism that suggests that the increasing pace of society is matched by (and perhaps driven by) journalists' ability to report events and the public's desire for more information.” (source)

1. The Importance Of Family Dinners

Feiler does a great job presenting the evidence for the topic and then providing practical ways to thread it into the reader’s family.  One of these topics is family dinners.  According to some surprising evidence, the benefits of family dinners range from improved vocabulary to being less likely to have an eating disorder or commit suicide.  Family dinners are also the largest predictor of school success and a decrease in behavioral issues.  

When I was growing up, eating dinner with my family was wild.  My mom’s delicious cooking (which I didn’t appreciate until much later) was always overshadowed by the outgoing antics of our family of six.  Dinners were often chaotic and filled with emotions. It was these moments that I look back on as some of my favorite memories as a child.  

With two young kids, the window between getting home from work and bedtime is narrow.  Fitting in a healthy meal with four butts touching dinner seats at the same time is rarely easy but we manage to do it pretty consistently.  Natural discussions about food and the day occur but we try to fit in a “favorite part of the day” and “what are you grateful for?” as well. 

Feiler suggests other dinnertime activities like a new word of the day, each kid identifying a “bad and good” part of the day, and the “What’s the difference?” game with no repeat answers (e.g. what’s the difference between Florida and Texas?).

2. Argument Styles: Men vs. Women

Naturally, marital conflict pops up as a topic in the Secrets of Happy Families.  One of the most interesting parts of this theme was the physiological differences in the ways men and women react in arguments. 

• Men’s fighting expression is anger and contempt while women’s is fear, complaining, and sadness. 

• Men self-soothe (as evidenced by a drop in blood pressure) by verbally retaliating. Women can calm themselves down without this need.

• Men activate their sympathetic nervous system (fight, flight, freeze) quickly and cool down very slowly whereas women cool down much more quickly.

Why such a discrepancy? These male traits are critical in life-and-death situations such as rescuing someone from a fire or protecting someone in a fight but the human mind never evolved to differentiate “about to die” from “just a martial argument.”

This quick-to-escalate/slow-to-cool identifies me to a T.  As does the desire to retaliate and win the argument without prioritizing solving the issue.  I’d like to say I’ve worked on this a lot in the last decade but it may just be that I’ve matured.  My wife and I rarely argue about issues but when we do I rely on a few strategies to avoid going full caveman. 

I now try to make an argument about the issue and strip the personal aspect out of it.  I’m better at pausing before I react, and if it’s later in the night I always ask for the discussion to be postponed to another time.  

3. Parents & Youth Sports

Fortune 500 senior executives were surveyed about their participation in high school sports, student government, and the National Honor Society.  A whopping 95% played sports while it was less than half for involvement in the latter two.

While there’s plenty of ability to participate in sports nowadays, one of the biggest reasons kids quit sports is due to their parents.  Feiler provides a few great tips for the parent who gets a little too involved from the sidelines.  

• Don’t get involved until the kid shows initiative.  

• Stick with encouragement only from the sidelines.  No instructions.  (“Nice pass” but not “pass!”)

• Kids hate it when you say things like “keep your head up” so come up with a ritual with your kid before the game or season.  He gives a great example of this in the book: have your kid remove their hat or helmet as a sign that the last play is forgotten and it’s time to move on.  The parent can do it with their hat (or simulated hat) as a reminder to the child.

• No post-game analysis on the car ride home.  Ask for things your kid remembers about the games.