The Intentional Family and Authentic Happiness

Running head: THE INTENTIONAL FAMILY AND AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS 1

The Intentional Family and Authentic Happiness

Tessa Yates

Brigham Young University

THE INTENTIONAL FAMILY AND AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS 2

The Intentional Family and Authentic Happiness

Over the past few weeks, I have immersed myself in the study of the family and positive

psychology by reading William Doherty’s The Intentional Family and Martin Seligman’s

Authentic Happiness. These two books have broadened and expanded my knowledge and

understanding of well-being, the family unit, and happiness within the family. I cannot help but

ponder and reflect on the words I have read and think of ways in which I can strengthen my

family ties and increase my own happiness by applying the knowledge I have gained. This paper

is a means for me to share and further contemplate on the things I have learned and explain what

I can take away from my study on happiness and the family. I will begin this paper by briefly

summarizing The Intentional Family and then transition into my personal thoughts about family

rituals and ties based on my own family’s experiences. I will then write another brief summary

for Authentic Happiness and explain how Seligman’s positive psychology has changed my

outlook on happiness. By the end of this paper I hope to adequately demonstrate the change that

can be brought about in both family and personal life by applying the theories of Seligman and

Doherty.

Summary of The Intentional Family

William Doherty’s The Intentional Family is a how-to book for creating intentional

families through simple rituals that are meant to develop and strengthen the ties between husband

and wife, parents and children, immediate and extended family, and community. Doherty lays

the foundation to his book by explaining the evolution of the family unit. The family evolved

from the Institutional Family to the Psychological Family and finally to the Pluralistic Family.

Today, our society is inhabited by the Pluralistic Family. The Pluralistic family is not rigidly

defined. Families are individually shaped and created by the family members and what they


believe constitutes a good family. This freedom allows for what Doherty calls the “Intentional

Family.” The “Intentional Family is a ritualizing family. It creates patterns of connection through

everyday family rituals, seasonal celebrations, special occasions, and community involvement”

(Doherty, 1997, p. 8). Rituals, the foundation of Intentional Families, are planned and repeated

activities that have special significance and importance for the family. Rituals provide

predictability, connection, identity, and a way to enact values. According to Doherty (1997),

there are three types of rituals: connection rituals, love rituals, and community rituals (p. 12).

These different rituals, if properly integrated and executed, will build, connect, and strengthen

family ties.

Rituals of connection. Connection rituals provide opportunities for family bonding

through family meals, morning and evening routines, and family outings and vacations. Doherty

(1997) recommends that “family meals are the best place to begin the process of becoming more

intentional as a family” (p. 27). Family meals, specifically dinner, can be ritualized by setting a

certain time when the meal will be served, determining who will prepare the meal and clean it

up, creating an inviting environment, encouraging and discouraging specific topics to be

discussed, and most importantly, by eliminating distractions, such as the television or technology

(Doherty, 1997, p. 30). Family morning and evening routines can often be overlooked and lost in

the busy and stressful lives of today’s families. These rituals are important for both children and

parents. Drifting away from this ritual can lead to entropy, or lack of cohesion, in intimate

relationships (Doherty, 1997, p. 48). The last ritual of connection is family outings and

vacations. In regards to family outings, Doherty (1997) explains that the “easiest way to start or

upgrade family rituals of connection is to determine what you already enjoy doing as a family,


and then do it more intentionally” (p. 55). Simple activities such as going out for ice cream,

family movie trips, or eating out weekly can be ritualized in the family.

Rituals of love. Love rituals can be divided into two categories: couple rituals and

special person rituals. Couple rituals include talking time, weekly date nights, and celebrating

anniversaries and Valentine’s Day. Most newlywed couples are successful at creating couple

rituals, but they tend to get lost over time, especially when children come into the picture.

Couple rituals are important because they keep marriages afloat and heading in a positive

direction (Doherty, 1997, p. 79). Special person rituals, such as birthdays, Mother’s Day, and

Father’s Day, are recent in origin but they are staples of the ritual family year and provide

“important opportunities to celebrate connections to one another” (Doherty, 1997, p. 83). An

especially enriching ritual that can be done at birthday parties or special person events is the

sharing of personal appreciations. Personal appreciations involve family members taking turns

sharing with the celebrated person what they value and appreciate about him or her (Doherty,

1997, p. 90). Rituals of love build connections among family members by encouraging spending

quality time with the people that are nearest and dearest to us.

Rituals of community. Community rituals include events such as wedding and funerals,

religious activities in churches, and neighborhood activities. Over the course of family evolution,

community rituals have become less prevalent and important in families. Doherty attributes this

to individualism. He states, “American individualism, in the past balanced by a strong

commitment to community involvement, began to dominate the culture as never before. And

families became increasingly more isolated from their networks of support” (Doherty, 1997, p.

