Scholars who have studied the American family over a long period of time are challenging a number of long-held views about our closest relationships, according to a new book co-edited by UC Davis social psychologist Rand Conger.

In "Continuity and Change in Family Relations," Conger says that only by using detailed long-term studies can researchers understand the complex, continually changing dynamics in a family.

Among the findings:

• Relationships between couples, siblings, and between parents and children all seem to follow similar dynamics. "We think of divorce and separation as happening within a marriage, but it also happens in these other family relationships," Conger says.
• The greater friction between mothers and their teenage children may be due to the fact that mothers are emotionally closer than fathers to their offspring.
• Even two years into the marriage, couples who will divorce after seven or more years likely cannot foretell that they will be unhappy.
• The frequency of intercourse has little relationship to marital satisfaction in marriages of 13 years or more.
• The unequal division of labor over housework has little to do with marital happiness for many; what matters is the wife's attitudes toward housework and her standard for egalitarian marriages.
• The quality of lifelong relationships between siblings influences their individual mental and physical health, social functioning and general well-being.

"It is not just the absence of hostility but also the presence of warmth in these relationships that helps define the quality and, thus, the long-term success or failure of one sibling's relationship with another," write book chapter authors Katherine Conger of UC Davis, Chalandra Bryant of Iowa State University and Jennifer Meehan Brennom of Kirkwood Community College.