By Erin Blasko and Colleen Sharkey, Notre Dame News, April 6, 2021
Family life isn’t always harmonious, and the stress and anxiety brought on by the pandemic has certainly led to more difficulties for many families living under one roof. However, the inevitable conflicts or differences that occur in families do not have to be a negative for children.
In fact, years of research by scholars at the University of Notre Dame indicate that there can be constructive, positive conflict that allows children to experience problem-solving and good feelings about family life, something that the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families Professor of Psychology Mark Cummings says benefits their development. The new Happy Families Project, supported by a major four-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health and led by Cummings, Research Assistant Professor Kathleen Bergman and professor emeritus John Borkowski, is meant to arm as many families as possible in South Bend, Fort Wayne and Indianapolis with critical tools to help them communicate with one another effectively.
The Happy Families Project is designed to help any family work through conflict, no matter the makeup of the household. Cummings, Bergman and Borkowski, whose research is primarily done through Notre Dame’s William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families, developed the program content based on the emotional security theory (EST). The theory is that conflict between two parental figures and the family unit affects how safe and secure a child feels within the family. EST builds upon attachment theory, which posits that for proper social and emotional development, a child must form a bond with at least one primary caregiver, with EST extending that idea to stress the importance of children’s emotional security across all family relationships.
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