135). In order to combat destructive individualism, families need community rituals that involve

extended family, friends, neighbors, social organizations, and religious fellowships.


The how. Doherty lays out specific steps families should take in order to become more

intentional. The first step is to evaluate your family’s already existing rituals. This involves

assessing whether or not your family’s current rituals are meeting the needs of connection,

meaning, and community and realizing which areas of your family’s life need ritual enhancement

(Doherty, 1997, p. 189). The next step is creating or changing family rituals. There are two

routes to creating family rituals. The first is the direct route—proposing changes, planning new

rituals, and evaluating how it works. The second is the indirect route—an individual creates an

experience before proposing it became a ritual and evaluate whether or not it should become a

permanent ritual in the family. The last step in becoming a more intentional family is monitoring

and revising rituals. Overtime, some family rituals may need to be revised or even dropped if

they have served their purpose and are no longer needed (Doherty, 1997, p. 198).

Personal Insights on The Intentional Family

The evolution of my own family. I was born into what would be considered a traditional

family. I grew up in a family with a stay at home mother, a successful father, and two older

brothers. We lived in a secluded, friend filled neighborhood in Murray, Utah. We had what

would be considered a “good” and “normal” family life. Life got flipped upside down when I

was about five years old. My parents got a divorce, my dad moved away, and my mom had to

pick up a full-time job in order to provide for my brothers and me. In The Intentional Family,

Doherty (1997) explains that not all families become disabled or dysfunctional after divorce, but

“most experience significant disruption of their rituals of connection, celebration, and

community” (p. 169). Reading these words made me reflect upon my childhood and how my

parent’s divorce influenced my family. Right after the divorce, my mom was stressed, my

brothers fought more than usual, and our house seemed to never be clean. Our family rituals of


going out to eat or taking walks in the park seemed to vanish for the first few weeks. Fortunately,

these negative impacts that the divorce caused on our family rituals were only temporary. My

mother, with the help of extended family and friends, made life “normal” and comfortable again

for my brothers and me. We resumed traditional rituals that were a part of our family when my

parents were still married and we created new rituals of our own. It took time, patience, and

healing, but eventually my parent’s divorce became more of a positive than a negative life event.

It brought my mother, my brothers, my extended family, and me closer than we had ever been

before. In his book, Doherty explains that single-parent families can be some of the most highly

intentional families or they can be the most entropic (Doherty, 1997, p. 175). In my family’s

case, divorce caused us to become one of the most highly intentional families that I know.

Doherty (1997) says that the keys to having an intentional family after divorce is the “ability of

the single parent to focus on what is most important about family rituals of connection and

celebration, and on the degree of support from the extended family and community” (p. 175).

These keys played a vital role in mending my family together after my parent’s divorce. Despite

what my mom was going through, she never failed to celebrate our birthdays, rejoice in our

successes, continue our holiday traditions, or kiss us goodnight.

Approximately three years later, my mom remarried. Yet again, my family structure

changed. In The Intentional Family it reads, “As difficult as they can be, single-parent families

don’t hold a candle to remarried families when it comes to complications with rituals…

Remarried families require the highest levels of intentionality of any form of family life in our

culture” (Doherty, 1997, p. 175). This statement definitely rings true to me as I think about how

difficult it was, and continues to be, to try to merge two families together that come from

completely different backgrounds. These differences in family traditions and rituals became


especially evident at Thanksgiving and Christmas time. We each had family parties with our

separate extended families and my mom and step-dad argued about which parties to attend. In

order to better involve my step-father’s side of the family with my family, we created our own

rituals of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. These dinners consist of traditions that come

from my side of the family and my stepdad’s side of the family. My family successfully did what

Doherty recommends in his book, which is to take existing rituals from both sides of the family,

merge them together, and also create new rituals that are specific and special (Doherty, 1997, p.

180).

Stepparent-stepchild rituals. When my mom first started dating my stepfather I was

stubborn and cold towards him. I was young and did not want to lose my mom’s love and

attention that I felt should only be mine. Even now, I do not have the relationship with my

stepfather that I should probably have after knowing him for 12 years. Doherty explains that

when a stepparent enters the family, it is important for them to use rituals to forge bonds with

their stepchildren. Rituals can “slowly build a one-to-one relationship between a stepparent and

stepchild” (Doherty, 1997, p. 179). As I reflect on my relationship with my stepfather, I cannot

think of any rituals that we had together when I was younger. Having rituals would have

probably strengthened our relationship, but we never made that kind of connection with each

other. Fortunately, it is never too late to work on relationships. I believe that if I make the effort

to create a ritual with my stepfather our relationship will develop. Creating a better relationship

with my stepfather will also help my whole family grow closer.

