Description

According to Dr William Doherty, there are a number of forces outside the family that make it harder to be an effective parent today. In Confident Parenting, he considers the effects of the advertising industry, television programming, other parents who are permissive, other parents who compete over their children's achievements, and other providers of children's activities such as sports coaches. In his experience, many parents today lack confidence in their roles and are unsure where to draw the line with children's behaviour. A combination of unclear, ill-defined values in many families, and parents' fear of being unpopular with their own children can add up to weak and ineffective parenting. This can force children to seek their values and identities elsewhere - usually in their peer culture and the consumer culture.

In Confident Parenting, Dr Doherty offers clear advice on particular issues that arise for two-parent families, fathers, single-parent families and stepfamilies, and shows how we can all be more secure and better parents to our children.

‘If children live only as consumers of parental and community services, then they are not active citizens of families and communities.'

About the Author

Dr William Doherty has practised as a marriage and family therapist in the US since the 1970s, and is former president of the National Council of Family Relations. Currently Professor and Director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at the University of Minnesota, Dr Doherty was named by Utne Reader magazine as one of the ten most innovative therapists in the US in 1997 for his work on moral and community issues in psychotherapy.