Daniel A. Bochner, Ph.D.

Parenting is potentially both the toughest and the most rewarding part of life. Any parent knows that the minute their first child is born, their life changes forever. All that you thought was important before pails in comparison to the health, well-being, and future success of your children. Thus, the parenting function of the couple in a family is obviously of crucial importance for the efficient, or at least sufficient, functioning of the family machine. In this section, the articles emphasize the basics for good parenting, protecting the parents from disruptive outside influences, and helping kids understand just how much their parents care. In The Essentials of Parenting, the balance between four primary parenting skills is outlined and discussed. Who's to Say What's "Right" in Parenting? encourages parents to trust their own judgment in picking the basic kind of parenting they want to practice. Finally, in You Don't Know How Much They Love You, a "talk" is presented that one might want to have with an ungrateful or disrespectful child or adolescent, with hope that any child who is loved can see just how passionate parents are about the welfare of their children. This section, when combined with the next section on Building Good Kids and the next on "discipline practices," offers a good basis for quality parenting. Quality parenting leads to building good kids, and there can be no doubt that discipline practices are central to that process.