Summary of Authentic Happiness

Authentic Happiness is Martin Seligman’s attempt to understand and define the elements

of a meaningful and happy life based on his idea of positive psychology. Seligman shares what


he considers the three levels of life—the pleasant life, the good life, and the meaningful life—

and how happiness can be increased and maintained at each of these levels. Seligman’s aim of

Authentic Happiness is to propel the field of positive psychology forward by providing us with

knowledge and research about positive emotion, personal strengths and virtues, and the hows of

a happy life (Seligman, 2002, p. 6). But why is it so important to be happy? Seligman (2002)

states that positive emotions “have a grand purpose in evolution. They broaden our abiding

intellectual, physical, and social resources, building up reserves we can draw upon when a threat

or opportunity presents itself” (p. 35). Seligman unfolds his theory of life satisfaction in

Authentic Happiness and explains the numerous benefits that come from consciously creating

and living a happy life.

Happiness formula. Seligman’s happiness formula, H = S + C + V, helps us to

understand the components of happiness and which parts are uncontrollable and which are

voluntary. H, the enduring level of happiness, is equal to our (s) set range, (c) circumstances, and

(v) voluntary variables (Seligman, 2002, p. 45). Approximately half of our general happiness is

dependent upon our set range, which can be compared to a steersman, treadmill, or thermostat

that returns our happiness to a certain level after we experience positive or negative emotions.

This set range represents the inherited aspect of overall happiness (Seligman, 2002, p. 48).

Circumstances, such as the amount of money we have, marriage status, social life, health,

education, gender, and religion, may seem to play a significant role in our level of happiness, but

they account for no more than 15 percent of the variance in happiness (Seligman, 2002, p. 61).

Seligman explains that the true key to happiness does not lie within our set range or

circumstances; rather, lasting happiness is based on our thoughts, actions, and the positive

emotion we have about the past, present, and future (Seligman, 2002, p. 62).


Positive emotion about the past and future. Positive emotions about the past include

satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, pride, and serenity. Although some psychologists think

that past events, especially childhood, shape our future, Seligman firmly believes that the “major

traumas of childhood may have some influence on adult personality, but barely a detectable one.

Bad childhood events, in short, do not mandate adult troubles” (Seligman, 2002, p. 67). Along

with letting go of the idea that our past determines our future, satisfaction with the past can be

achieved by voluntarily increasing our gratitude and by learning to forgive ourselves and others

for past wrongdoings (Seligman, 2002, p. 82). Positive emotions about the future include

confidence, hope, optimism, faith, and trust. Optimism about the future can be achieved in two

ways. First, we can assess and change our explanatory style, which is our attitude about desirable

and undesirable life events. Second, we can learn to argue with ourselves when we have negative

thoughts about ourselves or our future (Seligman, 2002, p. 88, 95).

Positive emotion in the present. Happiness in the present is based upon pleasures and

gratifications. Pleasures are delights that are immediate, momentary, strongly emotional, and that

come through the senses (Seligman, 2002, p. 102, 103). A life based purely upon increasing

pleasure, or the “pleasant life”, will not constitute lasting happiness. In contrast, gratifications

“last longer than pleasures, they involve quite a lot of thinking and interpretations, they do not

habituate easily, and they are undergirded by our strengths and virtues” (Seligman, 2002, p. 102).

Gratifications may not provide us with instant positive emotion like pleasures do, but they lead to

enduring levels of happiness. Gratifications require skill and effort, they motivate us to use our

signature strengths, and they allow us to become totally absorbed in the activities that we pursue

(Seligman, 2002, p. 111, 112, 119).


Strengths and virtues. Unlike the pleasant life which relies on pleasures, Martin

Seligman (2002) defines the good life as using our “signature strengths every day to produce

authentic happiness and abundant gratification” (p. 13). Strengths are moral traits that are

measurable and acquirable. They are “states we desire that require no further justification”

(Seligman, 2002, p. 137, 138). Displaying and building upon strengths (ex: kindness, bravery,

diligence, and love of learning) is the route to which we achieve virtues. The six virtues of

wisdom/knowledge, courage, love/humanity, justice, temperance, and spirituality/transcendence

are the core characteristics that are present in all cultures and religious traditions (Seligman,

2002, p. 133). Seligman explains that if we want to create a good life and eventually a

meaningful life, we must actively choose to build our strengths and virtues.

