9. Family Therapy with a Larger Aim

After many years of working therapeutically with families, we have recently been developing some practices within our work that attempt to address larger social ills simultaneously with helping families change specific troubles that bring them to therapy (Rojano, 2004). Our family work has always been an integration of family therapy and social work; we regularly address basic needs (e.g., adequate housing, effective childcare, good nutrition, and supportive medical care) along with presenting problems, and now we are bringing what we call the larger societal discursive influences on families, that is, those scripts or messages about how one should conduct his/her life that we learn from growing up within specific communities/societies, into our therapy with them (St. George and Wulff, 2008).

We have each begun incorporating specific themes in our work that address the larger social problems of gender imbalances, unfairness, and violence among people. I (Sally) have found some ways of conversing with client families that help them solve/resolve/dissolve their presenting issues, while simultaneously raising the issue of discrimination and unfairness in gender relationships within their own family system. My therapy includes examining and re-visioning families’ lived gendered relationships and how those arrangements may impact the issue(s) that brought them to therapy. The family becomes part of a process of seeing themselves and their troubles as connected to influences shared by all persons in their community, that they are not alone. Seeing themselves as connected to other families and their larger world encourages a sense of togetherness, as opposed to a sense of isolation and privatization of their troubles which often happens with the structural design of traditional therapies around confidentiality and working with families separately (Wulff, St. George, and Besthorn, 2011).

I (Dan) have taken up working with families in ways that address their concerns with violent behaviors of their children while avoiding reinscribing the use of violence (verbal and/or physical) as a parental response. A great deal of family therapy and family intervention literature has encouraged, in varying degrees, the importance of a parent or parents exercising their legitimate hierarchical control over their unruly or defiant children (e.g., Minuchin, 1974; Nichols and Schwartz, 2004). This process of establishing a hierarchical system whereby the parents occupy a position of authority may be inadvertently misinterpreted as a call to exercise domination and power. Being responsible and accountable for children can be developed by a parent creating a dependable “presence” without incorporating power tactics of fear and intimidation (Omer, 2000). Instead of aggressive tactics, methods of nonviolence, such as those that have been employed by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. on a larger scale (e.g., sit-ins, going on strike, consistent nonparticipation), can be adapted to the family context. The connection between this way of working and the larger aim of resisting aggression and violence on a community or societal level is based in the belief that violence is supported and expanded by the individual performances of violence in our daily lives, even within our most intimate familial relationships. These efforts within my practice of family therapy represent a grassroots initiative to teach and mentor client families to resist the all-too-prevalent invitations to include aggression and violence in our lives and relationships.

In both of these initiatives, we hope to demonstrate how social workers, family therapists, and potentially all helping professionals can perform their therapeutic work in ways that promote social justice. Working with families in ways that challenge gender inequalities or families’ overreliance on violent or dominating practices constitute approaches that some refer to as subactivism (Bakardjieva, 2009), that is, actions in everyday life that have the potential to collectively impact larger social concerns or systems.

Subactivism includes those experiences in the everyday flow of life that can be understood to have a political or ethical frame of reference (or both) (Bakardjieva, 2009). They are personal and interpersonal events or relationships that reflect or support preferred ways of being that may uphold societal discourses and preferences or may deviate from them. They could include preferred ways of practicing one’s job, one’s role as a parent, or one’s position in a neighborhood or social network that reflect some fundamental values or beliefs. One could go so far as to say that all our behaviors are built upon values and beliefs. We continuously reinforce or contradict values and beliefs by our choices of behaviors, but we may not be cognizant of this process or of the values and beliefs we favor. As a social worker or family therapist, one could practice professionally from a position that tends to support nonviolence (or re-inscribes violence), tends to support gender equality (or upholds hierarchical gender relationships), or tends to support emotionality (or privileges intellectualizations), and so on. These allegiances are not absolute—it is unlikely that any practitioner can behave completely in accordance with any of the above-mentioned positions consistently. But the point here is that we tend to gravitate to one side more than the other.

In our view, it is not enough just to perform our therapeutic work without having that work address social problems that plague our communities and societies in which that therapeutic work occurs. Further, we believe that whether we are aware of it or not, our therapeutic practices emanate from positions on these societal and communal values and beliefs—we do not operate in a vacuum. One risk of this kind of work may be a tendency for a practitioner to use the therapy situation to proselytize for a social cause, neglecting the family’s original reason for coming. We think this balancing of functions/actions can be effectively nurtured and maintained to provide high-quality family therapy while deliberately working toward challenging social problems. This blending of therapeutic work and activism presents a challenging new frontier in how we might imagine clinical practice.

As social workers and family therapists we have long approached our work with philosophical and theoretical ideas that are commonly understood as postmodern or social constructionist (Becvar and Becvar, 2009). For us, these ideas have been, and still are, a preferred foundation for our therapeutic work because of their constructive and generative impact in helping us help families and also their coherence with the principles by which we live. We think it is important to live out the collaborative principles more generally in our lives than we espouse in our therapy approach (St. George and Wulff, 2007).

The affiliation of these ideas with the term “social constructionist” is not our motivation in embracing them. In fact, the oft-cited debates between social constructionism and positivism seem, in our view, to detract from considering more directly how ideas and their associated practices influence behaviors and relationships.

That being said, we are pleased to present some notions that we have been working with that share much with the ideas that resonate with other literature under the label, social constructionist. In particular, we appreciate working from a position that openly acknowledges and values that “the realities we live in are outcomes of the conversations in which we are engaged” (Gergen, 2009: 4). This quote represents some key ideas that we center our work around, namely: Realities are plural (not singular), language is crucial, relationships are central to our lives, and life (and our understandings of it) is fluid.

