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You are here: About us Associate Parliamentary Group for Parents and Families Activities 2008 - 2009 March 12 2008 Summary

Supporting Adult Relationships: Time for a Rethink? - March 12, 2008

The Family and Parenting Institute and Relate supported this seminar to provide an opportunity to discuss how support for adult relationships, to prevent difficulties from becoming crises, might impact on outcomes for children. The seminar has offered the opportunity for a varied discussion at a time when there is a great deal of public debate about the importance of supporting constructive relationships between adults in diverse families and the quality of family life we want to achieve in the 21st century.

Presentations by:

Mary Macleod (Chief Executive - FPI)
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Dr. Helen Barrett (Senior Research Fellow - FPI)
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Claire Tyler (Chief Executive - Relate)
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The following are key issues raised at the March 12 seminar on Supporting Adult Relationships held at Portcullis House, Attlee Suite

Points from Helen Barrett's presentation:

• "When you compare the two documents, 'Every Child Matters' and 'Every Parent Matters', they are, as has already been pointed out, quite subtlely different. In the 'Every Child Matters' we're aiming for the five desired outcomes which are all to do with different forms of well-being; staying safe, being healthy, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution, achieving economic well-being. When we look at the 'Every Parent Matters' the main thrust of that is looking at how you actually get … parents into working with you to do what they should be doing, i.e. looking after their children. But if every child really matters, I think every adult must too, because every adult should also have equal opportunities to enjoy all these different forms of well-being: family, community and environmental well-being, mental and physical well-being, emotional, intellectual and creative well-being, social well-being and economic well-being. Failing this how can they be expected to provide for others?"

• "Relationships come under strain at particular transition points, particularly around deciding to have children and we know when these points are, it's been documented to the nth degree when relationships come under strain. A lot of relationship skills don't come naturally to everyone, in fact, not to a lot of people. A substantial minority of people have insufficient social skills to negotiate difficulties and the conflicts that arise in relationships."

• "attachment styles… tie in very much with a lot of the research on conflict management and in that research what tends to come out is that you have these patterns of interaction that are to do with pursuit and withdrawal or demand and withdrawal and you can get into cycles of very negative, negative reciprocity."

• "by 12 weeks you can see that infants just don't take in information from mother or from father, they can watch what's going on between mother and father and work out what their role is going to be in that triangular relationship. So if mother and father are engaging in kind of positive way to problem solve together and if they're actually engaging and meeting with each other rather than withdrawing or minimizing each other or getting very fed up about what they're trying to sort out, the infant can pick up on that and what tends to happen is that the infants will show some capacity to empathize and relate to that quite early on in life."

Points from Claire Tyler's presentation:

• "the reality is the majority of our clients are parents and it's rare, actually, during the time with us that they don't, at some stage, talk about their concerns, about how their problems are actually impacting on their children. …client's children and their needs are therefore at the forefront of our practitioner's minds when they're dealing with adults and we know that there's plenty of evidence that shows investing in the quality of an adult relationship within the home pays good dividends in terms of better outcomes for children."

• "Nearly three-quarters of our adult clients come to us about their couple relationships. 15% of these clients say that problems in the this relationship have a negative impact on their children and after we've worked with them on their relationship issues, 25% said they'd seen their children's behavior improve, 43% said that they'd seen a strongly positive effect on their children's level of distress and parents also reported positive effects on their children's attainment at school…"

• "More broadly, the adults that we saw took less days off work, made less visits to the doctor and generally felt happier after accessing our services."

• "those with parents who had attended groups which also had relationship support had what you might call the 'double your money' effect. Their parenting was better, their children did better in schools and the adult's relationships were stronger and there was less conflict in that relationship and, indeed, parent satisfaction with their relationship then didn't decline after the birth of their child. Now I think all that evidence suggests that the Government's investment in parenting and the increased provision in parenting support, which we think is incredibly important, can be undermined when it's not combined with relationship support"

Issues and questions posed by delegates during discussion:

• "...The Family Law Act (1996)... Part One of that Act, which is on the Statute Books, it actually says that there should be funding for research into relationships and ... unless we fund research, we're never going to move this because what I hear now from policy makers is yes, they've accepted that adult relationships have a big impact upon children's outcomes. For the first time I think we're beginning to accept that, but then they're immediately saying, ah yes, but what's the evidence of the effectiveness of say the interventions? And they're right, there isn't a great deal, there a bits and pieces, mainly from American literature."

• "I strongly agree with what you're saying there about our need to sort of have a strategy, an overarching strategy and what I would sort of love to see is that rather than us having to fund our pigeon hole ourselves, be it the Children's Plan or the NHS, whatever it is, that we, as a sector, have actually developed this strategy."

• "if you ask for a strategy, what we try to talk about is to remember about when people get older, if you're doing cost benefit analysis, you know, the State cannot afford to care for all these people who're getting older on their own, so in a purely pragmatic view, if you're thinking about adult relationships, that the people are caring for each other as they get older, and therefore that relationship has got to be one that can cope with getting older together as well, so it has a right, in it's own right. But I'm just thinking back to that 1996 Act, you know, with the amendment for Marriage and Relationship Support and how that got changed into parent/child's and really encouraged and gone back to think about adult relationships, but also we should think about them because of when they're getting older and the whole aging thing, with the population getting older as well."

• "It's interesting if you look at the press, you look at lifestyle programmes, reality TV, I mean discussion about relationships is wall-to-wall, how to do it better wall-to-wall, you know, there clearly is a real keenness there"

• "Yes, we are talking about changing the culture. Now what strikes me is the media strives on conflict, look at any soap and it's surrounded by conflict, you don't see people seeking help or providing their own solutions, you don't do you?"

• "We work a lot with teenage parents and for them the relationship that matters most is the one with their child, they really don't seem to have often great expectations of a relationship with either the father of the child or whatever and they're taking their relationship to counseling … They don't really expect to live happily ever after and if you ask them about what they needed to make their situations more positive, I would suspect that relationship counseling is moving into the scene. So I think there is an issue about who you are selling this to and how access is often a social issue."

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