A meaningful life. Seligman’s final purpose in his book is to help us understand how we

can use our signature strengths in our ever day lives. He identifies work, love, and family as

three different areas of life that we can implement our strengths into in order to increase our

happiness (Seligman, 2002, p. 165, 185, 208). Infusing life with our signature strengths will lead

to a good life, but how can we create what Seligman terms as the “meaningful life”? The

meaningful life not only uses signature strengths in everyday realms, but it also uses them in the

service of something larger than life. Something larger than human beings. Seligman concludes

that “the meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward

knowledge, power, or goodness. A life that does this is pregnant with meaning, and if God comes

at the end, such a life is sacred” (Seligman, 2002, p. 260).

Personal Insights on Authentic Happiness

Gratitude. In order to generate greater life happiness, Seligman recommends we change

our perspective about the past by showing more gratitude. Gratitude benefits our lives because it


“amplifies the savoring and appreciation of the good events gone by…” (Seligman, 2002, p. 70).

On page 71 of Authentic Happiness, there is a Gratitude Survey of six short questions that is used

to generate a gratitude score. When I took this survey, I got a very high score and I wondered

why that was. After reading a few more pages into the book, the answer became clear to me.

Seligman recommends that in order to increase our gratitude and overall happiness we should

keep a gratitude journal. He says that each night we should set aside time to write down on a

notepad five things that we are thankful for that happened in the previous twenty-four hours

(Seligman, 2002, p. 75). Keeping a gratitude journal is something that I have been consistently

doing since the start of this semester. Without realizing it, I had already implemented one of

Seligman’s exercises into my life before even reading his book. I try to write in my gratitude

journal at least five times a week. Each night, I write down ten things, people, or events that I am

thankful for that day and why I am grateful for that person or thing. This exercise takes

approximately 10-20 minutes to complete each night. From my own experience, I can

confidently say that keeping a gratitude journal greatly increases life happiness. Seligman (2002)

explains that the “reason gratitude works to increase life satisfaction is that it amplifies good

memories about the past: their intensity, their frequency, and the tag lines the memories have” (p.

75). When I write in my gratitude journal, my good memories are amplified just as Seligman

says will happen when we show our gratitude about the past. Even when I have an overwhelming

or stressful day, writing in my gratitude journal helps me focus on all the good people and things

that I am blessed with. This exercise has increased my overall happiness and positive emotion

and I hope to continue doing it for the rest of my life.

Responsive and attentive listening. Seligman explains that we can strengthen our

relationships with the people we love, and in turn increase our happiness, by developing


responsive and attentive listening. Validation is the main principle of good listening. When we

speak to other people, we should paraphrase their words in order to demonstrate that we have

been attentively listening and are attempting to understand what they are saying (Seligman,

2002, p. 203). We should also refrain from preparing our rebuttal or interrupting other people

while they are talking. Having response and attentive listening is especially important during

arguments. I implemented these techniques while having a conversation with my mom about a

topic that I would consider to be one of my “hot-button issues”. Hot-button issues are those

topics that can easily escalate into a fight because they are a sensitive subject to one or both

people engaged in the conversation (Seligman, 2002, p. 203, 204). In the past when my mom and

I have talked about this topic we usually argue and fight, but this conversation was different. I

did my best to take Seligman’s advice and validate my mom before I spoke. Seligman also

advises that when it comes to hot-button issues we should allow the speaker to have the floor

when they are talking. If we are not on the floor, then it is not our turn to speak (Seligman, 2002,

p. 204). I tried to do this while having my conversation with my mom. When she was talking I

did not interrupt her. I waited until it was my turn to speak, at which point I would paraphrase

her words, validate her, and then give my own thoughts and opinions. Even though the

conversation was about a sensitive subject that usually results in contention, my mom and I did

not argue or fight. Implementing Seligman’s techniques helped me stay calm and collected while

talking to my mom. The conversation ended on a high note and it was uplifting and positive.

Becoming a good listener is an aspect of my life that I need to continue to work on. From this

conversation with my mom, I can see the positive effects good listening can have on a

relationship.


The Change in Me

When we were first given this assignment in class, I dreaded it. I was not looking forward

to reading 500 pages and then writing a book review. My attitude and perspective quickly

changed when I started reading The Intentional Family and Authentic Happiness. These two

books contain valuable information about how to form stronger family ties and increase

happiness. The knowledge, advice, and techniques shared by Doherty and Seligman can create

greater happiness within ourselves and our families if taken to heart. These books have changed

my outlook on what it means to live a meaningful life. I have come to truly understand that

happiness within the family and personal happiness are things that cannot be bought or found.

Rather, happiness is a choice and it must be actively created through our thoughts and actions.


References

Doherty, W. (1997). The Intentional Family. New York, NY: Avon Books, Inc.

Seligman, M. E. (2002). Authentic Happiness. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, Inc.

I read 199 pages of The Intentional Family by William Doherty, 260 pages of Authentic

Happiness by Martin Seligman, and 50 pages of Flow by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi.

Documents

The Intentional Family and Authentic Happiness