Each of us will describe how we have developed some ways of working with families that are built upon these ideas. We include some illustrations of our experiences with these ideas-in-action, and what these experiences suggest to us now regarding next steps or new avenues that we might pursue to further the aim of helping social workers and family therapists find ways to more positively impact our communities and society.

“Women supporting women” is a phrase that I (Sally) used as an antidote to the discouraged and heartsick feelings I experienced as a result of working with a number of families in which mothers and daughters were seemingly at war with each other. It is a phrase that captured the spirit of gendered expectations and resistance to repeating the languaging, hierarchies, and experiences that women and girls are vulnerable to in interactions at the workplace, in school, and other social situations. It has become a code phrase (1) for noticing the ways in which women are covertly treated as second-class citizens in the world and (2) as a warning for women to not succumb to reenacting such behaviors inside the home, particularly between mothers and daughters. It flows from social constructionist ideas that Ken Gergen speaks of in The Saturated Self (1991) summarized below:

We create the realities of our relational lives.

What we think of as the individual evolves from the confluence of all our relationships.

Together, we are creating a different reality of living together in ways that are more satisfying for the mother and her daughter (or of working together in therapy).

The individual self is thought about and talked about in relationship, between mothers and daughters, between family and their society.

In the last two years, I have seen many families consisting of single-parent mothers and adolescent daughters. The conversations that are occurring in family therapy sessions between mothers and daughters are filled with anguish, anger, self-righteousness, blaming, threat, and confusion. I have heard daughters accusing their mothers of being “stupid” and “failures” and mothers calling their daughters “whores” or “inconsiderate losers.” Often they are both so angry that the only solution they can think of is to have the daughter leave the home. In talking with other colleagues in the field, I found that I was not the only one who was trying to deal with and counteract such situations in daily practice. Therefore, my purpose is to share the directions that my experiences and thinking have taken me in working with families who are experiencing major conflict between mothers and daughters.

This is a work-in-progress and contains three ideas I am developing and using in working with mother-daughter conflict from a social constructionist stance and incorporating a kind of gentle gender talk. The first is a shift from problem or solution talk to what I call philosophical talk in session. The second idea is centered on encouraging mothers to reposition themselves from a “power over” or “overpowered” position to one of guiding and preparing their daughters for womanhood in our society. The third idea is involving a community of women and men who are all invested in the growth and development of our daughters. As illustrations of these ideas, I will share some stories of success and challenge.

A long time ago I read Plato not Prozac (1999) by Lou Marinoff. My intention in reading that book at that time was to look for conversational alternatives to the language of deficit and diagnosis, to bring forth different metaphors and focus to therapy and supervision. In the last two years, I have again been drawn back to philosophy, not a formal study of philosophical thought per se, but to the ways of living or worldviews that we live by as we face crises, change, excitement, danger, opportunity, and globalization in daily living.

When mothers and daughters begin fighting in session as I try to learn the nature and location of their distress, the last thing I want to sort out are the facts about coming in late, who reneged on a promise, who used a certain tone, who made what threat, who lied more often. We know from the principle of reciprocal causality (Becvar and Becvar, 2009) that each action is in reaction to what has already transpired and to sort out the truth or the beginning will be futile—all behaviors are responses to other behaviors before them. What I prefer to do is to see how things “make sense”—how behaviors and interactions that are upsetting may be traced back to good intentions and efforts that maybe have deviated from what the participants had hoped. Perhaps the intentions that got so far off-track actually contribute to the interpersonal anger and frustration. I am finding that I can get the conversation to move in that direction if I use some open and relevant questions to generate possibilities for more effective ways of talking and listening. Let me offer the following composite synopsis formed from several different first sessions.

In some cases, this first session was enough of a start that mother and daughter could carry-on together at home in this manner without my direct participation. In other situations, they have come back telling me that they have begun thinking more about their philosophical stance and that they are more cognizant of being a woman who supports other women as they interact with each other, as well as other family members, workmates, and even in making big and small decisions.

Of course, changing the discourse to one that is more philosophical is not foolproof, but it is often a viable option. In another therapy session, while a daughter refused to talk, she did not disrupt her mother from conversing with me about her philosophical stance as a mother. Some of the questions that I had asked her were:

Most of the times when I have this kind of conversation with mothers in the presence of their daughters, their daughters are listening intently as evidenced by their gaze, by nonverbal signs of disagreement, or when they re-enter the conversation. I suspect it is more listenable for daughters because the focus is on the mother’s thinking rather than the daughter’s behavior or the interaction.

One of the things that I have noticed with mothers and daughters coming to therapy is their particular version of “power struggles.” It seems that they are caught up in a competition in which one person is a winner and one is a loser—they even use these words in describing their interactions. Mothers and daughters are both frequently worried about “giving in” and “losing” and thus they hold tightly to their positions, even when it is unpleasant and unproductive. I am increasingly alert to the limitations of discourses of competition in family life, which I see as a dominant societal discourse representing male-gendered behavior and socialization. In response to this type of discourse, I purposefully try to move the conversation to one in which mothers embrace the role of guiding their daughters toward successful adulthood and in which daughters can focus on learning to be women in our society. I ask mothers to tell me about the responsibilities they feel in regard to raising their daughters. They usually respond with a sense of duty to teach and prepare their daughters to be productive and good adult women and citizens. Then I ask daughters to tell me about the confidence they have that this process of preparation is on track, that they are on their way to becoming productive and good adult women.

