O.C.’s Poor Economy Reveals Riches of Family Life

As the lingering recession continues to take its toll on bank accounts, an increasing number of Orange County families may discover in 1993 that it’s possible to enjoy each other more when they’re forced to get by with less.

Local therapists who have been seeing the emotional fallout of the recession say that financial distress has led many Orange County residents to the realization that their priorities have been out of whack.

As people reorder their lives in an effort to adjust to harsh economic conditions, they are discovering that even though money is tight, their relationships can still be rich.

Bobbi Nesheim, a psychotherapist who practices in Fullerton and San Clemente, points out that, although financial problems often cause friction in relationships, the recession has motivated many people to work harder at getting along with their loved ones.

“When society as a whole is in trouble, families tend to cling together more to solve outside problems instead of bickering among themselves,” she explains.

Gerald Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute in New York, acknowledges that pressures on families have been increasing as spendable income has dropped. However, he observes: “There’s a real opportunity for the quality of family life to get better. People could get in touch with more meaningful objectives than consumption.”

Orange County therapists have seen evidence that this has, indeed, been happening in some homes as the recession has brought about changes in the way families live and relate to each other.

Irvine therapist Jackie Singer says people who have had to scale back are realizing they don’t need all the material things they spent so much time, energy and money acquiring in an age of excess. “We thought we had to have so much around us. Now we’re realizing we can do with less, which in our society is a real positive. It keeps us from being so complacent and helps us appreciate what we have.”

Gerry Owen, a marriage, family, child therapist in Brea, says that children growing up in mostly affluent Orange County have a chance to develop better values as they are exposed to the realities of tough economic times.

He sees parents calling on children to make sacrifices to help the family through a crisis. Young people are more cooperative, he notes, when they are given a chance to help decide how family spending will be curtailed. “The parents get to make the major decisions, but if the kids have a say on where some of the discretionary money goes, it helps by giving them a sense that they’re not just the victims of scarcity.”

Involving children in solutions shifts their focus from how much they have to what holds a family together--”the people, not the things,” Owen adds.

In the book “Familyhood: Nurturing the Values That Matter,” the late Dr. Lee Salk noted that periods of financial hardship can be “among the best times to instill and strengthen in children two of the family values we consider most important: being responsible for one’s actions and providing emotional support to one’s family.”

Today, offering emotional support often involves participating in the care of a frail or ill grandparent who has moved in because the family can’t afford to pay for long-term care in a hospital or live-in facility.

“People are having to rely on everyone in the family to help out,” Nesheim says. “The kids have to help feed Grandpa, or watch Grandma while Mom goes to the store. Children are seeing that a family sticks together and takes care of its own.”

Owen has also observed a trend toward more multigenerational households. He says the recession seems to be breaking down the isolation of the nuclear family and reviving the norm that prevailed in the ‘30s and ‘40s, when it was common for three generations to live under one roof and even for grown children to remain in their parents’ home indefinitely.

Having closer ties to extended family is good for children, Owen notes, because “they get different generational perspectives. They have more people to talk to, more models to work from.”

A number of today’s multigenerational households include young adults who have chosen, for economic reasons, to live with their parents while attending college or have returned home--sometimes with a spouse and children--after losing a job or finding they couldn’t earn enough to make it on their own.

This is happening so often that, according to Huntington Beach therapist Karen Jordahl, parents are beginning to change their expectations about when it’s normal for adult children to leave the nest.

With education cutbacks making it increasingly difficult to get required classes and job opportunities being limited, it’s not realistic to expect young adults to do what many of their parents did: spend four years earning a degree, then move into a promising position in their field and become self-supporting.

“With most of the young people I see, it isn’t happening that way,” says Jordahl, who has two college kids living at home. “Parents shouldn’t make definite timelines if they really want to be understanding of their children. We used to work hard and then get what we worked for. I don’t think that’s true any more.”

Parents should discuss goals and plans with their adult children, then try to be flexible if things don’t work out on schedule, Jordahl advises.

Conflicts are bound to arise when grown children remain under their parents’ roof. Those who get along best manage to “live together as adults, not as parents and children,” giving each other plenty of privacy and autonomy, Jordahl says.

