Family’s Important Part In Training Children

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30822, 6 August 1965, Page 12

Family’s Important Part In Training Children

The family was the most important training school for children, more so perhaps than the standard type of schooling which came after, said Dr. H. Stierlin, in a lecture on “Emotional Stresses In Family Living,” in Christchurch last night.

The reason for this was that many of the essential skills for successful living were learned in the first five or six years of a child’s life, said Dr. Stierlin, an eminent German psychiatrist.

“During this formative period much can go right or much can go wrong. A lot depends on the school for the skills of living which the family provides,” said Dr. Stierlin.

He said what was learned at home was not the sort of learning found later at school but something which occurred in the obscurity of intimate relationships—of identifi-'a-tion and imitation of family members.

What was required for such training were available models—worth-while models for identification—and what was involved was the pro' ’.sion of a balance of relationships which every child should have, he said. Dr. Stierlin described , the most turbulent period of a young person’s life as adolescence—the t rue when youngsters moved outside the home with an almost “compulsive independence.” “They try to be adults emotionally and economically but without a proper balanced adult outlook. This is the sort of situation which can create stresses and problems.”

In order that a child could pass successfully through its various relationships, there had to be a clear delineation of roles in families. Family Types

Dr. Stierlin spoke of two basic types of family—the extended and the nuclear. The former enjoyed fairly close meaningful relationships between all members of a family; it was feudal and tradi-

tional, and was found in the cultures of the older European countries. Opposing this was what had become known as the nuclear family now a dominant type in the United States. The nuclear family consisted largely of two parents and the children and Was the outcome to a large degree of the high paced, mobile and industrialised society such as was to be found in the United States, “From observation and study it appears that the average American family moves about every seventh year. This type of mobility would prevent meaningful close relationships,”- he added.

A factor which tended to encourage the nuclear family, said Dr. Stierlin, was the trend to early marriage. “There is tremendous pressure on early marriage, both economically and psychologically, in the United States.” In what was an affluent society there was a notion that it was right to get married now and somebody could pay later.

In New Zealand the family pattern was rather mixed, he said. In some respects it had a European tradition; yet it could safely be expected that With an increasing population the whole pace of life in the Dominion would increase. At present, family ties in New Zealand seemed to be close and there was a community which could be overseen. Yet the importance of the nuclear family, and the problems that went with it, were likely to increase, said Dr. Stierlin. “This will develop as you go under the spell of mass media which will simulate an outlook similar to that which now exists in the United States.”