One of the sticky points I have noticed of late is that many of these daughters sound like adults in terms of their criticisms, certainty, and demands (although not adult-like in terms of responsibility to others). It seems that when adults hear adult-like talk from their children, they expect the full range of adult behaviors and skills that adults hold, such as understanding long-range consequences, reasoning, and logic about who else might be affected, or the ways in which events or situations might not go as planned. I think this is the place in which the talk at home often breaks down—the presumption that the daughters hold an adult stance because they use adult-like claims as well as sarcasm and other tones that adults use to achieve power.

To help mothers counteract this urge to treat their daughters as full-fledged adults/women and understand the presumptions they hold, I ask them what they believe their daughters still need to learn in order to be an advantaged woman (one day) rather than a disadvantaged woman. By advantaged woman, I mean a woman who understands the traps and turmoils of gendered expectations, unspoken rules, rights, and possibilities, as opposed to a woman who accepts the world and her expected role as it is prescribed by society. Many times the daughters think they are already in the knowing position, but I encourage the mother-daughter pair to examine their positions for the merits and limitations inherent in any position. I can do this with the mothers individually or with their daughters, helping mothers with some new languaging to continue to guide their daughters, especially in the face of a daughter’s resistance. I use some of Haim Omer’s (2004) ideas about nonviolent parenting (which Dan will discuss in more detail later in this chapter) that invite mothers into some more fruitful forms of conversation with their daughters. In this way, we are using language to open possibilities to more effective ways of talking and listening. I am very active in sessions giving examples and illustrations. But those are just that—examples and not prescriptions—and are often in response to the request for concrete strategies for change.

For example, to counteract some of the predictable patterns they identify occurring at home (e.g., the power struggles), I ask mothers about their stances regarding what they think their daughters yet need to know in terms of what is happening or going to happen. These items that they may need yet to know are not small nagging items about rules, chores, or privileges, but rather the big learnings. Additionally, this is not about coercing a daughter to follow traditional norms that perhaps the mother experienced. Chances are these items are major issues that the mother and daughter may likely agree with in principle—their divisiveness may stem from just how to reach those goals or principles. From this I add a distinction between consistency and predictability. It seems to me that children need consistency, that is, they need to know that they will be cared for and supported no matter what happens. But they do not always need to be able to predict or know in advance exactly what will happen as a result of an interaction, that is, how the mother will feel and what she will do to take care of a situation. When all of this is too predictable or thought to be scripted, daughters seem to plan ahead to oppose their mothers’ efforts. In the face of a daughter’s protest, I coach a mother to say something like:

In a sense these responses add a degree of complexity to these situations that the daughter is often trying to minimize. The daughters appear to want the decision to be simple and favorable. When a parent introduces added complexity into a situation, there is another important learning moment for the child. For example, a daughter came in extremely late without calling home and her mother was very worried and started making calls to everyone she could think of who might have information about her daughter’s safety. The daughter also wanted to guarantee a weekend outing and so she did some cleaning and her homework for a couple of days. Then when the outing came, the daughter asked her mother for permission and a ride. When the mother replied no, the daughter launched into a tirade about how she has done everything that was asked, expecting that a short time of compliance should balance out her transgression of deceit and irresponsibility. She made no connection between the lack of responsibility and her being told no, nor did she take into consideration the other person in the situation, thinking her solution would do for both parties and anything other than acceptance of her solution was unfair and stupid. Attending to complexity is another social constructionist idea that helps me honor the difficulty of the situations and open possibilities for creating a difference (Gergen, 2009; McNamee and Gergen, 1999). It helps me help mothers teach their daughters some things that will be useful in the daughter’s adult future. It is not about a parent gaining compliance—rather it is about teaching about relational complexity. This can change the whole mindset of the involved parent.

I have identified a prevalent (although largely unsatisfying) teaching strategy all of the mothers I have spoken with in this situation have utilized. It is repetition and each mother has reported it to be exhausting for them as well as their daughters. The repetitions may vary, but they usually progress from polite requests to threatening demands. I have come to understand or frame this as an interaction that has evolved in which the mothers sense that they are not being taken seriously by their daughters. When I have asked the daughters when they know they should take their mothers seriously, they can oftentimes give me a precise number or signal such as “on the fifth time she says it” or “when her voice lowers and there is anger” or “when she stands with her hands on her hips.” Part of the goal then becomes to help the mother and daughter to develop a new pattern in which the mothers are serious on the first time they say something and the daughters take them seriously on the first time as well (or at least work toward that).

What distresses me about this interaction and what I share with clients is that I see it as an enactment of what many adult women often face in the workplace or in other societal contexts—that they are not taken seriously until they express themselves angrily or forcefully (most mothers have agreed). This discourse of not paying attention until one is threatened can be seen on the front page of world politics as well as in interactions in intimate relationships, in effect encouraging violence toward one another (a theme taken up by Dan in the second part of this chapter). To counteract this I try to develop ways with mothers that they can be taken seriously without needing to escalate or explode, helping them to add another truth about effective parenting. I urge them to say what they want and mean very clearly and fully and yet succinctly, once. We talk about saying more with less, while sending a clear message and in the face of resistance to employ language along the lines of:

Daughters are often caught up in repeating their views or wishes far too many times. In my experience, it seems much more productive and efficient for both mothers and their daughters to find ways to not repeat what they say to one another. It is oftentimes the act of repeating that is most annoying and angering in stressed relationships.

