This content is locked. Please login or become a member.
Raising Your Cultural Intelligence: Negotiate Household Conflict Using the Tight-Loose Lens, with Michele Gelfand, Cultural Psychologist and Author, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers
Identify the contexts of conflict
I study nations. I study states. I study organizations. But I finally got to realize that, “Wow, tightness and looseness is really in my house.” It’s in my household. We don’t often think about when we get married, how tight or loose is that person vis-à-vis me. We should probably do that kind of assessment ahead of time to identify contexts we might have some conflict.
It differentiates my spouse and myself. How do we make financial decisions? It is something that I need to think about as I’m deciding how to parent. It’s a miracle that two people would happen to agree on how strict or permissive you can be in different domains, whether it’s appearance with your kids or the language they use or the social media you use or their homework. These are all domains that we tend to develop norms around, but some people are more permissive and some people are more strict. And it can cause a lot of marital conflict. It can cause kids to be confused. I think it’s important to use the lens to diagnose what we think is the appropriate level of norm strength and then negotiate it. As a parent of a teenager, I could be legislating tightness in every domain. But maybe there are some domains that I don’t need to be tight in.
Get your kids involved
We don’t want to be too tight or too loose. And we can talk about it with our kids. I mean, I do that with my kids. We talk about which domains have to be tight, and which domains can be loose. And of course, many of us would be horrified by thinking that we should let our kids be slobs. But I decided, you know what? That’s one domain I’m going to let them loose on. But being good siblings to each other, doing well in school – those are more important domains to be tight in. And so I think it’s really something that we should anticipate, as we’re developing our parent styles, and as we’re really coordinating with our spouse in many domains from financial decision-making to parenting.