We want to help. Not step by step advice. We want to begin a search for a useful and integrated vocabulary and framework that helps in transparent discussion and research of aspects of human experience such as:
- how our individual and "societal group" identities form and interact. How we become "our selves."
- how a parent's "self" interacts in a family framework to help or hinder a child's development into a mature and competent adult and citizen.
- how kids, parents and parenting interact with the political and macroeconomic institutions surrounding them.
In our experience understanding always precedes good effective advice. So part of helping, will be to aid understanding of the full meaning of the family and parenting process for parents.
We also address therapists and academics (see MENU, above) to further good practice, investigation, and research. In helping children through working with their parents; in fact specializing in this field, we learned that smart, effective parenting can be a relatively simple process to do, but it is always encased in a very complicated fabric of connections. Average IQ is more than adequate to practice effective parenting; yet a great deal of complicated education and knowledge is necessary before one can understand its underlying vectors and principles. It cannot be formulaic or learned by rote. Thus, the confusion and contradictory advice from various sources.
I think you will find that this site approaches the issues of parenting and family therapy in a non-traditional manner. Please be ready for that. Our gradual understanding over forty plus years of encountering various roadblocks and overcoming them both personally and professionally, has pushed us to certain hypotheses and some conclusions too.
There are no really new concepts here; rather we combine and juxtapose established concepts from various fields in a different way. Some are obviously related to views of family life and societal structure; others are more remote and historically, less connected. Elizabeth “Betty” Carter, Monica McGoldrick, Philip Guerin, Harry Stack Sullivan, Erich Fromm, and others have contributed as clinicians and family theorists. The writings of Francis Fukuyama and Jerry Mueller have been major contributions in the area of integrating society, governance, and economy.
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