Sometimes the emotions and the stakes rise as mothers are faced with daughters who continue to use threats and violence that invite their mothers to confrontation. For example, when a daughter does not get her way she may threaten or attempt to leave. While many mothers’ impulses are to physically restrain their daughters, they know they cannot and they feel desperate to do something to keep them safe. I think it is an untenable situation, and mothers cannot physically force their daughters: if for example, a daughter yells, “then I am leaving” as a tactic, I advise mothers to say something short and pointed (and truthful) like “that’s unfortunate,” or “leaving will create a dilemma for us.” It seems that at these intense moments of escalation and possible confrontation, the tendency to become repetitive is at its strongest. Even at these junctures, being clear, while being nonrepetitive, is a productive path.

One other thing I ask of mothers is to describe the kind of mother they want to be, and I encourage them to continue to strive toward that kind of mother. Again, all of the mothers want to be generous with time and money and share good times with their daughters but they feel constrained because often they have determined that their daughters are not worthy (based on their behaviors). I urge the mothers to be generous on their terms and to get the fun, to be as loving as they wish to be and to not violate their own parenting philosophical principles. This relates to Omer’s (2004) proposition that negatively escalating relationships cut out the positive aspects of our relationships—the trouble crowds out the good stuff. Mothers can be kind and generous with their daughters any time they wish to be—it is not necessarily limited to when the daughter is compliant or worthy.

These are suggestions for different ways to guide daughters by modeling good adult and womanly communications that are loving, truthful, and clear. In this way, mothers can maintain their stance as guides, enhance the relationship with their daughters, and be the kinds of mothers they would like to be because they love their daughters and their daughters need them and deserve the best of what their mothers have to offer—they are women supporting women. Mothers have not resisted this kind of conversation, even when their view is that the daughter “is the problem” or is the one who “has a problem.” My focus has been on mothers and daughters, but there are strong father-son connections that could be developed in particular, focusing on how fathers hope to encourage their sons to be responsible adult men. The risks of boys growing up into manhood in ways that create hardship and pain for them and those around them is high, and working with fathers to be more effective guides and mentors could work well, just as my initiative has approached work with mothers and daughters.

It does not take long to ask families: “Who is not in this room and yet is invested in the success of this mother-daughter team?” Ironically the most common first answer is “no one” or “we are on our own.” In spite of this negative answer, I persist. I might ask them to name someone who they interact with regularly without conflict and follow with this question: “If I asked [the people just named] directly, ‘Would you want to see [names of mother and daughter] be healthy and successful as a family,’ what might they say?” Alternatively I might ask, “Who in your world is invested in thirteen-year-old girls not being expendable or exploited?” With these prompts, mothers and daughters can usually create a list of those who are invested and to whom they could turn for support and help. Often aunts and uncles, grandparents, friends, co-workers, ex-spouses, stepparents, and school personnel are identified, even those at a physical distance, whom mothers and daughters could turn to when the situation seems so exhausting or without the possibility for change. I encourage them to think of ways in which they might turn to their community supporters, and, when available, these people are encouraged to come to therapy with the family, provided that the family thinks that would be useful and is willing to ask these additional people. Most frequently, I have had local aunts, grandparents, and other helping professionals attend sessions and pledge their help. To involve school personnel, I frequently travel to the school to have a joint meeting with the school person(s) identified along with the family.

The Western social discourse and philosophical stance that privileges individualism as one of the highest goals, as described by Gergen (2009) or Stevenson (1998), has taught us to believe that families should be able to handle their own problems without “outside help.” Even during moments of despair or being in the failed repetitive patterns of criticizing and defending (Tomm, 1991), there remains a resistance to inviting others into the fray. I have to remind my families (and me, too) that, “You’re exhausted—time to call in supports. We cannot handle this on our own. It is far bigger than the three of us.”

What I have found important in recruiting and involving other people is that we become clear about the specific ways they might be called upon or what they can offer. For example, one pair of jet-setting grandparents who had not really been aware of the depth of the trouble their daughter and granddaughter were having offered to have “spa weekends” at their house, in which both mother and daughter could stay over at their luxury home to get massages, homemade meals, and generally have a weekend of pampering and playing games and a reprieve from fighting (that was a condition of the weekend—no fighting). In another example, a mother turned to her co-workers whenever she was exasperated and out of ideas and held a type of focus group, investigating things that the average mother could say and do in order to not lose her daughter to life on the streets. One of my favorite examples is the mother who, whenever she was having an escalating argument with her daughter, would call “the girls’ team” consisting of two aunts and two friends who lived nearby. The call would go out via text with a coded message that translated into “come now if you can,” and a portion of the team, if not all, would come over to listen, to calm down the mother and her daughter, and help create a new or useful resolution. This team was called upon quite a bit in the first month; after that their involvement was lessened, though their emotional and supportive investment remained high. There have been times in which the support network needed to be called together to discuss fatigue or ways to support the support network. A meeting with a focus on progress and a reexamination and perhaps a reworking of the original plan has been sufficiently helpful. The act of helping one another also has a component of being uplifting for the persons helping—it feels good to be able to help another. So helping does not only use resources, it replenishes.

Talking about stretching or extending the network of help is an opportunity for me to occupy the role of inquisitive caregiver (Anderson, 1997) in its purist form. Because I do not know the nominees of support, I can only ask questions that I hope will generate answers. For example, I ask, “What makes this person a good support?” or “How do you come to call this person a dependable support?” or “What tells you this person is safe to ask and will hold your best interest centrally?” The other piece of approaching the dilemmas in this fashion is that the daughters become full participants—they frequently have many ideas about who could be supportive to both themselves and their mothers—supports for the relationship! One daughter suggested one of her friends and her friend’s mother to bring in both points of view when things had gone awry. The daughter’s mother did not know the friend’s mother very well, but with some encouragement from me, that is, seeing some possibility in this suggestion, agreed to call her and talk with her and offer her a bilateral agreement to protect both of their girls from the pitfalls that single mothers with daughters face as well as the harsh gendered realities that women often face in their lives—another example of women supporting women.

