Family of Origin Questions:

Recall when you were about 12-14 years of age:

?Describe your mum and dad in 3-5 words

?What did you think about their marriage?

?What roles did your parents play within the marriage?

?How did your parents communicate?

?How was conflict (difference) managed within the family?

?How was discipline managed?

?How did mum and dad show affection to each other, to the kids?

?Were you encouraged to work as a teenager or was education more important?

?How was money managed in your family? When thinking about money, what were some of the important issues and values that your parents wanted you to know?

?What rituals did you have in your family that included everyone?

?Describe family celebrations – who was responsible? Think about the future… perhaps in 10 years time:

?What do you hope your marriage will look like?

?What will you do to make sure that happens?

Share your answers with your partner, then:

?Discuss three things from your FOO you want to take with you into your marriage

?Discuss three things that you do NOT want to take with you

?How will you do that?

[Questions to put in re future:

?How do you expect your affection will be shown to each other?

?What are your expectations of how you will communicate in your new family?

?How do you hope differences will be dealt with in your family?]

Supplied by a pre-marriage counsellor…

Related Articles:

• The Parents Poem (Robert Bly)
• Gay man opposes gay marriage
• Being a Pastor Doesn’t Automatically Make You a Sex Therapist
• Is the Men’s Movement Dead?
• Making a Will

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.