John Medina, the author of Brain Rules and a secular biologist, is often approached by men looking for the silver bullet of fathering. In one way or another, they all come around to asking “What’s the most important thing I can do as a father?”

His common answer alludes to something I recently stumbled upon.

The Experiment.

I was just a few days in to a recent lifestyle experiment where I set out to discover the effect making my wife priority number one had on various other layers of my life. This particular morning happened to be one in which making her a priority took a back seat to making sure she got a very real and raw piece of my mind.

You know this kind of day. You both wake up looking for someone to blame.

As we each emphatically “reasoned” with each other as to how the issue was the other’s fault, Cruz -my 16 month old son- ran in the room. He took 3 steps in the door, stopped for a couple moments to observe our chaos – then proceeded to scream at the top of his lungs and fall to the floor in an all out melt down. Not only was this uncharacteristic of him, but the intentionality of his episode was just bizarre.

The experiment I referred to previously went something like this. Every day for a month, I attempted to do 5 intentional things to make my wife my number one priority. Each night I tracked my efforts on a scale from one to ten. If I accomplished the 5 things, I would give my self a high score and vice versa. Additionally, I tracked 4 other layers of life in the same way – including marriage enjoyment, general quality of life, marital health, and career – to observe the effect being intentional in my marriage had on these other areas.

However, after Cruz’s meltdown, I began wondering about the relationship between our adult tantrums and his childish ones. Thus, the experiment inside the experiment began.

Each day, I rated the health of my marriage on a scale from 1 to 10. Ten – indicating lack of conflict or quick resolution in conflict, several moments of connection throughout the day and/or powerful communication. And One – obviously representing the opposite. Then, I noted my child’s behavior. Ten – being zero tantrums, general pleasantness and swift obedience. And One – indicating moods, strong will and multiple tantrums.

The Results.

The observations above confirm my suspicions. They paint a strong relationship between the health of the parent’s marriage and a child’s behavior. Though it lacks a 100% correlation, the graph clearly shows that the more conflict without resolution and the less connection my wife and I have, the more that my child acts out.

Even more practically, the second graph shows the effect that giving my wife priority number one has on my child.

And as noted in my previous post, my observations suggested that if one was to give their wife priority number one (indicated by priority pts), then several other areas of life would strongly benefit.

Per the results above, we can officially add fathering to that list. Because, 84% of the time, my child’s behavior was directly effected by the level of intention I gave to my marriage.

Gary Ezzo & Robert Bucknam, the authors of Babywise, say it this way.

“A healthy marriage creates an infused stability within the family and a haven of security for a child in their development process.” They go on to sum up their years of research by saying, “In the end, great marriages produce great parents.”

Re-enter John Medina, the secular biologist. How does he respond, after years of biological research and several books of parenting conclusions, to the question “What’s the most important thing I can do as a father?”

His answer…

“Go home and love your wife.”

My 30 day experiment may not be substantial enough to start building universal truths on. However, it seems to point at something science has apparently proven as well.

That is, that good fathering is first about investing in to a marriage that creates a family culture for children to find safety in and thrive from.

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