My (Dan) attentions in therapy have been upon the prevalence of violence and domination on the parts of parents and children and, all-too-often, from the helping systems. I have found that families who use violence tactics have frequently been involved with police, courts, and other governmental services. Living in today’s world provides constant reminders of the pervasiveness of violence—in wars, in gangs, in schools, in sports, in the environment, in advertising, in economic policies, in our homes. Violence has become embedded in our societies, so much so that its presence may be overlooked. Our attentions are drawn to global scale violence such as terrorism and war, and consequently we may consider interpersonal acts of hostility or aggressiveness as found in our homes, schools, or neighborhoods as not real violence—just isolated acts of frustration that do not merit concern like militaristic or terroristic forms. It is my concern that downgrading interpersonal violence in homes among family members as not as serious as mass killings or tortures plays into the view that tends to minimize the more local and smaller-scale examples of violence. This minimization tends to excuse or hide the consequences of these actions.

My work at the Calgary Family Therapy Centre centers largely on families experiencing parent–child conflict, frequently including physical and verbal violence or threats of violence from children/adolescents toward their parents, siblings, and/or classmates. Parental response to this aggressiveness often resorts to heavy-handed tactics to try to assert their control over the threatening young person, oftentimes at the behest of therapists and social workers, and additionally by society in general. Society expects that parents are responsible for their children; when faced with serious breaches of conduct, a parent is expected to regain control and ensure the child becomes compliant. The means by which a parent is to gain control are not specified—there is a principle that says that the child should not be harmed, but there is also a principle that says that a parent must gain control over the child’s unruly behavior. Research has indicated that matching violence with violence in families often leads to an escalation in violence, rather than its reduction (Omer, 2001). Withdrawing or ignoring the violent overtures also is ineffective. Despite the ineffectiveness of these responses, parents are often at a loss for what else they can do.

Responding to children/adolescents in strong and domineering ways may be an understandable response, but one that may actually re-inscribe our society’s already well-developed allegiance to violence and its tactics without any resultant diminution in the violence that prompted the action. So how do we break the cycle of violence in these frontline client situations in a way that undermines the use of violence by all?

Connecting to the social constructionist notion that behaviors are best understood within a relational context, I have been focusing on sociological approaches rather than psychological ones, a bit of a departure from most psychotherapeutic traditions. Interventions/approaches that are built upon sociocultural theories (such as nonviolent resistance) rather than psychological theories (in which behaviors are understood as more individual in nature) have significant potential to impact the violence in relationships that comes forward in therapy as well as violence seen in the larger social world.

Adapting ideas of nonviolent resistance from Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., families (as well as schools and communities) can learn to effectively respond to violence. Haim Omer (2001, 2004), from Israel, has demonstrated how specific nonviolent resistance practices can be employed by families and has provided some research results indicating the effectiveness of this approach.

From an understanding that behaviors emanate from relational patterns (McNamee and Gergen, 1999), violent words and deeds are contextually understood. Violent actions stem from a network of relationships rather than from an autonomous self. This does not absolve responsibility for one’s actions—rather, it points us toward ways of responding to violence in ways that enhance the possibility for reducing the continuance of violence. It fundamentally shifts our understanding from one of independent and autonomous actors in competition with one another for dominance to one in which an understanding of our interconnectedness as persons invites us to choose from a set of responses that can serve to either encourage or discourage interpersonal violence. The culprit is violence itself, not the individual actors who engage in the violent relationship. The mutual engagement in violent encounters provides the opportunity for all participants to join in an effort to turn away from that way of relating. This is a form of externalization as Michael White and David Epston (1990) have outlined. This way of relating to violence provides a space in which any and all participants can join efforts to eliminate this interactional pattern. While a collaborative effort would be most advantageous, if one or more persons engage in this undertaking (and some do not), it can still pose a strong resistance to the continuance of violence.

With this viewpoint, parents and others can respond to violence from a child/adolescent with various responses, some more likely to continue the violence and others that contradict the continuation of violence. I encourage families to respond to violence in ways that emanate from nonviolent approaches. Consider the following message that a parent or parents might use with a violent child/adolescent:

Violence has made life unbearable for us. We cannot and do not want to live like this any longer. We will do all we can to change the situation—except attacking you physically or verbally. To this end, we decided on the following:

We shall be consistently present in your life.
We shall no longer remain alone with the problem but shall appeal to relatives and friends, tell them openly what is going on, and ask for their help and support.
We shall determinedly oppose the following behaviors: ______________ [usually specifies the violent behaviors of concern]
We have no intention whatsoever of subduing you or gaining control over you. This message is not a threat, but an expression of our supreme duty as parents and human beings (Omer, 2004: 52).

This sample response is an example of a nonviolent response from parents in the face of violence from their child/adolescent. This is a challenging statement for parents to make. They typically have responded to violence with efforts to control and perhaps have used violence (or threats of violence) to try to curtail the child/adolescent’s violent or oppositional behavior. As you can see, this statement takes a decided position against the violent behaviors, but not in a manner that uses violence in the process. It expresses a clear and decided opposition to the violence, but also includes a commitment to oppose without aggression or attack. This nonviolent statement and approach stands in stark contrast to what most of us have experienced within our own families of origin, and even when parents see the logic and value in this stance, they find it extraordinarily difficult to employ in their own family situations.

