The secret to a happy marriage? Small acts of kindness
Sarah Hampson, Globe and Mail, 1/8/2012
That's the finding of a recent study by the University of Virginia's National Marriage Project, examining the role of generosity in marriages. Defined as "the virtue of giving good things to one's spouse freely and abundantly," such thoughtfulness adds a new dimension to our understanding of how couples can build a strong, stable partnership, say the researchers... Undertaken in co-operation with the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values, an organization headed up by Elizabeth Marquardt, a famously pro-marriage family scholar who argued in her book, Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce, that even amicable divorces profoundly shape the lives of children in negative ways, the study set out to counter what it calls "the increasingly individualistic tenor of modern life."
