Extended family and personal development

          Imagine visiting a place where adults and children walk through the narrow streets of the village exchanging greetings with one another.   What’s more, social gatherings typically involve two, if not three generations. (Children are welcome!).    You would have a hard time buying yourself a newspaper or a pair shoes – or anything – if you tried to go to a store during the three hour midday break when all places of business and all schools are closed to allow adults and children to share their midday meal with their families.  Also, in this village you would find that only one activity goes on at any given time.  Sunday afternoon, for example, is the time families take strolls in the neighboring countryside. 

          Is this a nostalgic look to the past?  Certainly it is not something we are likely to find in North America.  However, this is precisely what Canadian psychologist Gordon Neufeld and his family found on a recent visit to a village in Provence, France. 

         What Dr. Neufeld found in Provence was an example of a culture organized around the essential task of helping children to develop strong, healthy attachment relationships with their parents and other important adults in the community.   

        Such a society is adult-oriented in that values and norms are passed on to children from adults.  Dr. Neufeld and physician Gabor Mate discuss the importance of an adult-oriented social structure (as opposed to a peer-oriented social structure) for the healthy development of children in their book “Hold Onto Your Kids: Why parents need to matter more than peers” (Ballantine Books, 2006).