Quotes by Kenneth Keniston

Kenneth Keniston

Confronted with the unhappy facts of exclusion, we sometimes reassure ourselves by telling stories: the poor boys who made it, theblacks who became a “credit to their race,” the women elected to high office, the handicapped who made “useful contributions” to our society…. Just as we believe in the self-sufficient family, we also believe that any child with enough grit and ability can escape poverty and make a rewarding life. But these stories and beliefs clearly reflect the exceptions.

Believe

Boys

Children

Despite the long-term reduction in familial roles and functions, we believe that parents are still the world’s greatest experts about the needs of their own children. Virtually any private or public program that supports parents, effectively supports children. This principle of supporting family vitality seems to us preferable to any policy that would have the state provide children directly with what it thinks they need.

Believe

Children

Thinking

For Americans the contradiction between national ideal and social fact required explanation and correction. Ultimately this contradiction did not lead to the abandonment of the ideal of equal opportunity but rather to its postponement: to the notion of achieving for the next generation what could not be achieved for the current one. And the chief means to this end was a brilliant American invention: universal, free, compulsory public education. This “solution” was especially important for children and families because it gave children a central role in achieving the national ideal.

Children

Education

Mean

In brief, we have no explicit family policy but instead have a haphazard patchwork of institutions and programs designed mostly under crisis conditions, whether the crisis is national in scope (such as a recession ) or personal (such as a break-up of a particular family).

Broken

Family

Program

In the early nineteenth century, the doctrine of self-sufficiency came to apply to families as well as individuals…. The familybecame a special protected place, the repository of tender, pure, and generous feelings (embodied by the mother) and a bulwark and bastion against the raw, competitive, aggressive, and selfish world of commerce (embodied by the father)…. In performing this protective task, the good family was to be as self-sufficient as the good man.

Father

Mother

Selfish

In the end, the fate of children depends on our ability to use technology constructively and carefully. The connection of childrenand technology is not simply a matter of seat belts, safe toys, safe air, water and food, additive-free baby foods, or improved television programming. These are all important issues, but to stop here is to forget that today’s children will soon be adults. Technological decisions made today will determine, perhaps irrevocably, the kind of physical and social world we bequeath them and the kind of people they become.

Baby

Children

Fate

In the past the intrinsic pleasures of parenthood for most American families were increased by the extrinsic economic return thatchildren brought. Today, parents have children despite their economic cost. This is a major, indeed a revolutionary, change.

Children

Parent

Past

It is misleading to discuss recent changes in family life without emphasizing the fact that for generations some Americans have had to raise children under particularly appalling pressures. Although much of what is worrying American parents is shared by them all, the most grievous problems are those that especially afflict a large minority–the poor, the nonwhite and, in various ways, the parents of handicapped children.

Children

Parent

Worry

Mothers work outside the home for many reasons; one of them is almost always because their families need their income to live up to their standards for their children.

Children

Family

Mother

One current reaction to change in families, for example, is the proposal for more “education for parenthood,” on the theory that this training will not only teach specific skills such as how to change diapers or how to play responsively with toddlers, but will raise parents’ self-confidence at the same time. The proposed cure, in short, is to reform and educate the people with the problem.

Play

Self Confidence

Skills

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Believe

Block

Boys

Broken

Change

Children

Country

Dangerous World

Dedication

Destiny

Dream

Education

Educational

Family

Fate

Father

Giving

Home

Husband

Jobs

Mean

Mother

Needs

Pain

Parent

Past

Play

Player

Program

Reading

Religious

Responsibility

Self

Self Confidence

Self Esteem

Selfish

Skills

Teacher

Thinking

Worry

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Quotes by Kenneth Keniston

Kenneth Keniston

In brief, we have no explicit family policy but instead have a haphazard patchwork of institutions and programs designed mostly under crisis conditions, whether the crisis is national in scope (such as a recession ) or personal (such as a break-up of a particular family).

In the past the intrinsic pleasures of parenthood for most American families were increased by the extrinsic economic return thatchildren brought. Today, parents have children despite their economic cost. This is a major, indeed a revolutionary, change.

Mothers work outside the home for many reasons; one of them is almost always because their families need their income to live up to their standards for their children.

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

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