In "Fun Home," Alison Bechdel recounts a version of her family's history through moments of meaningful textual exchange. This paper takes up one such moment, when Alison's father Bruce offers his daughter a queer text, which she uses both to understand her own sexuality and to broach the the queer connection she has just learned they…

In a world in which individuals are judged on the basis of performance, parents can be lured into believing that their worth is measured by their child's achievements. Parenting is not a competition. This outdated mechanistic model fails to appreciate the unrepeatable, precious uniqueness of every child and every parent. Nothing is more important…

The protection of children from harm is commonly accepted as the cardinal duty of parents. In the USA, where young people's sexuality is often regarded with anxiety, attempts to restrict adolescent sexual behaviour are seen as ethically justified and even required of "good" parents. Running counter to popular anxiety surrounding young…

The purpose of this article is to bring to the fore a topic that has received little mention in the college student literature: conducting psychotherapy with survivors of war and political trauma who seek treatment at college and university counseling centers. Following a discussion of political trauma in relation to typical developmental…

In the past thirty years or so, divorce has been widespread in many countries. Globally the percentage of marriages that end up in divorce has increased dramatically even in countries where religious and legal impediments are strong. Divorce occurs most often within the first ten years of marriage. That means children of most couples who are…

As nonmarital childbearing escalated in the United States over the past half century, fragile families--defined as unmarried couples with children--drew increased interest from researchers and policy makers. Sara McLanahan and Audrey Beck discuss four aspects of parental relationships in these families: the quality of parents' intimate…

Painful situations arise during the education and careers of counselors and therapists. Most theoretical orientations fail to address how clinicians are to handle their live adversity during the course of their work with clients. In fact, irrespective of the theoretical orientation, most clinicians are given the directive to "check your own…

According to this author, when parents provide competent daily care, they are teaching infants what love and trust are. All the daily routines parents perform, including feeding, cleaning up, diapering, undressing, dressing and settling into sleep, help provide infants with emotional comfort as well as the courage to learn. This article also…

One of the most consistently recurring themes in great literature is the love triangle--Arthur and Guinevere and Lancelot, Tristan and Isolde and King Mark, and countless others. No one has produced an immortal story about it; but a love triangle plays itself out day after day in the lives of parents, young children, and caregivers. In this…

This is an exploratory study of the associations among parental warmth, peer support, gender, and emotional distress in a sample of 308 adolescents in the United States. Parental warmth was associated with less emotional distress, whereas turning to peers for support during family conflict was associated with more emotional distress. Gender…

I offer an autoethnographic exploration of my experience with the culture of a marriage and family therapist (MFT) in training. As a beginning therapist I assumed that success would be determined primarily by how well I mastered different theoretical models. This belief shifted during an instance in which I was planning to begin differentiating…

Describes workshop designed to help college-bound high school students begin to address developmental issues before matriculating. Discusses workshop activities based on Coons' (1974) description of developmental tasks of college students: resolution of parent-child relationship, solidifying sexual identity, formulation of personal value system,…

This book shows parents, clinicians, and policy-makers how the love relationship between parents and children is the workshop of the child's maturing personality, connecting everyday moments in family life to the growth of the child's sense of values and meaning. The book explains how children develop into fine, morally strong adults through their…

Behaviors and attitudes established early in life greatly affect friendships, parent-child relationships, and other personal contacts as children grow and develop into adults. Parents and other adults need to recognize and nurture the development of characteristics in children that can lead to intimacy, and to become aware of factors that induce…

Provides a brief summarization of 12 articles focusing on how gender, gender role identity, and attitudes toward gender roles may affect the nature of relationships, and how relationships may affect an individual's gender (including behaviors, attitudes, and self-perceptions). Although the focus is mainly on heterosexual relationships, lesbian/gay…