A Christian marriage guide book that highlights how best to communicate love within your marriage.

A contemporary classic that my husband and I were gifted for our wedding. There's some good content in here and I might revisit it occasionally for reminders on some different ideas on how to communicate love. ( )

‘Five signs of a loving family’ is different from Chapman's better-known ‘love language’ books. It discusses some aspects of a healthy family life which are usually lacking in today’s society. The author has picked out a handful of traits that were observed in his family, and which he believes are of significance to the many families at the start of the 21st century.

It starts well, with a look at an attitude of service.: not just what parents do for their children, but at the motivation, and the importance of children helping with chores. There were some good ideas and suggestions, but I felt that some of the author’s suggestions were a tad coercive. This continued through the book. There were some constructive suggestions for encouraging children's questions and freedoms, but they were tempered with ideas about ‘training’ which seemed overly authoritarian to me. Some of the examples given were, frankly, unfair, and likely to cause resentment.

There are assessment charts throughout the book. It’s good that readers are not expected to buy another ‘workbook’; on the other hand, these assessments were a bit distracting in the middle of the text. I would have preferred them as an appendix.

The writing is good, some of the anecdotes are interesting, and there is plenty to discuss if a couple decide to read this book together. The author is a Christian, and this is spelled out in a couple of places; however the book is deliberately written from a mainly secular point of view, and should thus be relevant to people of any faith, or none.

This could be of use to families struggling to find a relationship between parents and children; even if readers don’t agree with most of the suggestions, they could well trigger some new ways of relating. ( )