Families Matter

Why Societal Origin and Family Structures
Are Important

LATEST= 12/18/2016 7:58:28 AM

Do you think your ethnic background doesn't influence your thinking? You think it doesn't influence your parenting? Think again. What about your spouse? Is your family considered tribal or is tribalism actually a universal human trait that expresses itself in different ways?
Granddaughter and Grandmother

INTRO I

If you’ve come to this site, you are probably interested in understanding more about the parenting process; either “how to…” or “why is it so ?” and “wherefore the cause ?” Although parenting is central to most people’s lives, there seems to be more self-help books about parenting than about sex. We take this to mean that there is no central, consensually accepted and studied, approach to this universal process. If that is true, it follows that there will be a good deal of confusion, frustration, and needless expense (monetary and emotional) in trying to be the best parent for our children’s sake that life allows us to be.

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.

My work has always focused on the children, influenced by the nuclear family and its unresolved issues. The nuclear family, in turn, is influenced by interactions with the extended relatives and community which are reciprocally influenced by the culture, the macroeconomy and their history. Although relevant to couples and other adult family treatment, the focus here will always be the many interacting systemic factors affecting the growth of children to full and mature adulthood.

Please remember, our goals are to maximize your choices and effectiveness as executives in your children’s development. We believe your evaluating and absorbing the concepts learned here, will help your children achieve more choices and life successes as they grow into mature adults. If the goal of simply “becoming a more effective parent” is why you are reading this; if the “why’s and wherefores” do not interest you, than

 Kids Playing

Just go to the “For Parents” page in the “MENU”. There you will see some basic principles and approaches that aid effectiveness and outcome as well as basic understanding. The principles that we have derived might be seen as controversial. They are derived from the thinking and hypotheses that are laid out on the other sections and pages of this web site. If you seek deeper or more elaborate advice and background theory, start with the INTROs II and III.