The following points (Omer, 2001) highlight the reasons why the typical parental efforts to control their children fail:

An example often given is one where a parent responds to his/her child who hits his/her sibling by hitting the offending child, and then exhorting him/her to not hit. Is it possible that this parental reaction re-inscribes the violence that the parent is trying to oppose? Or, is this a false comparison? Regardless of one’s viewpoint on this, I think it is crucial for parents to engage in this type of reflection when choosing parenting strategies. All too often, parenting decisions are made by default, harkening back to some experiences “when the parent was a child” without making a deliberate evaluation as to what option the parent wishes to choose.

Violence exhibited by one’s child is alarming on several levels: (a) concern for the child’s safety and the consequences (short-term and long-term) for him/her; (b) concern for the parent’s own safety (or others around them); or (c) worry about this behavior as a sign of parental failure and the resultant feelings of blame or shame. The distress of this situation can also lead a parent to feel a sense of disbelief that this is happening and an unrealistic desire for this problem to just go away on its own.

Let me describe some applications of these ideas that I have tried. I have discussed using nonviolent methods with parents who have become extremely frustrated, bordering on hopelessness. After repeatedly attempting more conventional strategies of behavioral management of their children, including boundary setting, reward systems, consistency, tolerance, firmness, and emotional appeals, they have a readiness to trying something new. My efforts to begin working with parents using nonviolent strategies (before they have tried all of the other more commonsensical methods) is oftentimes viewed by parents as insufficient, weak, and maybe even capitulation to the child. This early tendency by parents to want to control the child supports my belief that discourses of control and domination are firmly rooted in our societal belief systems. Parents accept the belief that they must control their child at all costs and diligently follow that mandate, even when they engage in behaviors with which they personally disagree.

Once parents have the sense that they have exhausted all conventional parental strategies and approaches, the way is cleared to discuss the possibility of utilizing nonviolent strategies. The theoretical, as well as pragmatic, case is made to the parents as to the potential of this approach in achieving what the other more customary approaches could not. Without this foundational understanding, the efforts to consistently use nonviolence will likely wilt under the child’s uncooperative or even hostile reactions to this way of responding. Children are also convinced of the value of violence as suggested by the societal discourses, so when faced with a nonviolent parental response, their initial response is likely one of disbelief and/or scorn for the parents for using this approach. If the parents are uncertain or unsupported in this new way, the frustration of not seeing quick results and the verbal abuse forthcoming from the child may encourage them to reenact their conflictual dance.

This radical refiguring of the family interactional patterns highlights that parent–child interactions are constructed. They can be configured in a variety of ways. When relationships are not problematic, we usually do not consider our roles in constructing them. It is when they seemingly fall apart that we are given the opportunity to revisit and revise them and can more readily see how relationships can shift by our efforts. Deconstructing our practices allows us to see more clearly how they function and to assess whether or not they should be continued. This knowledge can be comforting and reassuring when we are having doubts about the possibilities of our social world changing.

One set of parents who had just begun this process of using a nonviolent approach with their physically threatening sixteen-year-old son reported back to me that their son “laughed at them” and told them that they were “weak.” These comments shook their resolve, and they became verbally aggressive in return. They felt that they had failed. The history of nonviolent approaches on large societal levels (Sharp, 2005) (along with parenting approaches in general) has shown us that perfect applications of strategies cannot be realistically expected. A misstep in consistent parenting does not ruin the effort. I encouraged them to regroup their thinking, reflect on his response, and plan for how to continue their effort as now wiser parents than before. His challenge to their new approach conveniently provided them with more information from which to more ably continue on their new path.

Their persistence in using nonviolent strategies in the face of his scorn or ridicule had an impact on him. He had been used to derailing his parents’ parenting efforts, and their determination with this approach caught his attention. In fact, this approach to parenting was much more agreeable to him on a certain level, because they were not overtly challenging him in his strength (his power showed in his loud voice and threatening behaviors). They remained calm and did not escalate with him (which he had come to expect). They maintained their resolve to not accept his aggressive behaviors but did not engage with him in forceful interchanges where they demanded his obedience.

One of the elements of this approach flies in the face of psychological understandings; rather than respond with consequences to a misbehavior close in time to the unwanted behavior, this nonviolent approach suggests that responses that stand in opposition to the violence should occur when the emotions associated are cooled down. So rather than “strike while the iron is hot,” the idea here is to “strike while the iron is cold” (Omer, 2004). This principle worked well with this family—the boy was more able to carry on a conversation about his behavior when he was not in the “heat of battle.” The possibility of having a discussion with him about his behaviors was much greater when they spoke with him in a nonagitated state. He was often able to reflect upon his behaviors in ways that indicated to the parents that he at least understood the outrageousness of his actions, even though his ability to refrain from periodic outbursts was limited.

One of the most disconcerting aspects of this family’s violent situation and their long history of failure in changing it was that the parents were unable to be the kind of parents they had wanted to be with their son. The violent interactions had generated a conflict zone where they could not be nurturing, supportive, loving, or even appreciative of their son. The parents felt that they had been cheated out of being the kind of parents they most wanted to be, instead becoming the kind of parents that they most did not want to be. When I asked these parents, “Are these the behaviors, thoughts, and feelings the ones you had hoped to have as a parent?” the result was silence and then tears. This type of question invites parents to step back and reflect on their hopes and dreams, similar to Sally’s earlier point of engaging her clients in a type of philosophical talk.

