Avoid disasters at your family Christmas with Ethics Centre helpline

With one in three Australian marriages ending in divorce, more of us are tiptoeing our way around the at times thorny landscape of blended families — how should you share your time between your mum and dad? Do you split the day or do you alternate each year? What if one parent would spend the day alone if not for you? What if your partner’s family lives in a different city?
And then there can be other dilemmas chucked into the mix, like having a relative who is unwell or who has passed away. Or you might simply have a pesky aunt you just can’t face seeing.
Well, there is actually a bona fide helpline to help minimise your pain in dealing with such nagging issues.
For the folks at the Ethics Centre, no problem is too small — as long as your conundrum has a moral element to it.
The organisation’s trained volunteers at the Ethi-call service help Australians navigate the ethical dimensions of their personal situation — not by giving advice or spelling out what the ethical choice is, but simply by helping them explore scenarios and what decision may be best according to their own values.
The underlying aim is to alleviate the distress caused by the dilemmas of day-to-day living.
Ethics Centre senior consultant Elisabeth Shaw, who runs Ethi-call, said family issues may seem minor to outsiders, but they can feel deeply disturbing to the person in the thick of it, especially if they feel they are violating their life values.
“They experience great internal conflict. Usually when there’s an ethical dilemma, emotions run very hot,” Ms Shaw said.
“We get extraordinarily complex calls you simply could not have invented yourself.”
She said people rang when a problem felt very private and they couldn’t or didn’t want to look to their usual support networks.
Ms Shaw, who says she has gained special insight into the changing Australian psyche, warned that the holiday season was becoming more stressful as blended families became more commonplace.
“We have more families of different forms, so we’re seeing issues around what family means and how we consider who is part of our ‘tribe’,” she said.
As a result, calls received at this time of the year often revolve around who gets a seat at the dinner table on December 25.
This decision-making process involves juggling between the caller’s sense of kindness, self-interest and their personal preferences, as well as exploring their duties to themselves versus others.
Ms Shaw said in one recent call, a couple who were both in their second marriage with children from previous spouses were again about to plough through a tough Christmas, but this time exacerbated by the fact the adult son of caller, Jo, was newly single, unemployed and homeless.
Jo’s husband did not want her to again let him come running to her and stay through the holiday season. She rang to thrash out her responsibilities as a mother and a wife, Ms Shaw said.
In another case, a group of adult siblings grieving the recent death of their mother felt the right thing to do was to cancel their Christmas celebrations. One sister, Sally, rang Ethi-call detailing how she did not believe the season should be spent mourning, but felt judged for standing apart.
 “Sally, who had been single for many years, was dating a new person and felt she had a lot to look forward to and to celebrate. She believed her mother would want this, and that she should be allowed to enjoy herself at this time. Family Christmas had been a big tradition,” Ms Shaw said.
And for a few, their Christmas quandaries spread further than their families.
“We recently had a call from someone questioning how she can go about the indulgence of Christmas when Syrian refugees are arriving with nothing but the clothes on their back,” Ms Shaw said.
Stepfamilies Australia chief executive Karen Field is likewise very aware that tens-of-thousands of Australians are currently filled with dread contemplating the social minefield of the festive season.
For many of the one-in-five Aussies who are members of a stepfamily, Ms Field said Christmas could be an emotional battle with their past, their identity and their future.
“Blended doesn’t always mean mended, and emotions can be particularly raw at this time of year — especially when dealing with new and old parents and partners and siblings, not to mention different cultures, religions and traditions,” Ms Field said.
She urged people to remember to compromise, to value quality time over money, to allow for new traditions and for long distance families to seize the benefits of technology.