Main description:

Parenting: Contemporary Clinical Perspectives offers fresh insights into treating parents and their children that highlight the evolving role of parents throughout the lifespan and amidst contemporary social pressure and change. By drawing from their own personal experiences as well as those from clinical practice, distinguished clinicians and analysts examine each phase of parenting through a variety of lenses to tackle our biggest parenting questions. While we must be highly present for our children to help them develop a sense of self-worth, we must simultaneously step back if we want them to develop a sense of autonomy and individuality. As our role as parent changes, how can we maintain a sense of grace, humor, and perspective? How can our work in practice inform and enrich our parenting, and vice versa? Thoughtful and engaging, this volume is a valuable resource for family therapists and clinicians, especially those who are parents themselves.

Contents:

Part I: Theorizing on the Process of Parenting
1.Parenting Across the Lifespan: Some Personal and Conceptual Musings / Steven Tuber, PhD, ABPP
2.Not Your Mother's Identity: Good-Enough Parenting in the Age of Maximization / Lisa Samstag, PhD and Nick Samstag, PhD
3.On Being Essential: Parenting, Immigration, and Acculturation / Diana Punales Morejon, PhD
4.We Are Always Essential / Ken Barish, PhD
Part II: Parenting and Its Impact on Clinical Work
5.The Therapist's Experience as Parent: The Complex Interaction Between Parent Process and Clinical Work / Leslie Gibson, PhD
6.Parental Humility / Kevin Meehan, PhD and Elizabeth Zick, PhD
7.Rage, Forgiveness, and Acceptance: Parenting Through Difficult Moments / Paul Donahue, PhD
8."I Can't Stand Her": The Role Of Hatred in Development / Marsha Levy Warren, PhD
Part III: The Impact of Clinical Work on Parenting
9.Transformative Aspects of Our Own Analyses and Their Resonance in Our Parenting and Work with Patients / Lauren Levine, PhD
10.Why Did You Choose Me?: Some Thoughts on the Wish to Have a Child and the Child's Wished-For Parent / Banu Seckin-Ertal, PhD
11.Self-Disclosure, Reverie, and Countertransference as Essential Aspects of Psychotherapy / Monique S. Bowen, PhD
12.Becoming a Grandparent: Memories, Identifications, and Reenactments / Jerry Meyer, MD
13.Gardening in the Softball League: How Teachers Parent / Benjamin Harris, PhD