With this question, I was inviting them to imagine the kind of parent they once hoped to be and to compare it to the present. They described many of the things they had hoped to do with their son and felt that those experiences were now unavailable to them, in large measure due to a need to follow a parental script that was handed to them by society, by tradition, by expectations outside of them. They had come to believe that they had no choice—they were trapped by the violence of their child/adolescent and were forced to either try to dominate in return or simply to “take it.”

The violence that their son exhibited had been a shameful experience for the parents that led them to want to hide that aspect from their rather large extended family. They would often skip family gatherings or leave early if they sensed that the violent behavior might be noticed. In my work with this family, I encouraged the parents to no longer keep this a secret. In fact, I asked them to deliberately discuss the situation with extended family members in order to receive support and perhaps some new ideas on how to deal with the situation. Several extended family members stepped forward to volunteer to have the boy stay with them for weekends or even longer stays, providing respite for the parents as well as offering some direct help in dissuading the boy from violent interactions. While these times living with other relatives did not eliminate the violence, it gave the boy and his parents some much-needed time apart and some other perspectives on what was happening to them. These short stays with relatives were mostly peaceful, not going on long enough to develop the kind of testiness and raw feelings that the parents and their son had experienced together. Had the visits with relatives been longer, it is very possible that those relatives could have encountered similar forms of disagreeable aggression and violence.

Exposing the “secret” was a relief for the parents (although it involved some initial embarrassment for the son), and the pressure that was present due to the need to keep this hidden from the rest of the family was relieved. Being able to confront the influence of violence in one’s family by talking about it openly with one’s family, extended family, and others in one’s social network is a significant step in cracking the influence of violence. By naming it and openly rebuking its influence in one’s life, it mounts a successful point of resistance, and to the degree that it is shared with others may stimulate others to follow likewise.

They used the strategy of a “sit in” whereby they sat in his room and when he asked them why they were there, they stated that they were opposed to his aggressive and violent behaviors and were planning on sitting to think and discuss what might be done to stop the violence in the house. (He was invited to participate if he wished—he declined.) They performed the sit-in repeatedly, thereby emphasizing their commitment to change even though the exact plan on how to change was unknown.

Probably the most noticeably nonviolent method they used was persistent noncompliance with his invitations to escalate. As they developed their skills in nonviolence, they became more able to simply resist/refrain from his overtures to escalate angrily and aggressively in return to him. He initially tried to bait them into anger (and it sometimes worked), but they became increasingly adept at sidestepping these invitations. He began to try to provoke them less in return—another sign that their initiative was being noticed and having an impact.

Early research results suggest that this way of working has had only a modest ability to curb the violent behavior of the child/adolescent (Weinblatt and Omer, 2008), but a noticeable outcome has been that parents are able to “find themselves” again. They recognize that they can stay within the bounds of what being a good parent means to them, irrespective of whether or not their child/adolescent changes. This seems to be a key development for the parents. It re-establishes their own self-control and allows them to behave in accordance with their principles rather than feel controlled by the child/adolescent. This serves as an invitation to the child/adolescent into a new kind of dialogue with the parent leading by example.

In my work with this particular family, the son’s behavior has continued to be at times violent and threatening, but less often. The biggest improvement has seemed to come from the parents recapturing a sense of themselves as parents. They now feel as though they are not wholly dependent on their son and his moods. The escalating behaviors they used to engage in daily with him are not as frequent. They also feel that they can do fun or kind things with or for him when they feel like it. The “dark cloud” that hung over their relationship with him has lifted somewhat and they are no longer held hostage by his moods or behaviors. This change is very significant because persons under threat of violence often feel that their whole life is eclipsed by the angry relational partner—their entire life is subject to the angry feelings of the other. To not be chained to the other’s moods/behaviors provided this couple with a sense of liberation in their own lives, which had an overall positive impact on their relationship with their son. This ability to be less hopeless and disconsolate probably contributed in a positive way to their son’s disposition as well.

A positive aspect of this approach is also to reduce the sense of frustration and feelings of unhelpfulness for the therapist. To work with families with this level of violence is worrisome for the therapist—there is a strong desire to try to improve the situation quickly (just like the parents feel). To be able to see some relief in the parents, irrespective of the child/adolescent’s progress in reducing his/her anger/violence, provides some optimism for the therapist as well. Too often, therapists tend to look only at the reduction or elimination of the presenting problem as the only marker of therapeutic progress. In this case, the parents’ growing sense of optimism and relief for the reclaiming of their own self-agency was a significant development. In fact, this development may have been most advantageous in terms of curbing the use of violence in this family. The parents have refrained from those tactics and their son has seen a parental example of not resorting to violence to deal with violence. This living example of turning away from violence affords the child the opportunity to see what it takes to say “no” to violent tactics. In the spirit of nonviolent resistance efforts throughout history, the goal is not to attack or defeat (in this case, violence)—it is rather an opportunity to claim a nonviolent behavior as one’s own in an effort to support what you believe in.

In this way, the parents turning away from using violence in relationship with their son decreases the overall use of violence—by two people. Hopefully, their son might be able to join this nonviolent path, but for now, the violent interaction of three people is cut from three to one. If violence can be reduced or rejected by more and more people, perhaps this might eventually impact the larger society’s overall investment in violent ways. At this point, this idea is only a proposition, but, in my view, one worth believing. In the early stages of any movement, the efforts to resist some negative influence are usually small and are oftentimes considered insignificant. These decisions to behave nonviolently are based upon principled behavior and are worth it because the means used to pursue some goal must be congruent with the principles we espouse.

