Quotes from Joshua Coleman

Rule: "My adult child should be able to balance out whatever mistakes I have made with all of the good that I have done as a parent." Counter: "While I wish that my child could see all of the ways that I have been dedicated, I

Since my child is choosing not to spend time with me, it is healthy for me to think about how I want to spend my time without him or her in my life. Putting my child out of my mind is useful for my happiness and serenity. When I punish myself for the past, I perpetuate the myth that I deserve to suffer. I have suffered enough and as of today I choose to feel good about myself as a parent and as a person.

In contrast to prior generations, conflict is no longer seen as an unavoidable, and perhaps even necessary, component of family life, but rather a referendum on each person: Does my parent limit my potential? My happiness?

Every divorce is a unique tragedy because every divorce brings an end to a unique civilization—one built on thousands of shared experiences, memories, hopes, and dreams. E. Mavis Hetherington and John Kelly, For Better or for Worse: Divorce Reconsidered

maintain that one of the reasons some adult children estrange themselves, or claim to have narcissistic parents, is that they experience their parents' demand for intimacy as more than they can fulfill, and in some cases, more than they should be asked to bear.

I maintain that one of the reasons some adult children estrange themselves, or claim to have narcissistic parents, is that they experience their parents' demand for intimacy as more than they can fulfill, and in some cases, more than they should be asked to bear.

In other words, if I say that you abused, neglected, bullied, or traumatized me, then you did. As Haslam writes, evaluations about whether emotional abuse, trauma, or neglect occurred are today based on the child's perception of that behavior, even if that behavior would look benign to an outside observer or exist independently of the parent's intentions or emotions. It's what I feel that matters.

The dynamic, however necessary, may have misshaped her subjective world in the same way that a miracle drug may leave someone with lifelong vulnerabilities.

This lack of social capital puts enormous strain on working-class and poverty-stricken parents because they not only don't know where to turn for help but also can't afford it when they do.

As Mark Twain famously quipped, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

The tendency is always strong to believe that whatever receives a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. John Stuart Mill, 1869

In 1850, Dr. Samuel Cartwright reported in The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal the discovery of a new disease, which he called drapetomania. Drapetomania was a condition that caused sulkiness, dissatisfaction, and a desire to avoid service. It was used to describe slaves who sought to run away from their servitude: drapetes, the ancient Greek word for "runaway slave," and mania for "excessive energy or activity.

While the family was once where individuals located themselves in a chronological or social order, it now comprises the institution from which they must be liberated.

Carl Jung wrote that nothing affects children more than the unlived lives of their parents.

Our prejudices lead us to tear nature where we want it to break. Gary Greenberg, The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry

As the Chinese sage of early antiquity Sun Tzu said, "The side that knows when to fight and when not will take the victory. There are roadways not to be traveled, armies not to be attacked, walled cities not to be assaulted.

What Chinese parents understand," Chua wrote, "is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up.

That's why taking care of yourself is important: your partner doesn't have endless resources to support you, and you need to be able to give something back to the relationship.

Avoid what marital researcher John Gottman refers to as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: defensiveness, criticism, stonewalling, and contempt. Studies show that no marriage can survive a steady diet of those emotions.

Many men feel hurt and rejected by the central focus that a child gains in his wife's life. Men who feel displaced, hurt, rejected, or devalued by the arrival of a child are more likely to retreat from doing housework or parenting. Their "laziness" is a protest for feeling displaced and unimportant.

If you are to gain power in your household, you need to come face-to-face with the ways in which you may subtly or overtly idealize men or their power. You need to gain the comfort to face a man down and to strongly assert your wishes and needs for change. As Mahony writes, "Is there any way to expunge the glittery aura of male status? Only by changing one's feelings. Women who can't will scurry like a scullery maid or live with guilt.

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. Aeschylus

women who get the most participation from men are those who are comfortably assertive in their expectations of that participation.8 If you feel overly responsible or guilt-ridden about wanting your husband to pull his weight, you'll be at the mercy of his goodwill. This is not where you want to be in the modern-day, stressed-out marriage where everybody's trying to steal a few minutes of down time.

Unfortunately, some men are a little hard-of-hearing. This is why about a quarter of them are completely surprised when their wives file for divorce.9 If you're talking to your husband about your feelings, you may have to make it very, very plain how unhappy you are with the current arrangement.