The recession has resulted in more togetherness for couples as well as for parents and children. Victoria Felton-Collins, a certified financial planner in Irvine who has a doctorate in psychology, notes that many people who’ve been laid off or offered early retirement packages have launched entrepreneurial ventures from home offices.

(Celente of the Trends Research Institute says 31 million Americans are doing part or all of their work at home, a 10% increase since 1991.)

When the home becomes the workplace, the potential for conflict increases because roles tend to get blurred, Felton-Collins observes. For example, the spouse who goes to an office may expect the one working at home to take on more household or child-care responsibilities, making it difficult to concentrate on business. Couples need to discuss their needs, expectations and goals at the start of an at-home business venture to avoid misunderstandings that can create major rifts in their relationship.

It’s also important for people working at home to learn how to separate their professional and private lives, Felton-Collins stresses. “The business tends to spill over into the private life,” she says. Couples must set boundaries, making sure, for example, that business calls aren’t answered and shop talk stops after normal working hours.

Felton-Collins, who has written books on money conflicts in marriage and divorce, says rocky relationships are at greater risk of dissolving in unstable economic times, which often require unsettling lifestyle changes. “In those relationships, any effects of the recession are simply going to be viewed as an excuse to blame the other person,” she explains.

However, she adds, a number of “moderately good” marriages are not only surviving, but are becoming stronger as people respond to the recession by getting back to basics.

“They’re more in touch with reality. There’s a better sense of what our money can do and what it can’t do,” Felton-Collins says.

One thing money can no longer do for a number of unhappy couples is buy a quick exit out of a marriage, Jackie Singer says. “They can’t sell their houses, so they’re staying in situations that they may not have stayed in before. They’re living in limbo.”

Zena Polly, an Irvine psychologist, points out that some people who feel trapped in a marriage by economic conditions end up becoming bitter and withdrawing from their partner as they use destructive outlets--an affair, alcohol, drugs--to escape from the problems in their relationship.

However, she adds, she’s seen a number of couples revitalize a relationship when forced by financial circumstances to preserve a marriage that didn’t seem worth saving.

Polly observes: “People have had a conscious sense in the back of their mind that they can always leave if things get bad. In better economic times, people mistakenly believe that by changing partners, they can change their lives for the better, without going through the painful process of personal growth that would come from staying with a partner and working together to make the relationship work.

“When times get tougher economically, choices narrow down. It’s no longer quite such an available option to think about one partner moving out. Now I’m seeing couples saying, ‘This is a commitment. I’m going to stay in this relationship, and we’re going to work out our problems together, as a partnership.’ ”

Although not all troubled marriages can be turned around, Polly has seen a number of couples “rediscover what their relationship was about when they first got together.”

When they look back, she says, they often find that they were happiest not when they were prosperous economically, “but when their lives were simpler and their main priority was each other.”

Those who are able to stop being defensive and make substantial changes in themselves and the relationship find the big payoff is preserving the rich history they’ve shared, Polly notes. “It’s so gratifying to be able to pull a marriage back from the edge and feel you have a deeper relationship than before,” she adds.

Nesheim says she’s seeing couples grow closer not only by working harder to resolve their problems, but also by becoming more sensitive to the suffering of others. At a time when shocking images of starving Somalians dominate news reports, people are saying, “Maybe we’re not so bad off after all.” And, with material rewards dwindling, they’re beginning to yearn for the inner satisfaction they can draw from a spiritual or global connection, Nesheim says.

“People like nothing better than to give and not expect something in return. It’s a habit we’ve gotten out of as a culture. Things came too easy for a while. We got ourselves into a place where we had so many expectations of the good life that we didn’t pay any attention to those who didn’t have it.”

Now, more people are involving the entire family in causes or volunteer projects in an effort to make life better for those whose needs are greater than their own. And, at the same time, family members are becoming less selfish and more compassionate with one other. Nesheim observes: “Helping somebody else brings more closeness to the family unit, because they’re focused in the same direction instead of each one trying to outdo the other.”