Beyond the value for the families to desist from violent parental strategies, an important point in this example is having professional helpers paying attention to the values and beliefs that they uphold in practicing their profession. A more deliberate knowledge of, and effort to develop, those principles we believe in can be built into the ways in which we help people. Social action is not only something that is done in protest marches and letter-writing campaigns; in very significant ways, the everyday practices of family therapists speak loudly in supporting or challenging the preferred societal practices of family life.

In discussing our projects in which we use front-line therapy work to try to impact larger social ills, we see common points. In our practices, we promote a position of asking parents to not use force or overt domination with their children as they try to deal more effectively with the troubles their children pose for them. Actively using nonviolent strategies makes sense both from a moral position as well as a way of most effectively conversing with the other.

Another intersection was the conversations asking the parents to return to their original hopes and intentions for becoming a parent. In both of our projects, we encourage the parents to reclaim their hopes for parenting and to find ways to bring them to fruition. This reconnection to their personal wishes and dreams raises their optimism level. What they had considered lost and irretrievable is discovered to be still available.

The third commonality is the importance of breaking the code of secrecy that surrounds the family trouble. The shame and blame associated with these situations drives the parents to secrecy and fosters feelings of isolation and hopelessness. As with all these common points, they can be enacted by the parents by simply rethinking their ideas and their behaviors. They are able to unilaterally stop being violent or threatening, they can reclaim their dreams of how they want to be a parent, and they can break out of isolation. In the face of disagreeable relationships with their children, they can turn the tide—not by making their children be different, but by altering their own behaviors. The feelings of victimization that come with being parents in these very troublesome situations can be impacted by parents who re-think their ideas and decisions and make adjustments.

Many professions are well-positioned to have an impact on our world beyond the stated objectives of the profession. The ways we enact our roles serve to support or challenge pervasive understandings within our societies. From our perspective, we cannot not contribute to our societal ways of being. When we revisit social constructionist ideas, we are reminded that we are constantly remaking our relationships in all our interactions. The ways we have come to understand gender and the associated roles, and violence and its consequences, are not automatic, and they are not beyond our influence. Developing ways of conversing or dialoguing about the ways these aspects of our lives impact us provide us with an opportunity to make changes in our lives that have an impact on others around us. Given this, we believe that one should consciously consider these larger societal issues and how one might fit these into daily practice to make a difference in society. In our situations, we have taken stands in support of gender equality and in nonviolence. We have illustrated our ways of enacting our roles as family therapists in ways that support these larger societal initiatives to make our worlds better places within which to live.

2:00 p.m.	Greetings and introductions among Sally; mother, Sandy (age 42); and daughter, Shannon (age 15).
2:05	Sandy begins by telling about all the therapy they have attended and that things are worse because “my daughter is hanging around with undesirable people and will not tell me where she is going and she won’t answer her cell phone. Furthermore, she is engaging in risky sex and won’t listen to me about taking precautions because she thinks I don’t know what I am talking about. I believe in therapy but she doesn’t, so I don’t even know if this is going to be helpful.”
2:07	Shannon doesn’t wait for a question inviting her to offer her perspective; instead she immediately jumps in fiercely staring at her mother, saying, “What difference does any of this make? You never listen to me. Nothing I can say will change your mind. And why would I answer my cell phone? You call every ten minutes trying to tell me what to do and what not to do. Plus, I know my friends much better than you do and at least they are not liars, and at least, I don’t lie—like you do. You need therapy; I don’t. You and my father are both liars and you both need therapy!”
2:10	I am thinking at this moment “Is there any graceful or inviting exit from this array of accusations on the table to a different kind of conversation?” With hope I offer, “It seems like you both are very sensitive to having important principles in your lives violated. But sometimes with a listing of the complaints, we lose sight of the philosophical principles that we were trying to live by. What I mean by philosophical principles are those important values you are trying to live by or live up to—the main ideas of how you want to live and how you want to be understood and treated. And I have a feeling that you two have fought this round before. Is that so?” (They agree so I continue.) “Would it be OK to switch the conversation for the next few minutes into a more adult-to-adult, woman-to-woman form and examine the principles you are trying to defend with one another? And then if you want to return to the things that you were listing a few minutes ago, we can. But for now could we make this slight shift and go in this other direction?”
2:13	Shannon is doubtful that her mother has any principles, but she would “love to have an adult, and especially womanly, conversation.” Sandy is ready for anything that is different; she admits to being exhausted from the fighting.
2:15	I ask them, “What philosophical principles are so important to you that you are willing to fight for them?” They begin to list them individually, not jointly. Sandy says “cooperation and respect,” and Shannon says “honesty and freedom to be an individual.” I then ask, “When you are arguing and calling out each other on faults or missteps, which of the principles are you trying to uphold?”
2:20	What ensued was a discussion of what each was trying to achieve—Sandy was working hard to get Shannon to be cooperative and respectful so that Sandy can feel close and give Shannon all the attention and things she would love to give her. Shannon just wanted her parents to be honest with her about the nature of their relationship. (Shannon suspected that both were having affairs and she felt left out and very uncertain.)
2:30	We are about halfway through the session and the tone is different with fewer accusations and more regard for the other. In addition, anything that is said or offered for the next portion of the session is discussed in relation to the fidelity to their claimed philosophical principles of living. When they leave, I note that we are talking as women supporting women; they are smiling and agree that talking philosophically was a new, more womanly (speaking to each other as women more so than as mother with power and as daughter challenging authority), and less distressing way to converse.